So new post-#MeToo theory of the ‘90s is that as institutions from businesses to the Senate and Presidency of the United States “grappled with sexual harassment” and started reorienting against it and trying to sort practitioners out the NY and LA culture industries held out effectively, relying on tight internal relationships and captive legal and para-legal institutions (“privilege” meant “private law”).
Other norms too – I cannot emphasize enough how in the 90s fucking teenage groupies was accepted and celebrated as definitional of rock stardom – this was where you first saw “new economy” companies generalizing “rockstar” to “elite and valued employee”
This differential sorting left the culture-shaping industries of the time consisting of, and thus the culture guided by, a cohort that was significantly higher in both desire for human exploitation and skill at human manipulation than the rest of society, over and above the dynamics you would normally expect pressing in that direction, and this is critical to understanding '90s culture in retrospect.
Just as those seeking tribal tattoos 20 and 30 years ago were drawn to the aesthetics of an exoticized, ancient culture, so too are many of the new, Gen Z tribal fans: specifically, to the years 1997 to 2004, and their curious folkways.
That is the cultural period Aesthetics Wiki defines as “Y2K,” an era that is in the process of being strip-mined by cool internet people under 30 for outfit ideas, design trends and general vibes.
Thinking about how to serve up some musing on Clinton and realizing that like no one under 30 will understand the Bono references.
Honestly I was born a little late for them myself, I didn’t really follow youth music until 1996, I knew he was like, the celebrity lead of a recognizable band, but it seemed fundamentally as arbitrary as if it had been Michael Stipe riding on Clinton’s jet and blurbing neoliberalism in Newsweek.
The hilarious thing is that as late as the 90′s Boomers were still seen as the generation in the shadow of their WWII-vet parents, whom they selfishly spited by refusing to grow up. Bill Clinton was the first boomer president, literally and figuratively, he liked McDonalds and jazz music and that was enough for some of the old establishment gatekeepers of the time to declare him Unfit to Lead.
And I guess this has just passed from common knowledge to historical curiosity because I see not a hint of irony, or acknowledgement that this just happens every thirty years or so, from people who see boomers as a uniquely privileged, uniquely evil class in American history, the eternal oppressor in the way a 19th century Marxist might talk of ‘the aristocracy’. And yes those people are idiots, but sometimes you have to push back on idiocy.
Not terribly sure what you’re looking for, so I’ll just riff that both the general positivity around the early-90s Desert Shield/Storm Iraq War and the later-90s “Greatest Generation” WWII commemorations and cinema revival were used by Boomers to distance from earlier Vietnam War opposition and use war to reconnect with their parents’ generation.
Meditate on the role of the Vietnam War in Forrest Gump’s 90s Boomer-experience pageant.
God, how much of ‘80s pop was just “and now… The British Queers!”
I used to nod in agreement about how rave was just derived from gay clubs, Paradise Garage and all that, but god, it’s like getting your prostate slammed gives you +5 Synthesizer
This was the context of Trent Reznor calling himself a “synth faggot” in 1994
