1999 doesn't just mark the end of a decade, or even one hundred years, it is the end of the millenium. The end of 2000 years of human evolution.
We were taught to believe that by 2000 we'd all be having Space Odysseys, living in bubble cities, and driving flying cars like The Jetsons. Instead, we got McJobs and cynical viewpoints.
WHATEVER!
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The end is near. Quite litteraly, in a few hours the 90's will be just a memory. It's also fitting, since most people spent this last year counting down to the Millenium or reminscing about the past. Either way, avoiding the present. People will tell their grandchildren where they were when the Millenium stroke. All in all, the 90's seemed like the decade for nostalgia; former groups reunited, and everyone thought about other decades. It seemed that news, fashion, TV and movies where getting their inspiration from the past. The 50's inspired the cigar smoking, martini drinking trend. The spirit of the 60's was brought to life on the big screen in movies such as: The Doors, JFK and Austin Powers along with Woodstock's 2&3. The 70's resurrected in fashion and music. Blondie, Kiss, Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac had reunion tours for the fans and their money. In fashion, bell bottoms and platform shoes were cool again.
Even cereal changed in the 90's, Cheerios were now MilleniO's. No longer was there a prize inside the box. You had to send a check or money order and three proofs of purchase to get that plastic toy your child would choke on. As I look back at the last ten years, I see how much has changed and how much remains the same.
The events of this decade maybe too close to home for us to see their significance. In high school, my generation experienced the Gulf War, all two months of it. Broadcasting nightly in the antifreeze-green of CNN's nightvision goggles. Clarence Thomas watched pornos and shared the details with Anita Hill. Mike Tyson went to jail along with all the child stars of the 80's. A french fry eating, womanizing, non-inhaling, draftdoger, (Bill Clinton) took office. There he met Monica Lewinsky's friendly mouth. There was road rage, the Oklahoma bombing, The Unibomber and school shootings(Arkansas, Kentucky, Columbine). Princess Di's death. JonBenet Ramsey, a little Barbie doll killed presumably by her parents. The L.A. Riots burned the ghettos in the City of Angels after the Rodney King trial. And if that wasn't bad enough, they had OJ Simpson and the trial of the century.
Disgruntled postal workers went on shooting rampages which gave rise to the term goin' postal. America's basketball Dream Team destroyed their competition by 40 or more points per game in the Barcelona '92 Olympics. Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan made the '94 Olympics interesting if at least watchable. The Chicago Bulls (aka: Michael and the Jordanaires) won six NBA Championships. And of course, the internet. More than any event, the 90's will be remembered as the communication decade. Everything became "online this" and "dot com" that. The decade that exploited the use of the personal computer to reach millions around the world, as well as look at porn. Internet and email, the very means which by you read this essay has taken over the world. It took radio 40 years to reach a worldwide audience of 50 million, TV achieved the same in 14 years, the Internet did it in 36 months. The internet became a necessity, it scratched an itch were once there was none. The 90's was the age when Microsoft took over the world and the Antichrist-aka Bill Gates reigned supreme. And with it the threat of computer viruses, hacking and Y2K. Along with internet, society became more complex and introspective. No longer the 'me' decade, viewers wanted to see 'us' on TV.
In the post-post modernist theory, a society becomes so aware of itself it creates fake realities more real than life.
If one show capsulated the spirit of the 90's it had to be Seinfeld. A group of egotistical, neurotic New Yorkers in a show about "nothing." Another show that iconized the trendy, coffee drinking 90's was Must See TV's Friends. The Simpson's in their irreverant cartoon like ways also changed the perception of it's viewers, ushering shows like Beavis & Butthead and South Park. The "reality" of life was mirrored in MTV's ersatz The Real World(installment ad infinitum/nauseaum.) Teenage shows peppered the airwaves starting with the cultish Beverly Hills 90210, creating teen angst and reviving sideburns. 90210 also spawned clones-Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and melodrama's; My so called life, Dawson's Creek, Felicity and Party of Five. Gap commercials dulled the imagination while selling khakis with groups of young people dancing to swing dance, r&b, or jazz. Along with them, in the most annoying commercial category would be those 'got milk?' ads.
The 90's were also a celebrity fixated culture, especially Celebrity Schadenfreude, the lurid joy of celebrity misery. Just ask Mike Tyson, Hugh Grant, or Robert Downey Jr. TV reflected itself reflecting Pop Culture.
It was the post-beige decade, replaced with blueberry iMac's, the new VW Beetle and the blue M&M. There was a certain comfort in having objects from the past, updated to the upcoming future.
