Dude, who even knows.
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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.
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Thinking about Entourage. First off, how did I not notice it was transparently a male Sex and the City?
Probably cause I was working with Hollywood suits at the time and I was distracted with how it was like an editorial cartoon for that world, like with Penny Arcade and vidya
(The famous actor who had a weed connection when the city was dry was Harrison Ford! The female agent who stole clients by seducing them was a real person!)
Also just post-Weinstein and broader cultural stuff, how much it was a celebration of the asshole boss (Enduring phone-throwing principals was widely valorized as the filtering first step of your career. I was filtered out.)
And how this fit with broader neoliberal themes of the time, like Ari was a huge asshole – the kinda guy who’d barge in and interrupt High Holy Day services in front of everyone to make a deal – in a way that advanced himself, but it was ultimately okay because his assholeness fed into and his glory came out of his legitimate economic function of getting his clients’ movies made and promoting their careers.
Like for decades everyone knew Harvey was the biggest asshole. And that he had the benefit of female celebrity attention. But because this passed through the economic function of production it was thought okay – he’s a jerk… in service of producing award-winning films, and women attend him… instrumentally, because he makes award-winning films. It’s from the sense his abuse was essentially sexual embezzlement that didn’t pass through legitimate ends that it can be so cleanly renounced now.
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kinda weird Tori Amos has nothing to do with our reevaluate-the-90s moment
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Watching Kill Bill, the black and white scene outside the church where Uma Thurman says she’s getting out to talk about music with her petty-rebel-fronting boyfriend and raise a strong girl
And David Carradine languidly asks whether she really wants to flee his patriarch-managing-badass-women life of flying around the world immune from law and morality on their elite projects
And she refuses so his allies correct her
Man, that scene by Quentin “all the sexy, violent movies I make with Harvey Weinstein are about sex and violence in movies or in the movie industry” Tarantino sure reads deeper now