What Was Wrong With the 90s?

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Copying a thread from ILM because I wanted to recast it as a more general question, and also not one answered by a list.

Were they safer than the 80s, and thus more boring, culturally? Too tasteful? Did post-modernism finally permeate mass culture, with tedious results? Did everything dumb down?

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Candlebox.

― Kingfish Cowboy (Kingfish), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 14:56 (twenty-two years ago)

UserFriendly

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 14:59 (twenty-two years ago)

N: Ewing, T, thinks that your own questions are kind of OTM; or he once did. He told me, once, when I was trying to research the 90s.

Maybe I agree with him, or you.

But why should we assume that something was wrong with the 90s?

On second thoughts, scratch that last question.

The answer is: they came after 31.12.1989?

― the babefox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 14:59 (twenty-two years ago)

PF, are you intending to contribute anything of use to man or beast at any point today, or just "raise" questions?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I think I will let someone else answer that... "question" for me.

― the beebfox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe we have to think something is wrong with the 90s to carry on doing anything, pinefox. I think that's the way that culture works, as some kind of dialectic with the past. Or maybe that's just fashion. You probably disagree.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:05 (twenty-two years ago)

That is a good thought. It could be accurate.

My slant is: what is wrong with the 1990s is that they killed the 1980s. I had tried to say that already.

That is my enabling and dialectical view, see, in accordance with your theory.

― the bellefox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:10 (twenty-two years ago)

This thread is number one on Both Boards

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:11 (twenty-two years ago)

whose 90s anyway?

not trying to get overtly political, but a middle-class American's 90s was very different to...well, you get the point.

― paulhw (paulhw), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

It is too soon for me to say. It still feels like we are living in the 90s to me, but maybe that is just my age.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

That's a good point. I think most of us are doomed to carry on seeing the world through the eyes of our youth. I struggle against that, but then maybe it is too soon for this to matter.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:15 (twenty-two years ago)

(that it still feels too soon to ask is part of the reason I asked. I had my stupid eye on the future, imaging this thread being read in 10 or 20 years time)

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:17 (twenty-two years ago)

If most cultural products of the 90s were produced now, Ricardo, you would at least be able to sense that they were dated, behind the times, no?

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh yeah, I was watching Seinfeld reruns last night and I was like, people dressed like that?

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I wonder whether the defining power of Thatcherism left a huge hole; I remember style pontificators and such like wanting the 90s to be a decade of something, when I think maybe Thatcherism was odd in that it was known to be the era of Thatcher at the time, instead of being defined against a later present; eg, Thatcherism redefined the 70s as the decade of crud. The 60s defined the 50s as the era of yawn. I think it's too early to decide what the 90s were.

Anyway, what was wrong with them - the labour Party out of desperation decided to allow itself to be taken over by triangulators who decided that accomodation with Thatcher was desierable, not merely expedient. This helped into turn depoliticise much of UK life, which led to a stunning increase in the belief in the neutrality of corporate capitalism. It also was the deacde of Loaded, where the identity politics gains started to be broken down, and indeed, all the things the left tended to believe in were shot to shit.

On reflection, I didn't like them. Though I lost my virginity, so it wasn't all bad, eh!

― Dave B (daveb), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Gazza talks sense.

N: I have often started threads for posterity - like that one about Blair which I can never find. Unlike yours, mine never work.

I did do one about a 2002 time capsule, also, though, that was not so bad.

― the bluefox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh yeah, I was watching Seinfeld reruns last night and I was like, people dressed like that?

Surely you thought that even at the time?

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, well, mostly, N. It's more that it's a continuum with a fairly soft gradient unlike the only other decade transition I was old enough to remember properly. The difference between eg 1987 and 1992 is much sharper than that between 1999 and 2004.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Which virginity, Dave B?

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:28 (twenty-two years ago)

N: Actually, yeah. That was the joke. But I think that's also one of the reasons why the Simpsons holds up in reruns better than most other shows. No fashions to get old.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I started my only sustained effort at diary keeping on the 1st Jan 1990. The first sentence reads something like:

"Even Thatcher has now christened this decade 'the caring 90s'. They are therefore guaranteed to be the most miserable ten years we have ever experienced."

