What do you think the reasons were that the late '90s were so different from the mid-'90s and early '90s (though, in their own way, they really weren't?) I think alot of it had to do with the general economic, cultural, and social feeling of prosperity and contentedness gripping the country. Of course, like in the rest of the '90s, there was a feeling of paranoia and "hidden truths" coming out from underneath suburban idyll. Columbine and the reaction to it, to me, symbolizes alot about the late '90s. It was prosperous like the mid-'80s in almost every way, but there was a certain cockiness about how the socially progressive and politically correct '90s had solved all these social issues and things had advanced to an optimistic point where they weren't going to be issues anymore at all. So, Columbine had this mixture of mass media sensationalism and an almost draconian reaction by school boards. It was one of those little peeks of the cracks underneath the late '90s white picket fence. This thread was sort of inspired by this story I read by a friend of mine who's a year older than me, which really evoked the carefreeness-above-deeper hidden problems of childhood in the late '90s. I think we had a thread about this once before, but the late '90s, late 1996-mid 2000 or so, was like its own renaissance of suburban childhood due to the demographic boom of people born in the mid-late '80s and early '90s, arguably to a point unseen since the late '50s and early '60s Howdy Doody days.

Then and again, you could argue the late '90s was the sunnier turn of the whatever of the early-mid '90s and took alot from it, sunnier due to the general state of affairs in America and such. It seemed like, back then, unless this is just a child's memories, people thought all these issues like racism and poverty and classism had been conquered, and argued less about the PC status quo. 9/11 and the 2000 recession have made people much more cynical about the state of affairs of America in general, or just nonchalant and lacking idealism. It's like 9/11 and all the issues the country has had since then have sent the country's youth in two directions: a.) party or b.) depression, much like after WWI in the 1920s.

The '90s were a paranoid decade from start to finish.  Everything just got worse as the decade progressed until the howling crescendo of the last couple of years.  I consider the election of 2000 and 9/11 to be '90s fallout.

Gulf War I
Rush Limbaugh
Election '92--George Herbert Hoover Bush versus Slick Willie versus Ross-for-Boss.
First WTC attack
Ruby Ridge
Waco, Branch Davidians
Election '94--bicameral Republican majority.
The Newt Deal
Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh
Rush Limbaugh
Election '96--Bob Dole runs on a "Return to Shame" campaign, loses bigtime re-affirming GOP resolve to "get" Clinton
Welfare "reform," TEOWAWKI--The end of welfare as we know it.
Monica Lewinsky
Impeachment debacle
Columbine
The sense the country was going mad!

The '90s were a paranoid decade from start to finish.  Everything just got worse as the decade progressed until the howling crescendo of the last couple of years.  I consider the election of 2000 and 9/11 to be '90s fallout.

Gulf War I
Rush Limbaugh
Election '92--George Herbert Hoover Bush versus Slick Willie versus Ross-for-Boss.
First WTC attack
Ruby Ridge
Waco, Branch Davidians
Election '94--bicameral Republican majority.
The Newt Deal
Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh
Rush Limbaugh
Election '96--Bob Dole runs on a "Return to Shame" campaign, loses bigtime re-affirming GOP resolve to "get" Clinton
Welfare "reform," TEOWAWKI--The end of welfare as we know it.
Monica Lewinsky
Impeachment debacle
Columbine
The sense the country was going mad!


The '90s were weird. Of course, I only remember that list from Election of '96/Oklahoma City Bombing or so, but there was this mix of economic, social, technological prosperity, etc., with an undercurrent of nutty paranoia and insecurity that, as Max said, progressed through the decade. It went from the "gritty/back to basics whatever" early '90s to the "breezy whatever" of the late '90s, but in world affairs it went from paranoia to more paranoia. Max forgot the Rodney King Riots and the end of the Cold War, both of which TOTALLY changed the West Coast, and the sensationalized rise of gangs like the Bloods and the Crips in the mid-'90s. One comparison that hasn't been much made is the '50s to the '90s. Both were outwardly prosperous and lifestyle-progressive decades with a fixation with "the darkness underneath", marked by the recovery from long tensions and the creation of new ones, and immense, palpable, placeless paranoia. Also, both had an obsession with lurking urban grittiness. The '80s was alot like the '20s, in my opinion...a fake "return to normalcy" that was in fact bad and incompetent politics complementing outward prosperity.

You only have to look at the pop-culture of the time to see how paranoid the Western world truly was. The X-Files, Earth 2, and other TV shows as well as films such as Conspiracy Theory and Breakdown are evidence of the paranoia in that country and other parts of the world as well. People were looking back to the past for comfort, which is why the 1970's became popular, such as in films like 54, Dazed And Confused and others. The reasons why they were looking to the past was because the 'present' was pretty scary, and now it has gotten worse.






AN

The paranoia of the 90s echoed that of the 70s - the 60s, and to a lesser extent the 80s, were filled with tumultuous social upheavel. In the 70s and 90s, this shifted to problems such as social welfare and other large-scale social issues. The nueroticism of the 70s - first manifest in the Singer songwriter boom at the tail end of Vietnam, and with the post-Watergate neurosis which could be found everywhere - were just ways America - and to a lesser extent much of the world, came to grips with the 'relatively' peaceful domestic situation. In stark contrast, International conflict were worse than ever in both the 1970s and the 1990s.

