That is sooooooo '90s

In My Humble Opinion
1

Now that we’re out of the 1990’s, what things are we going to look back on as being so very 90’s? (Part of my inspiration for this is the fact that I recently saw a very, very bad 80’s horror movie which was full of big hair, sequins, and leg warmers.)

Let’s get the simple stuff out of the way:

  1. The new VW beetle.
  2. Clinton, and all that entails.
  3. OJ
  4. The “color” teal. (More of an early 90’s thing, but it counts!)
  5. Techno music
  6. The rise of boy bands and bubblegum pop to mainstream respectability (and the concomitant removal of all music videos from MTV. Coincidence?)
  7. Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat/etc.

Now on to some more complicated stuff:

  1. An animation renaissance, started in part by “Ren & Stimpy.” For a while the gross aesthetic of R&S was all the rage, but it seems to have calmed down.

  2. Movies in which the opening credits are like this: the word “Bruce” appears, and starts floating diagonally across the screen. Then “Willis” appears and floats diagonally in the other direction. Extra points if the name starts out scrambled and unscrambles itself. (“Mercury Rising,” “Stigmata.”)

  3. The mainstreaming of the computer. Back in the late 80’s I was considered to be a computer geek. Nowadays, jocks look up the Sports Illustrated website. You see a lot of computers in movies, even before the Internet explosion, too. In 80’s movies if computers played a role, it was a “computer movie” or you had a specific computer geek character. (“Wargames.”) In 90’s movies computers became as everyday- and in some cases as essential to the plot- as telephones in “Dial M for Murder.” (Think of “The Pelican Brief” and all the other movies in which someone has to snag information off a computer.)

  4. A big change in action movies. 80’s action moves tended to focus on guts and/or muscle, with the typical character being a policeman with a rudimentary understanding of constitutional jurisprudence. (“Dirty Harry,” “Raw Deal.”) The plot would oftentimes involve little more than him roughing up some punks for a few hours, like the scene where Ah-nuld drives a tow truck through the Mafia front building in “Raw Deal.” Around the time of “Batman” and particularly “Die Hard” there was a shift towards movies and heros who were not exactly cerebral, but who emphasised cunning or dexterity more.

  5. Low-impact environmentalism. The 60’s and 70’s gave us “Silent Spring” and “Earth Abides.” The 90’s gave us the Rainforest Cafe, Rainforest Crunch, 50 Things You Can Do To Save The Planet, and a lot of other “5% of this purchase will go towards” sorts of things. Plus, Ferngully and Captain Planet.

  6. A big, big maturation of cable TV. We used to have HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax. Now we have made-for-cable shows like “Sex in the City” and “The Sopranos” are a big part of the intellectual universe of TV critics these days. Plus, we have the Learning Channel, the Food Network, the Golf Channel, the Hitler Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Sci-Fi Channel, Animal Planet, and so forth. (Did I say the Hitler Channel? I meant the History Channel.) This leads us to:

  7. The mainstreaming of gourmet foot. Emeril is a popular celebrity, and Wolfgang Puck made a guest appearance on Tales from the Crypt. In supermarkets, it seems like you can get a lot more exotic foods than you used to. (Was salmon really available in supermarkets in the 80’s?)

  8. Movies made from old TV shows.

-Ben

2

I think the 90’s was the decade of progressing technologically rather than creatively. I saw a lot of new spins on old ideas. It seemed like pop culture cared more about reliving the past than moving into the future. The 90’s was the retro decade.

3

ben, that list was really good. the only other thing i can think of is grunge music, and the tv show friends. even though it’s still going on, in my mind, it’s a 90s craze (especially the whole copying rachel’s haircut thing)

4

“Friends” is a good one- it will be the “Three’s Company” of 2027.

-Ben

5

The strange phenomenon that was political correctness. Nearly every rational person hated it, even though hardly anyone subscribed to it to any significant extent. It was ridiculed for loopy beliefs and practices (“nonhuman animal companion”, anyone?) which almost certainly were not the foremost concerns of PC and may not have existed at all in mainstream thought. And the greatest scare was that it was at its strongest in our colleges…which have ALWAYS been hotbeds for unusual political opinions. I could not name another movement as overhyped and overheated that had less real impact on our society.

Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton. Anywhere and everywhere. Nearly ten whole years defined by one man. Between the controversies, the scandals, and one news item after another, it almost looked like there wasn’t room for anyone else in the white house. The great irony, of course, is that nearly everyone missed out on what really defined his presidency, i.e., final shattering of the wall between Democrats and Republicans. This, remember, is the man who passed the Defense of Marriage Act, welfare reform, NAFTA, and GATT, among other things.

War in the Persian Gulf. For much of America, their first good, hard look into how American politics really works. Bonus points for abandoning the Kurds to their fate and imposing an embargo that’s led to thousands of deaths.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the aftermath. Our last foolish illusions about Communism destroyed forever. The Domino “Theory” shown to be nothing more than right-wing bluster…they couldn’t even support themselves, much less a burgeoning world empire. All that talk about burying us (which was trumped up, BTW), all the posturing and chest-thumping and saber-rattling…for an “empire” that would qualify as a Third World country under any other flag.

Stunning “new” developments that other countries have known and used for ages. Herbal remedies! Like, say, the Chinese have been using since the dawn of civilization. Polyamory! As in what comes naturally for most people when society doesn’t pressure them into monogamy. “Alternative” religions! Gee, you mean the first amendment isn’t just for Protestantism and Catholicism? Friendly work environments! Medicinal marijuana! World Cup soccer! Raves! Amazing how long it takes us to catch up to the rest of the world sometimes, isn’t it?

School shootings. What it took to finally convince us that there’s something seriously wrong with our public school system.

The rise of the megastores. Barnes and Noble. Sports Authority. CompUSA. Home Depot. In business, at least, size definitely matters.

Alternative music. No better example of our culture of assimilation. A bunch of rebels make a defiant gesture against pop music, going so far as to pursue independent labels so they’d never have to produce pop music. As it turns out, much of the country doesn’t care for pop music either, and they love this new breed. So what was once alternative was no longer. Meaning, of course, that the new alternative bands had to be alternative to the original alternative!

(If that doesn’t totally bewilder you, you had to have lived in the 90’s.)

6

Quentin Tarantino knock offs. Cheerfully violent movies involving a bunch of guys swaggering around, talking fast and comitting crimes. Throw in a generous amount of sleaze culture, add a few “artistic” touches, say maybe a character dancing around shooting people to Carl Orff, and you’ve got yourself a straight to video masterpiece!

The PlayStation. Not the PlayStation 2, but the original. The little machine that could. Ubiquitous.

Saved by the Bell. You know you watched it. Relentlessly bad television program that incidentally killed Saturday morning cartoons.

7

It seems to me that PC was only a real issue in the eighties. By 1990 or 1991 it had been reduced to a joke and to a shorthand for excessive sensitivity.

I think the 90’s will be remembered for crassness. Consider:
Movies like “Freddie Got Fingered” and “American Pie”
The sexual escapades of Clinton
The salacious tenacity of Ken Starr,
The explosion of tabloid journalism,
T.V. shows that greatly expanded the boundries of what was acceptable for braodcast.
Howard Stern and Jerry Springer
Internet Porn

I think that for a while we believed that the expansion of licentiousness would inevitably progress without control. I sense that people have realized that there is a limit to what people can stomach.

8

This is a subset of the technology observations pointed out by others, but the 90s is also the decade that brought us widespread use of cell phones, pagers, and other remote devices. Not being at home is no longer synonymous with being unreachable. It’s funny now to watch movies where a large part of the plot involves not being able to contact another character because he’s in the car, or out in the woods, or otherwise away from his phone. Or if the bad guy cut the phone line – so? Use your cell!

9

What, no “Seinfeld?”

Soooo, '90s.

10

The other day when I was getting dressed I put on a pair of ripped up jeans, a scrungy t-shirt and a flannel shirt. I looked in the mirror and thought, “Oh! '90s retro!” And then I cried because if there is such a thing as “90s retro” that means I’m old.

11

How about the democratization of the Internet? dot-com millionaires? (in fact, dot-com anything) 25-year-old billionaires?

12

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ignatzmouse *
**

First of all, “Freddie Got Fingered” came out this past year, not in the '90s.

Second of all, why would anyone in their right mind remember “Freddie Got Fingered” for anything other than the worst mistake $8 could by?