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm. On the one hand, I would have thought that the start of the aughts would have a clearer "now all is different" line than most other decades. On the other hand the noticable trends in the nineties - the professionalisation of everything, the death of objective truth, implausible deniability - are still here today, making things miserable.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Many of the noticeable trends of the 80s are still here too, also making things miserable.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Dave B's point about the lefts capitulation can maybe generalised to some other cultural facets. There was a sense of the battle against conservatism having been lost in other fields in the 90s.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I meant to say a sense of acceptance that the battle had been lost.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I was dating boys.

― Jeanne Fury (Jeanne Fury), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Or that we had "won", and by winning lost any alternative to what was happening in our name.

xpost.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

One defining cultural moment for me, and I really mean this and felt it strongly at the time, was seeing 'Movies Movies Movies' (later 'Movies, Games and Videos') on TV for the first time. Perhaps something similar had already been broadcast on cable and satellite, but to have this on terrestrial TV seemed like a watershed. The cultural guardians had loosened their grip. To the older or more out of touch, this will always be synonymous with 'dumbing down'. Maybe it was to me then too - it was such a shock.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Stolen from the other thread: Woodstock 99

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I was dating Jeanne Fury.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't know what N's Movies thing means.

I find myself agreeing with one of WMOF's recent posts. The queer old turkey that he is.

YMOF is maybe silly to talk about 'the death of objective truth', though.

― the bellefox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Do you remember the programme, bellefox?

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

On the other hand, the 90s gave us the Internet as something that could affordably exist in many people's homes (a million Ilxors go "yeah, great move THAT") - and possibly subsequent cybergenerations will view the 90s as Decade Zero or something really quaint in the way we view black and white 50s telly.

I felt that the 90s had ended when I was standing watching Slipknot at Leeds and watching the kids going mad for it and thinking "this is shite!" On a geopolitical level, they might have ended with the election of GWB, or on 9-11-2001. It's too early to tell. But then the 90s had the London IRA bombing campaign.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't believe that musically at least, the 90s were any more conservative than the 80s (unless you listened to indie).

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

No. What was it?

― the bellefox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

MMM: I remember thinking 'blimey this is a bit poor' and not much else.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

MDC: I did listen to indie!

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

This is miles better than the thread on ILM, by the way. Eat that, DeSouza.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

It was a 'new films' show filled with clips and stock cast member interviews. No real presenter, just an inane voiceover done by someone who presumably came from local independent radio. No attempt to review the films or place the clips in any kind of editorial context. Just an extended PR roundup.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Bargain basement crappy telly, but was it really all that qualitatively different to those The Making Of X puff pieces that date back to god knows when?

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, because they had the sheen of being a proper documentary. There was no barking idiot over the top.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, local radio pseudoenthusiasm does make a big difference I suppose.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Bargain basement crappy telly has always been with us. I bet there was some horrific stuff on 70s and 80s ITV. Possibly with socially-acceptable racism and homophobia also.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

There were plenty of programmes just as bad as MMM before the 90s, don't get me wrong. All those 50s and 60s gameshows, for example. But they still fitted into a kind of Reithian framework of entertainment broadcasting. This was tabloidy bish bosh stuff a million miles from another planet.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

The 90s was when people stopped giving a shit; for quality, for values, for politics, and a land-of-do-as-you-please lo-fi hedonism came in. It became acceptable for things to be rubbish. In some areas - in other, this ended, as telephone box vandalism started to be tackled, for example.

x-post N. Tabloidy - that's it in a nutshell - the final victory of Kelvin McKenzie.

― Dave B (daveb), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:07 (twenty-two years ago)

But the 90s also provided the spread of one of the internet's features - that for every opinion, there was an adherent. Now it is possible for two reasonable people to have mutually schizophrenic views on the world; One sees that the media is controlled by the liberal elite, and the other that it is under the thumb of right-wing corporate issues, and there is a support system in place for both of them, deep and wide and tall, websites and magazines and papers. And science! As much science as you want, any colour you desire.

This is what I meant by the death of objective truth, and can be seen to a certain extent here: Bush and the 9/11 Commission: What We Need to Know

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Take out 'a million miles'. Another sloppy re-edit.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not sure that high-class adverts masquerading as documentary is any better.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

The 90s was when people stopped giving a shit; for quality, for values, for politics, and a land-of-do-as-you-please lo-fi hedonism came in. It became acceptable for things to be rubbish.

Are you 80 yrs old??

― Kerry (dymaxia), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:14 (twenty-two years ago)

yes. I fought in the war, and this is the thanks the youngsters give me.

