I think the truly biggest moment in pop culture waa that I got old. I mean I still buy CDs and am wary of giving in to the kids' desire to use iTunes. When I asked if you got a poster with the album they just stared and stared. Then... I bought a banjo. Which made me an old fart. So in one decade I went from cool guy to codger. In just ten years. Fancy that. Here are other momentous events in the history of the decade without a name:
- The internet became popular. I mean no one really uses it except for book buying but it became really popular. It fed our enemies, shut down factories and introduced hardcore porn to children throughout the world - but it's really really popular. And apparently sentient people still defend its curses pretending it is the first technology in history with no serious down sides.
- That 24 hour millennium broadcasting we are the world love in stuff that happened at the turn of the century? Remember how we watched and cared what people were doing in the South Pacific and Finland. Didn't take off. Peace and love as popular culture was a total flop.
- Food porn. It really took off. Over the last ten years cable TV exploded and we all have a zillion channels. And we watch people make food we will never make and never go out to buy. Same with shows about fixing your house, cleaning your house, wearing better clothes and crap like that. We watch crap non-stop. Big winner of the decade: crap TV that saps your life.
- The Who at the concert for New York after 9/11. Best rock performance ever. Very uncomfortable and sad to watch now realizing the audience are all in mourning, so close to horror. Still, very important and instructional as to the correlation between Pete Townsend and democratic liberty.
- Runner up for loser trend of the decade? Blogging of course. It changed nothing. Killed off dance class instruction as a profession. I could know how to fly a plane, how to speak five languages, how to build houses and how to have real friendships with real people except for the curse of blogging. At least I found time to play the banjo badly.
There. The main pop culture trends of a decade. No doubt you have your own. Jack Michaelson being euthanized? The lack of internet based performance art? There must be more. It was a whole ten years, right?
Comments
Robert McClelland - November 30, 2009 11:39 AM
Reality TV took off this decade as we became less interested in the fictional lives of fictional people and more interested in the fictional lives of real people.
Scandalous behaviour by celebrities took off as a new form of pop performance art (ie. Kanye West's antics at the VMAs was undoubtedly planned).
Alan - November 30, 2009 11:48 AM
Good points, Robert. I was going to discuss in another post "business morality" and look at Martha Stewart and Enron but do you think that Kanye and Martha might be related?
Robert McClelland - November 30, 2009 12:04 PM
I'm referring to celebrities such as West now actively courting minor scandals as part of a marketing gimmick to attract attention. I doubt Stewart wanted her scandal to happen or wanted that kind of attention.
P of K - November 30, 2009 12:13 PM
For me it is the decade that will be remembered as the watershed when the Asian economy began to overtake the American economy. Of course it will only be remembered as such if the Asian economy continues to grow while the west gets comfy with the notion of steady state economics.
Alan - November 30, 2009 12:13 PM
But there was an anesthetizing of behaviour out of Martha which I think makes planning the Taylor Swift thing acceptable.
And, yes, I agree that Martha did not court court but she certainly was willfully blind. It is that idea of blindness to public morality, the erosion of something that happened this last decade.
Jay Currie - November 30, 2009 4:50 PM
The end of the mass audience. For TV, music, movies, newspapers, magazines - there is no mass audience crossing demographic borders. There are tribes and sub-tribes and two guys going viral on You-Tube.
I blame St. Algore for inventing digits and a pipe for 'em.
Alan - November 30, 2009 5:10 PM
Saint Anthony Claret, patron of tobacconists, does not get your joke.