On the day of the dead, when the year too dies...

[dolorosa_12]

Oddly enough, I don't actually want to post about Samhain, Halloween or Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence.

Actually, all that's going on is I'm currently experiencing my own distinctive combination of anxiety and boredom, and, as is always the case when I'm in such a state of mind, I regress to the '90s. A few weeks ago this meant watching many episodes of Daria, but I've now moved beyond that and am lurking in '90s-nostalgic Facebook groups, lurching from link to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles link on a nostalgia-trip that doesn't look likely to end any time soon.

What I realised, as I sat glazed-eyed through yet another montage-homage to rollerblades, Power Rangers, Push Pops and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air et al, was how passionately we '90s kids loved our decade. The internet is simply overflowing with early twentysomethings desperate to relive the days of leggings, overalls and long hair with puffy fringes. Every clip, no matter how banal or poorly put-together, is greeted with page after page of heartfelt, grateful comments: 'Thank you for putting this up. Oh, I miss the '90s so much!!!'; 'Things were so much better then.'

What struck me is that we're talking about our childhood in the same rose-tinted tones our baby boomer parents reserve for talking about their 20s.

What also struck me is that everyone talks about the '90s in such tones of anguished loss. 'Things were so much better then - they're terrible now' is the implication.

Why the passionate, grief-tinged obsession with all things '90s? The way we all talk about it, it's as if we were cast, kicking and screaming, from an Eden of Super Soakers, troll dolls and Care Bears (with a Backstreet Boys soundtrack), into a painful world of hard truths, hard work and hard knocks.

I certainly don't exclude myself from this. I have to indulge my '90s nostalgia in small doses, otherwise it actually starts to physically hurt me. There's something very brutal about being shown where you've come from in such stark detail, a sense not of loss so much as of clarity. This, this is who you were, in those bright days when being and doing were the same thing, when wondering why was not so fraught but merely a part of being alive is the emotion I feel when confronted with my childhood. If I'm listening to particularly evocative music, such as (and I know it's cheesy) Forever Young, I actually get a chill down my spine, and all the hairs on my arms stand up. My soul recognises its child-self, and sings.

I don't really have any answers. It might just be that, as the tech-savvy internet generation, we just have more of an online presence. Certainly there's a corner of the internet for every fandom, no matter how obscure, and growing up in the '90s was a shared experience of an entire generation - hardly an obscure fandom. But it's always struck me as odd that the boomers look back to their 20s - their coming of age - with great fondness and affection, while we Gen-Yers, upon reaching our 20s, have so categorically, so emphatically, so collectively, said, 'No, this is too hard, this is unendurable, this is intolerable, we'd much rather sit on YouTube and watch clips of the theme music to Raggy Dolls and discuss Animorphs, thanks.'

(*points to music* How could it be anything else? I'm a big fan of the thematically-linked music and LJ post, in case you haven't noticed.)

Comments

[romen-dreamer.livejournal.com]

The way we all talk about it, it's as if we were cast, kicking and screaming, from an Eden of Super Soakers, troll dolls and Care Bears (with a Backstreet Boys soundtrack), into a painful world of hard truths, hard work and hard knocks.
That's exactly what happened. We grew up. I for one am having a tough time recognizing that things in the world aren't quite as nice as they used to be, because over the last five years or so I've gotten so used to the "omg, this is new to me so it must be new to the world, how horrible" feeling, and learned that my loss of innocence doesn't mean the world is actually in any new sort of decline, and so now all the bad stuff I hear about like the economy just seems like me learning more about the world, not the world getting worse.

Now I wish I hadn't given away all my Animorphs books, curse you :P

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

I for one am having a tough time recognizing that things in the world aren't quite as nice as they used to be, because over the last five years or so I've gotten so used to the "omg, this is new to me so it must be new to the world, how horrible" feeling, and learned that my loss of innocence doesn't mean the world is actually in any new sort of decline

Wow! You took the words right out of my mouth.

[kat-frog.livejournal.com]

I think I just liked pop culture's view of the 90s, not my own as much. Also, can't believe you never include X-files in your 90s nostalgia. They were the 90s!

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Also, can't believe you never include X-files in your 90s nostalgia. They were the 90s!

Maybe for you. The closest I got to the X-Files was the year that everyone seemed to have a gym routine to the theme music.

Notice how I didn't include a single reference to Buffy? That was the 90s.

[(Anonymous)]

Wait until "we're" past 50. Then we won't remember our teens, and our twenties will be idealised.

Though I don't even subscribe to the general '90s children idealise it' theory: when so many are connected, it doesn't a high proportion of people to give _any_ particular impression, and you get one because you share it (i.e. look at related youtube videos, read blog posts, etc. - it wouldn't cross my mind to view a montage-homage of the 90s, let alone comment on it).

(James H)

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's very true. People generally tend to think that things were uniquely blissful when *they* were young and carefree, and, as I said before, I have a tendency to regress to '90s nostalgia when I'm A)Anxious B)Bored C)Procrastinating or D)All of the above. You can get a skewed idea of what a certain cultural phenomenon is about if you focus only on that particular phenomenon, and for every tencel jeans tragic uploading a slide show of the Goosebumps books' covers, there are probably 50 perfectly happy 25-year-olds getting on with adult life cheerfully.

[(Anonymous)]

Ooh, I just realised my sentences made no sense. At least you seemed to understand them :)

(James)

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

I inserted a 'take' into the 'it doesn't a high proportion' sentence and then it all made sense!

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm, I think a 'this' between 'get' and 'one' might also have helped. Or just rewriting it completely!

(James)

[cereswunderkind.livejournal.com]

There's nothing like moving away from home to bring on a nostalgia attack :)

It sound like the 90s are the new 60s. The 70s were crap too.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

There's nothing like moving away from home to bring on a nostalgia attack :)

An emphatic 'yes' to that! I think that a certain group of people (myself included) are incredibly risk-averse and see any kind of change as taking a terrifying risk. Thus, any change is accompanied by outpourings of nostalgia, much denial, and lots of holding onto the metaphorical furniture.