― Dave B (daveb), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Tabloidy - that's it in a nutshell - the final victory of Kelvin McKenzie.

But maybe it was a victory that needed to happen. Do we want a middle-class filter on everything?

I'm reminded of a documentary I once saw on the forgotten northern comedy film industry, producing v.popular films that played to huge audiences, but which were seen as a coarse embarassment by the cultural custodians of the time. I remember one old guy, who used to love them, saying the competing Ealing comedies were viewed as toffee-nosed and not in touch with the lives of the people he knew. Bit of a tangent, sorry.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:18 (twenty-two years ago)

i think of their being 2 90s now, one was 88-94, the other 94-98. i think its only in the last 2 years or so that 99-04 has seemed so separate from the 90s.

currently the 90s are at a low ebb in how they are viewed, but thats always the case with the preceding decade. i think the 90s were a better decade than the 80s, if only for the many concurrent music styles going on, oh, but this is ile, and i have answered in a primarily music-centred way. still...

― gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, as regards N.'s point about "we have to, to keep moving", it is the duty of every decade to produce a television program proclaiming the preceding "The decade that taste forgot!"

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:27 (twenty-two years ago)

i LIKE the fact the '90s is harder to pin down because of the perceived broader range of trends, styles, genres and whatnot going on whereas people tend to think '80s and think '80-'84 new-romantics and Phil Oakey hair (conversely people seem to think about the mid to late '90s more than the early '90s unless it's to slag off The Word or something)

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:29 (twenty-two years ago)

The Director of sex lives of the potato men did this - he watched the film with da proles and said they giggled their tits off; it was only trendified metro types who were appalled. It's overdone though. It's less a recoiling at the culutral products but a coarseness and de-valuation of everything; having a moral compass is seen as quaint, giving a stuff a bit mad, having a care for the long-term weird. Sure, people will reject these stances but it informs so much public policy. The guiding referent for adjudging the correctness of something is the now-elevated to sacred status of 'efficiency' which has no concern for the long-term. It's the creeping crapness that worries me most; there's unlikely to be an event to cause a reaction to it, but the solution is that people must start giving a fuck and acting as such, but ultimately, many shrug shoulders and say 'yes, it's a shame. But I can't be arsed doing anything about it'. Related to this - the other great bugbear is that people look to others for solutions all the time. People complain about things as if they were bystanders and not actively part of the solution and thuis problem; this blindness to one's owen (lack of) responsibility. It's someone else's fault, someone else's problem.

― Depressive soon-to-be 30 and doesn't it show? (daveb), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Abe said something interesting. He said that because everyone's so poor these days, the '90s will be a decade with no architectural legacy or style - everyone's too poor to put up new buildings. He said that code is the architecture of the '90s.

"Microserfs" Douglas Coupland

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:39 (twenty-two years ago)

That's a useful double entry.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I always thought you were older than me, Dave. I hope that's not offensive - it's not supposed to be.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:43 (twenty-two years ago)

but Dave B, aren't the press and media more obsessed than ever about scapegoats and pinning the blame on something/someone whenever anything goes wrong? i'm not sure if the standard of art/music/whatever generally has been allowed to decline as such, just the British film industry perhaps

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:46 (twenty-two years ago)

i wonder if the perceived broadness will dissipate with time. as distance increases, each decades perceived broadness shrinks, until there are a handful of signifiers. passage of time doesnt do a lot for nuance

― gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:46 (twenty-two years ago)

N - It means you think me wise etc.

I am becomes increasingly curmudgeonly, but partly because I despise the fetish of the modern and elevation of the new to an end in itself. The conceit of youth is to think it knows better. We've seemingly forgotten that it;s a conceit, not a given. I see this in sport a lot - thrusting types wanting to do thing their way - little realising that previous generations forgot more than these dicks will ever know.

― Dave B (daveb), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Gareth is right. It may well be the case that the 90s were more culturally complex and fragmented than any previous decade, but the phenomenon he notes makes it rather impossible to say.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 16:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I quite liked the '90's. Obviosuly, it contained my joyless adolescent years, but I'm over that now.

― jel -- (jel), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:13 (twenty-two years ago)

yeh you do seem happier...

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:18 (twenty-two years ago)

well said Dave B but i guess matters aren't helped by the fact that kids have to teach their parents how to use the internet/mobile phones/whatever in many cases

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:20 (twenty-two years ago)

it would make sense that the '90s were more fragmented partly because it was the end of the century so a lot of people were reflecting nostalgically and putting everything into order, taking stock - though there was a lot of looking forward going on as well (but no more than the '80s?)