If there one place that should be declared City of the 90's my vote goes to Seattle, WA. Their fashion and music started the Grunge era, and 90's Über-companies: Starbucks, Amazon.com, and Microsoft are based there. Generation X, Douglas Coupland's 1991 book changed the fate of a generation of people born between 1965 and 1978. It gave a name to a group of disenfranchised youth with no war to remember them by, no pigeonhole to place them into. In fact, the X stands for nothing. We are the nothing generation. How can you classify the 90's? It was the age of Barney, Beany Babies and Teletubbies. The age of Political Correctness gone amok, blacks were now African-Americans, indians became Native Americans, midgets were now the vertically challenged, etc. Coffeehouses became the places to hang out as coffee became the fuel of America. Energy drinks from Odwalla to Red Bull were offered for those who multitask. Waif models with heroin chic looks (ie. Kate Moss) made magazine covers. We aired our dirty laundry on national TV to Oprah wannabe, Ricky Lake. Meanwhile, Jerry Springer lowered IQ's by 30 points with his show-not that it made a difference on his viewer's lives. In the 90's, sports had to be X-treme. Be it fishing, cycling or Inline skating, it had to have the probability of serious bodily injury. The 80's had "New Coke" the 90's had "Crystal Pepsi." While eighties soccer-mom's drove station wagons, their nineties counterparts paraded around town in SUV's. Virtual Reality came at the fore-front, no longer did man want to explore other world's, he wanted to create them from within. And what can you say about the staples of the 90's: the enigma of Dennis Rodman and Baywatch beauty cum homemade-porno-queen Pamela Anderson? The Zima craze was short lived in the early part of the decade. The Arsenio Hall 'dogpound' solute also saw its heyday. Just like Grunge-Flannel and Doc Marten's started the 90's fashion sense. Black people wore hats with X on them in the early 90's and FUBU later in the decade. Most of the 'fashion' stemmed from past styles, the bell bottoms and platform shoes from the 70's resurrected twenty years later. Girls wore small shorts or the polar opposite, baggy pants, both with tight tanktops and Sketchers. Guys wore baggy, saggy, cargo pants, wallet chains and loose shirts. The early 90's answer to the early 80's Smurfs, were Trolls-ugly little naked guys with Don King hair. Later Beany Babies were the rage, Elmo tickled wallets empty, and Furby's were on the X-mas list of every kid and the out of stock shelves of every store. Everyone was connected, beepers, cell phones, faxes and voice mail. Rave culture spawned pacifiers, surgical masks and Dr. Seuss hats. Added to that culture the alternative set also spawned the body piercing trend. From noses and eyebrows, to tongues, nipples and navels, to you-don't-wanna-know where. Piercing and tattoing became the painful aesthetic to chic-ness. This was the culture and it needed a soundtrack.
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"Here we are now, entertain us"
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What can you say about 90's music? Michael Jackson turned whiter and (some would say 'because of')lost his talent. We had Beatle wanna-be's in Oasis. Puff Daddy "sampled" (ie. stole) old songs to make new ones. Does anyone listen to Hootie anymore? Beck made the definitive generational statement: "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?" We had our share of one hit wonders: Vanilla Ice (word to your Motha, Ice!), Criss Cross (Jump, Jump), Gerardo's Rico Suave, Right said Fred's I'm too sexy and Sir Mixalot's Baby's Got Back he likes big butts and he cannot lie! And God forbid, the Macarena. However the 90's also saw the rise of alternative music with the Seattle sound of Nirvana and Peal Jam. The rise and fall of flannel shirts and the term grunge. Electronica and the rave culture made its way from Europe. The tribal beats and sonic resonance igniting some primal urge in the human animal to dance till the sun comes up. The birth and death of Gangsta rap followed Dr.Dre's seminal work, The Chronic and protege Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle which had suburbian white kids donning Raider's jackets sitting in front of the mirror trying to enunciate 'bee-yatch'. Some of those white boys took over rap, like the aforementioned Vanilla Ice, Snow, Eminem, and Kid Rock. Some formed a rock/rap fusion such as Korn and Limp Bizkit. Cypress Hill made you want to light up a bong, read High Times all while singing, "insane in the membrane." The nineties brought forth music icons Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love. The rebirth of boy bands in Backstreet Boys, N'Sync et al. Gimmick groups like Spice Girls and Hanson stayed around to show us what was wrong with music in this decade. Ricky Martin led the Latin Explosion in the late 90's. Lollapalooza change concert tours forever by packaging several known acts into one bill(usually around $38.50). Later The Lilith Fair (aka Vulvapalooza) stole the idea. In the future, when bars have 90's Nights, those will be the songs we'll kareoke to. This music branded this decade, as movies did to our culture.
Pretty Woman made little girls want to be prostitutes so they could find their Richard Gere. Home Alone explored the possibilities of fun when an 8 year old goes up against robbers. Jurassic Park revived dinosaurs to bring in big bucks. The Crying Game made you look twice at your dates. Pulp Fiction, resurrected John Travolta's career after those talking baby movies. Teensploitation movies were back with a vengeance in teen slasher flicks like Scream and I know what you did last summer. Tom Hanks went from playing a drag-queen in the 80's to winning two Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. He also did the voice of Toy Story's Woody. Jerry McGuire had the phrase that payed. The 70's came to lief thru Boogie Nights, and Apollo 13. Good Will Hunting asked if we liked apples. Titanic kicked off DiCaprio mania-all six months of it. Star Wars:The Phantom Menace had 35 year old virgins waiting in lines across the country for weeks before its premiere. This was our culture, but this is still us.
As we kiss the 20th century goodbye, I reflect upon this decade.
The zeitgeist of the 90's is reflected by former ideas. The 90's were as original as they were a copy of previous decades. Where will this 'Brave New World' lead us? What will the next millenium bring? Armaggedon? or The Jetsons?-only time will tell. And it is with this mixture of hope and fear that a new era will dawn. What is left to say about this decade? Like the advent of the air quote, the 90's had a style but no "flavor." The ersatz decade, decade nothing.
Happy New Year.
aM 12-31-99
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