I was born in the 90s but I’m not really a product of the nineties. We’re mostly a product of the generation that we came of age - our formative years of teen-hood to college-aged. Generation X had it’s moment in the 90s and there’s no one better to interweave the importance of the 90s and its happenings than Chuck Klosterman in his new book, The Nineties.
Klosterman explains the deeply psychological nature of living in the 90s and overlays it with the specific cultural events that stand out in our minds. He categorizes the zeitgeist beautifully and tries to remind you that A) Every generation is the same, despite wearing and hearing different things and B) Revisionist history is powerful and the way you portray your affinity for things is likely dissimilar from the unfolding of the actual experience in the moment.
A couple things that really stand out to me from reading this book:
Remembrance arcs are funny as we replace prior opinions of individuals after a singular monumental event - think Tyson biting Holyfields ear, OJ after the bronco chase and murder acquittal, Clinton post Monica Lewinsky. It’s hard to elucidate their reputation prior to their respective ‘moments.’
Like so many times that are pre and post seismic changes, the amount of people that underplayed or disregarded the internets’ importance in the early 90s is astonishing. It was minority thinking to believe the internet would be anything more than something a bunch of geeks play around with on the weekend. I draw similar parallels in sentiment to things like electric cars, crypto-currency and AI. It is yet again another reminder that history and its’ underpinnings repeats itself but the mediums change.
Politics was not always as binary and polarizing as it is today. Both sides of the aisle were fairly content with Clinton and most people spent more time thinking about themselves and less time focused on politics. It was during this decade that TV news stations also made the radical transition from a programmatic source of news into fractional parties that were more interested in reaffirming its’ viewers biases as a form of entertainment than delivering a neutral take to inform the viewer.
Music and Movies make up the trophy case of a generation. Whether it was Nirvana’s Teen Spirit (and what that meant for grunge) and Tupac’s suspicious disappearance or Titanic’s cinematic blowout and American Beauty’s representation of suburban disgruntlement and twisted fantasies of maritally unhappy middle-aged men, once again the Zeitgeist is the mile marker of a decade.
Before streaming gave you the freedom to roam, the regularly programmed TV era required you to tune in at the exact time and day as scheduled shows were slated. The TV era of sitcoms about comical banality, Seinfeld, Friends or The Real World, brought us to our chairs to watch the every day nothingness of mid twenty and thirty year olds in the midst of their every day ambivalent lives.
A decade doesn’t really start and end at the New Years eve mark (Y2K), there are cultural events that signify the turning point to the next generation that bleed across decade lines. For the nineties it was brought upon by the fall of the Berlin Wall (down goes communism) and the ethos of the previous decade had come crashing down along with the Twin Towers.
And lastly, before the cell phone arrived in your pocket and only Zach Morris was arrogant enough to bring one to school, Chuck reminds us that “the car gave us the freedom to leave home but it was the landline that returned the power to stay home and await the call.”