If you look back at the last 50 years of mainstream pop-culture, each decade can be recognized through iconic styles of music, clothing and cars. It goes beyond this obviously to include everything that we would associate with pop-culture, but for the moment let’s talk about music, clothes and cars because they are compelling mediums of self-expression.
If we look at that these three dimensions over time we can define the last few decades with these examples:
50s: Elvis, blue jeans, mustang
60s: The Doors, leather vest with fringes, VW bus
70s: the Bee Gees, polyester bell-bottoms, Pontiac GTO
80s: Madonna, Reebok high tops, BMW 3-series
90s: Nirvana, flannel shirts and ripped jeans, VW (again)
…who and what fits the bill for the 00s? I for one am not sure and after asking a few people it’s apparent that no one is sure who or what will define the last decade of pop-culture.
What’s interesting when you look at each past decade is how different they are from the ones that preceded them. There seem to be fairly strong lines that separate the decades from each other. The sixties borrowed nothing from the fifties and the same could be said for every decade after that. Each decade’s pop-culture redefined itself in largely original ways that made it a clear departure from the past which is what people wanted. Each decade sought to reinvent itself to be better than the past one. The belief was that the future was something to look forward to because it was going to be better than yesterday.
But today, it seems we’ve stopped looking towards the future and have instead largely sought out the past. Most of pop-culture today is re-hashing the highlight reel from the previous decades instead of forging a more original path forward for ourselves. The green movement has inspired people to recycle plastics, glass, paper and aluminum but have gone too far with recycling culture?
You don’t have to look very far to see the past re-emerging. The music we hear today on the radio today is really no different than what we were listening to 15 years ago. In the last nine years we’ve experienced nothing ground-breaking like the British invasion of the 60s, the equivalent of Dylan plugging in at the Newport Folk Festival, or when rap first made itself known in the 80s. According to Rolling Stone’s ’50 Rock and Roll Moments that Changed the World’ (written in 2004) the only meaningful rock moment from 2000 to 2004 was the arrival of N Sync. What? Manufactured boy bands that appeal to tweener girls are a significant moment of rock n’ roll? I think someone at Rolling Stone was convincing themself that they were living in important times. Looking at music today there are a few glimmers of original thought, but no one has created a significant departure from the 90s, one that mainstream pop-culture would call a definitive of this decade.
The exact same argument can be made for clothes and cars. Nike and Puma are releasing their old-school collections that are made to the exact specs that they used back in the 70s and 80s, while every car manufacturer has been releasing models with direct lineage to older models for the last ten years. What began with the new Beetle in 1998 continues today with 60s-inspired Mustangs, Camaros and Minis.
So why has this happened now? What is it about today that makes us draw from the past in a way that no decade before us has done?
A few plausible hypotheses can be developed:
Because we live in a time rapid-fire technological innovation we seek out a way of balancing our tech-heavy lives through engaging with low-tech experiences and influences the past that provide us with a sense of being part of something authentic.
The last 9 years have been filled global strife in the form or war and terrorism that sends us searching for stable and secure influences that have been ‘validated’ by previous generations.
In our hyper-personal world the idea of mainstream pop-culture is no longer relevant and has been replaced with a rise in the importance of sub-cultures.
We’ve seen the future in the form of warnings about global warming, population explosion and nuclear proliferation and we’re actively retreating back to decades that feel more inspiring.
So… if you feel that you know what’s going to define this decade, please chime in. I for one would love to find out that this decade has been full of original thinking that will define our contribution to the evolution of mainstream pop-culture and somehow I missed it. Meanwhile, I’ll be driving to the Puma store in my retro Mustang for a pair of Californias (circa. 1983) while rocking some Girl Talk…