There was just an general uneasyness, if you wish to call it that, about stuff that was happening at the time, for pretty much the reason Maxwell stated.

The paranoia of the 90s echoed that of the 70s - the 60s, and to a lesser extent the 80s, were filled with tumultuous social upheavel. In the 70s and 90s, this shifted to problems such as social welfare and other large-scale social issues. The nueroticism of the 70s - first manifest in the Singer songwriter boom at the tail end of Vietnam, and with the post-Watergate neurosis which could be found everywhere - were just ways America - and to a lesser extent much of the world, came to grips with the 'relatively' peaceful domestic situation. In stark contrast, International conflict were worse than ever in both the 1970s and the 1990s.


I think alot of the uneasiness of America at the time was due to the rapid changes that began when Reagan was elected in lifestyles, economy, and values, and that slowly sunk into the surface of America, despite the apparent state of "normalcy" that gripped the country for most of the '80s and '90s. The '80s, socially and culturally, both built off of and were a reaction to the '60s and '70s. They commercialized the value changes that began then and rebuilt them into the fabric of an American life characterized by commercialism, class inequality, and "normalcy", and reacted to the liberalism of the 20th century with the rise of conservatism, evangelical religion, and blatant corporatism. I think the end of the concrete military-industrial complex that characterized American life from the late '40s to the late '80s had alot to do with the vacuum that created '90s paranoia. Once the creepy military experiments ended and such information was declassified in the early '90s to a large degree, pop culture paranoia was reborn for the first time since the '50s. The paranoia of the Cold War left, and so the vacuum was filled by aliens, child molestors, and school shootings.

The '90s were the time of the Reaganite changes sinking in to permanency, but at the same time, there was a peaceful domestic and international situation for most of the decade, so people looked to paranoia to deal with the changes.

I think alot of the uneasiness of America at the time was due to the rapid changes that began when Reagan was elected in lifestyles, economy, and values, and that slowly sunk into the surface of America, despite the apparent state of "normalcy" that gripped the country for most of the '80s and '90s. The '80s, socially and culturally, both built off of and were a reaction to the '60s and '70s. They commercialized the value changes that began then and rebuilt them into the fabric of an American life characterized by commercialism, class inequality, and "normalcy", and reacted to the liberalism of the 20th century with the rise of conservatism, evangelical religion, and blatant corporatism. I think the end of the concrete military-industrial complex that characterized American life from the late '40s to the late '80s had alot to do with the vacuum that created '90s paranoia. Once the creepy military experiments ended and such information was declassified in the early '90s to a large degree, pop culture paranoia was reborn for the first time since the '50s. The paranoia of the Cold War left, and so the vacuum was filled by aliens, child molestors, and school shootings.

The '90s were the time of the Reaganite changes sinking in to permanency, but at the same time, there was a peaceful domestic and international situation for most of the decade, so people looked to paranoia to deal with the changes.


The 90s were tumultuous, but in a different way. I think part of the reason is there were no great forces or events - like Iraq - which totally mobilised the public's consciousness in the 90s, so, as you say, the vacuum was filled by paranoia about pedophilia, cults.etc. Save those who followed the news - we seemed strangely detached from the international conflict of the 90s. Clearly, if the situation (like the Bosnian Civil War) doesn't direct the average American, there will be a lack of involvement or interest in it.

What do you think the reasons were that the late '90s were so different from the mid-'90s and early '90s (though, in their own way, they really weren't?) I think alot of it had to do with the general economic, cultural, and social feeling of prosperity and contentedness gripping the country. Of course, like in the rest of the '90s, there was a feeling of paranoia and "hidden truths" coming out from underneath suburban idyll. Columbine and the reaction to it, to me, symbolizes alot about the late '90s. It was prosperous like the mid-'80s in almost every way, but there was a certain cockiness about how the socially progressive and politically correct '90s had solved all these social issues and things had advanced to an optimistic point where they weren't going to be issues anymore at all. So, Columbine had this mixture of mass media sensationalism and an almost draconian reaction by school boards. It was one of those little peeks of the cracks underneath the late '90s white picket fence. This thread was sort of inspired by this story I read by a friend of mine who's a year older than me, which really evoked the carefreeness-above-deeper hidden problems of childhood in the late '90s. I think we had a thread about this once before, but the late '90s, late 1996-mid 2000 or so, was like its own renaissance of suburban childhood due to the demographic boom of people born in the mid-late '80s and early '90s, arguably to a point unseen since the late '50s and early '60s Howdy Doody days.

Then and again, you could argue the late '90s was the sunnier turn of the whatever of the early-mid '90s and took alot from it, sunnier due to the general state of affairs in America and such. It seemed like, back then, unless this is just a child's memories, people thought all these issues like racism and poverty and classism had been conquered, and argued less about the PC status quo. 9/11 and the 2000 recession have made people much more cynical about the state of affairs of America in general, or just nonchalant and lacking idealism. It's like 9/11 and all the issues the country has had since then have sent the country's youth in two directions: a.) party or b.) depression, much like after WWI in the 1920s.