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:22 (twenty-two years ago)

― jel -- (jel), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Goatees, and the Cigar renaissance.

― webcrack (music=crack), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 19:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Was there really anything wrong, people said the 80s were shit for a long time too.

I presume N is aware of this and is asking us to say what we at this moment in time think is wrong with the 90s, or what the cliched view of what was wrong with the 90s will come to be.

Will it just be the usual "bad hair, ridiculous clothes, haha over the top bombastic music" thing???

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 19:51 (twenty-two years ago)

dude, Hypercolor ROCKED!

Collective Soul, however, did not.

― Kingfish Cowboy (Kingfish), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Ronan, see my comment upthread about culture moving on by seeing what was wrong with what went before. Maybe wrong should be in quotes, but you wouldn't like that.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh I wouldn't mind. I don't see why I wouldn't??

Yes that's a good point, I didn't read the thread before posting I confess. I was eating a pizza.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the 90s seemed to give birth to a false idea of what constitutes being eclectic , aswell as cause the idea of eclecticism in itself to become over-emphasised a bit. I would guess this is what people were getting at with Pulp Fiction or something, I think gareth meant the soundtrack and its ubiquity as much as anything.

Was the "eclectic" movie soundtrack a 90s invention? Yuck.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Did gareth mean that?

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:56 (twenty-two years ago)

or what the cliched view of what was wrong with the 90s will come to be

I think this is a useful way to approach this thread. I think it's true that there's not yet enough distance to really take stock of the decade, but we've already begun to develop notions of what was wrong with the early 90s. (A perhaps U.S.-centric list:)

a) political correctness / "diversity" and "multiculturalism"
b) "Generation X" = apathy
c) postmodern irony

I think you see both (a) and (c) developing in the 1980s, the former on college campuses and the latter in the art world, but flourishing in the 1990s with (a) Clinton's presidency (emphasis placed on the diversity on his cabinet, though Bush Jr.'s is actually statistically more diverse), affirmative-action debates, overly sensitive language and its backlash (a million lampooning stand-ups using the phrase "follically challenged"), etc., and (c) the vast popularity of The Simpsons and Seinfeld; I remember thinking in 2000 that perhaps that had passed and we'd come to a post-post-modern stage where artists used the tools of postmodernism not to make a postmodern statement but merely because those were the tools they felt familiar with, and if this were the case, emotion and beauty were no longer necesarily the enemies of postmodernism. The cultural object that seemed to epitomize this for me was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 21:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, "eclecticism" I think is definitely worth noting.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 21:08 (twenty-two years ago)

dude, it's our big day tomorrow!

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 21:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Hahaha!

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 21:18 (twenty-two years ago)

the Extremification of American Culture

all of a sudden, Mountain Dew and Doritos and shit went EXTREME

and Corn Nuts.

― Kingfish Hypercolor (Kingfish), Thursday, 25 March 2004 03:48 (twenty-two years ago)

the rise of incomprehensible adverising (known as "cross-marketing", where you can't figure out what the hell if is they want you to buy)

― DMTina (DMTina), Thursday, 25 March 2004 03:49 (twenty-two years ago)

altho, there was that "Miller Lite Dick" series of Ads, with Evil Beaver, that was the greatest thing ever.

― Kingfish Hypercolor (Kingfish), Thursday, 25 March 2004 03:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Today on a sun-bleached dried-rained London street on the edge of a square I called O'Farrell a turkey TO HIS FACE. And he took it like a Thomas Mann, like I was talking turkey.

― the beebfox, Thursday, 25 March 2004 20:16 (twenty-two years ago)

oh yeah, and the overuse of distressed-typewriter font

― Kingfish Hypercolor (Kingfish), Thursday, 25 March 2004 20:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I may nnot have noticed The Pinefox's slip into jive.

An excellent example of what I was blathering about re: the death of truth is has reached a peak on Bush and the 9/11 Commission: What We Need to Know , though Dan may have let the cat out of the bag.

There's an excellent article on Lileks about Star Trek as cultural weathervane.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Sunday, 4 April 2004 13:01 (twenty-one years ago)

three years pass...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3169/2316363341_8a9fc89dd1_b.jpg

― felicity, Friday, 7 March 2008 18:38 (eighteen years ago)

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