13

The major phenomenon of the 90’s, thanks to Al Gore, has to be the Internet itself, and all that that entails. A website for everything. I needed to find the lyrics to a Bruce Cockburn song recorded in 1973 and damned if they weren’t available to me five seconds later, thanks to that wonderful search engine Google.

A corollary of that (and something we all have obviously experienced) is the whole virtual community, chatting, bulletin board servers, and the like, linking me (and everyone here) with similarly nutty thinkers from faraway places that I never would’ve encountered otherwise. I don’t know how I lived through the 70’s and 80’s.

A few other 90’s things:

Grunge rock
Goatees (guilty of this, myself, but I’m going to keep mine after they go out of style)
Increasingly casual workplaces
The return of silky, straight hair on women (and an end of those nasty 80’s perms) – I love this btw
Increasing acceptance of gay and bi people (80% of high school students now think being gay is acceptable). I’m totally for this.
White hip-hop artists (I thought the Beastie Boys were a one album joke, turns out they might have helped inspire the current crop of Kid Rock, Eminem, etc.)
Geeky teen movies like American Pie and Can’t Hardly Wait.

14

Not only excessive sensitivity. That phrase is used like a hammer whenever anyone shows any kind of sensitivity.

15

I keep hoping they’ll go away, but those stupid-ass baggy pants that make people look like they’re wearing burlap sacks still seem to be popular.

And while we’re at it, bell-bottoms looked silly in the 1880s when they had a purpose, and even more so now. Let the squids keep 'em, I say.

Those bright blue dress shirts were pretty goofy, too, and a sure sign that your girlfriend dresses you. However, since many men never throw away a piece of office clothing when they can spend the money on beer, we can expect to see them on the streets for the next decade, too.

Shoulda been sooo 90s, but they’re polluting this millenium as well.

16

What about Generation X?

The irony is that this no-ambition slacker generation, damned by everyone in the 90s, is now being courted by advertisers of cars, furniture, etc. as their most lucrative market!

17

Coffee. That old steel espresso thingy in the back of Mom’s cabinet behind the fondue pot, suddenly it becomes the most fashionable thing in the kitchen. Lifelong Folgers drinkers suddenly grind their own beans and debate whether or not to store them in the freezer. A wave of Mom and Pop outfits charging $3 a cup spreads across the country, soon to be engulfed by a wave of Starbucks selling the same stuff for $5.

Golf, swing dancing, cigars, and mixed drinks. My grandpa’s buddies at the retirement home couldn’t be more pleased with the young folks for these revivals.

Americans rediscover real beer. The microbrewery movement becomes so successful that several outgrow the name. Corporate manufacturers invent their own pseudo-microbrews.

18

[li]Rise of Comedy Central! Introducing a whole new generation to Saturday Night Live, cool movies…etc. That leads into…[/li]
[li]South Park!! The great mystery of the nineties. How it became popular, and why…well, we’ll never know, but it’s damned fun watching.[/li]
[li]Vulgarity and shock factor[/li]
[li]I’ll second whoever said cartoons (i.e., Powerpuff Girls, Dexter, anime, Daria, Nickelodeon, etc.)[/li]
[li]Cover songs of old sixties/seventies songs (i.e., Another Brick in the Wall, American Pie, Lady Marmalade)[/li]
[li]The Simpsons…it just is. Everything on this list…well, it’s practically on “The Simpsons”[/li]
[li]Colleges becoming a huge deal- One of the more negative parts. I’m not sure if this started in the 80s…seems a somewhat recent development)[/li]
[li]Irritating advertisements- people just being obnoxious in commercials. Not to mention, car ad upon car ad upon car ad.[/li]
[li]Parents vehemently protesting teenybopper bands (i.e., Britney Spears)[/li]
[li]Minidisks and MP3’s and what have you…[Bart Simpson]In my day, kids listened to compact disks and no one complained![/Bart Simpson][/li]
Revamping old novels/events for a younger audience (I.e., "Ten Things I Hate About You, O, The Musketeer, Great Expectations, etc.)

19

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zoggie *
[li]Minidisks and MP3’s and what have you…[Bart Simpson]In my day, kids listened to compact disks and no one complained![/Bart Simpson][/li][/QUOTE]

Wait a sec: didn’t CDs also become popular in the 90s?

20

[homer]
mmmmmmm… gourmet foot ::drool::
[/homer]

:wink:

-Rav