I think pop culturally, 1997-1999/early 2000 is like an echo of the mid '80s (and, that was sort of an echo of the mid 1950s) in the sense of seeming so much more controversial than anything that came before it. You could say Marilyn Manson, Jerry Springer, South Park and Doom were 1999's answer to what Twisted Sister and Ozzy were to Tipper Gore in 1985. Those things were scapegoats for the Columbine tragedy.

The reason all that stuff seemed so "end of the world-esque" I think, is because they were both relatively innocent times, so surface things like that stuck out more. I agree, there seemed to be an attitude that many of the world's problems had been solved, so trying to eliminate or restrict controversial music or TV was seen as another step in that direction.

I think circa 1998 is when I noticed the rise in PC.

Yeah, things like PC, Censorship.etc, seemed to pop up at those 'peaceful times', like the mid-80s, and the late 90s. It just proves people always need some to worry and fret about...

I think pop culturally, 1997-1999/early 2000 is like an echo of the mid '80s (and, that was sort of an echo of the mid 1950s) in the sense of seeming so much more controversial than anything that came before it. You could say Marilyn Manson, Jerry Springer, South Park and Doom were 1999's answer to what Twisted Sister and Ozzy were to Tipper Gore in 1985. Those things were scapegoats for the Columbine tragedy.

I think Marylin Manson was more popular from 1996-1998 than 1999.

I think pop culturally, 1997-1999/early 2000 is like an echo of the mid '80s (and, that was sort of an echo of the mid 1950s) in the sense of seeming so much more controversial than anything that came before it. You could say Marilyn Manson, Jerry Springer, South Park and Doom were 1999's answer to what Twisted Sister and Ozzy were to Tipper Gore in 1985. Those things were scapegoats for the Columbine tragedy.

The reason all that stuff seemed so "end of the world-esque" I think, is because they were both relatively innocent times, so surface things like that stuck out more. I agree, there seemed to be an attitude that many of the world's problems had been solved, so trying to eliminate or restrict controversial music or TV was seen as another step in that direction.

I think circa 1998 is when I noticed the rise in PC.


The backlash in PC began almost as soon as it really got huge around 1998, towards the end of Clinton, though PC probably started in the mid-'80s and rose rapidly in the early '90s. PC became seen as establishment, both due to some of its more ridiculous forms becoming the norm in education and the workplace and efforts by some conservatives to vilify it (when they really meant preventing visible prejudice and hate crimes, not PC), in the mid-late '90s. Some quick research on the term indicates that it began as a joke within leftists in the early '80s about the extreme demands made by feminists and environmentalists and by the tendency of those groups to focus on vocabulary over substance. It really came out big time in the early '90s, around the Rodney King riots and the '92 election, and Clinton's victory. The right used the word to refer to the suppression of conservative speech on college campuses; this actually was a problem in the early '90s, along with overaccusations of racism and prejudice and such. The PC backlash began in the late '90s, though, and is immensely popular now. Interestingly enough, the term "family values" also came out in 1992 during the GHW Bush v. Clinton race, from the conservative side (i.e. "We should be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons.") "Family values" could refer to the whole movement with the music censorship controversies in the mid-'80s and late '90s to the hysteria over pedophilia and more recently internet child pornography that continues to this day. In fact, the "family values" movement, slowly growing since the '80s, has been the cause of almost every late 20th century social panic.

The '80s and '90s both featured social paranoia, though it definitely peaked in the '90s.

For me, the 90's made me think of it as the modern day roaring 20's.


I'm not the only one!

The 80s laid the grounds for it (in a crude WW1 analogy, we fought the Hun and won), and the '90s marked our propsperity as victors of the Cold War. We also got lucky with the dot-com revolution; the folks roaring through the '20s probably said the same thing about their surging railroad and automobile stocks.

The 20s were the high point of our culture until the 50s.  The 90s were the high point of our culture until (and I'm guessing here) at least 2020.  We've weathered our post-Iraq-skirmish (we lost the war a year or two ago) slowdown (and as of the first week 2007, the problem is that employment is growing too fast for the Fed's comfort) pretty well, but that prosperity isn't being spread around in widespread global growth, because we didn't break enough stuff.  Rather than listen to my gut, which calls for a  30s-style Depression and a 40s-style Cleansing of the Economic Slate, I'm going to call the 2005-2015 era an era of 70s-style stagflation, as we print dollars (and devalue the currency) in order to pay for a lost war, and maybe in 2015-2025, we'll get an 80s-style recovery to accompany a 90s-style collapse of the Islamic world when we adopt nuclear generation as a carbon-free energy source that (whether used to render oil shale into crude, to generate the electricity for our plug-in style hybrids, or even to power chemical plants that'll synthesize the fertilizers required to grow corn and turn it into ethanol)  will supplant Mideast hydrocarbons. 

Or maybe my initial gut hunch was right.  Meh.

Agent Smith described the reason for the choice of timeframe in The Matrix better than I did.  The 80s were the most fun, buth the 90s were definitely the apex of our culture for the reasonably-forseeable future.