Did '90s Culture Ever Really End?

[liberalpragmatist]

I was born in the middle of the 1980s, which means that I most of my childhood memories come from the 1990s.

Now, we're already in the "late '00s". Yet it seems that, aside from the political sphere, the decade remains pretty undefined. Surely, there have been changes. Among them, the explosion of social networking online, the growth of online video and music, greater political involvement and SOME increased cultural permeation from Asia into the West. Overall, however, the '00s seem awfully like a continuation of the '90s.

For one thing, what the hell are we even calling this decade? It seems awfully late for this decade to lack an easy nickname. The "oughts"? In Europe, they're calling it "the Noughties".

Culturally, not a whole lot seems different from the mid-to-late 1990s. Sure, stuff from the early 1990s often looks dated, but ook at fashions, music, movies, aesthetics, design, and humor from the mid to late '90s (say, 1994 through 1999). I could be wrong, but it seems to me that a man or woman could wear contemporary, mainstream clothes from 1996 or early 1997 today, at the start of 2007, and nobody would bat an eye. Their hairstyles wouldn't look out of place, and most likely their clothes wouldn't either.

Now imagine someone wearing contemporary fashions and hairstyles from 1986 or 1987 in early 1997 - it seems to me that person would be glaringly out-of-place.

Even music hasn't changed much after 1994. Yes, there have been mini-trends (massive increase in popularity of rap through the late '90s, horrible teen pop in the late '90s, resurgence of retro rock in American indie music (the Brits already went through their retro-rock phase in the '90s)), but by-and-large popular music from 1996 doesn't sound dated at all. Popular music from 1986 or 1987 sure sounded old in 1997. Hell, even music videos from 1996 or 1997 don't look different from music videos on TV right now.

Has anybody else noticed this? Or are my perceptions wrong and there have in fact been dramatic changes and they've occurred too subtly for me to notice?

[JVS]

1. Ummm yeah! Where's the grundge?

[Deja Q]

2. corporatized stagnance has come to mind, I agree...

We're still in the mid-00's, however. 'Late' doesn't start for another year.
:)

[CanuckAmok]

3. Well....

As someone born in the mid/late 1960s, I found the 90s to be the most derivitive decade I've lived in.

It's almost as if the Powers-That-Be who dictate fashion and media had completely exhausted the recycling of previous decades by 1990. When you think about it, te 1990s were the end of the buying power of the first real "television generation". People who were born ten years prior to the widespread distribution of TV (1952) were pushing 60, and not really the kind of people who can be as aggressively marketed to as are teens, 20 and thirty-somethings.

In the 1990s, advertisers were marketing to a generation who had never had their own "style" which hadn't been influenced to some degree by television and radio. And, at the same time, the same Powers-Tat-Be were tapping into their own desire for nostalgia to their younger years, and the result was the 60s/70s recycling that came to define the 90s. As there was really nothing else to recycle, nothing ever was. It's almost as if we're in a kind of cultural stasis or purgatory until someone invents the "next big thing". As the people who dictate style and culture have never had anything original from which to base their talent, we may be in for a long wait.

[ixion]

5. good observation CanuckAmok

I think you're right. We may be in for a wait as we pass through this period of neobarbarianism.

[CanuckAmok]

7. Thanks! And FWIW, this is the what I feel will be that "Next Big Thing":

Three black horizontal bars contrasting neutral tones, topped with rigid, angular collars.

You heard it here first.

[ForrestGump]

10. That's been done before....

:P

[tuvor]

4. Boys are still wearing baggy dungarees halfway down their asses.

[ghostsofgiants]

6. Some of us have realized the error of our ways in that regard.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

8. Yes it did

2000s culture does not feel so distinctive because we're living in this decade. However things have changed.

Music has changed. Grunge, indie rock & indie pop helped define the 1990s. I don't know about the U.S., but in the early 1990s in Britain there was a substantial amount of 1960s revivalism in fashion and hairstyles especially the 'mod' look, although it is never quite the same, as new innovations and other past derivations are also mixed and matched. Other differences were that corporate hip-hop wasn't as powerful a force in music in the 1990s as it came to be in the early 2000s, and reggae pop was also a short-lived form that had been a minor force in the early 1990s before giving way to corporate pop music.

If one were to look at hair and fashion from an early season of the sitcom 'Friends' I think there would be a lot of differences and if were one to replicate those styles today, it would feel dated.

The continuing development of the World Wide Web had a huge impact on culture. Until the late 1990s, internet usage wasn't as prolific. The 'information superhighway' was this 'thing' that people heard of but weren't quite sure what it was (although there had been a polemic small internet culture since the 1980s). Music and the internet's entwining wasn't as apparent, and iPod culture wasn't to be seen. Music on the move meant MiniDisc and more probably a portable CD player.

Also the 1990s weren't fully to feel the cultural impact of the cellphone. Most people didn't have one until the late 1990s and even then they weren't the multimedia devices that they are now.

[Gatchaman]

9. End? When did it ever start?

Grunge? Is that the best you can do?