Is our Culture dying?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
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<p>Will</a> nostalgia destroy pop culture?</p>

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Over the last decade, American culture has been overtaken by a curious, overwhelming sense of nostalgia. Everywhere you look, there seems to be some new form of revivalism going on. The charts are dominated by old-school-sounding acts like Adele and Mumford & Sons. The summer concert schedule is dominated by reunion tours. TV shows like VH1's "I Love the 90s" allow us to endlessly rehash the catchphrases of the recent past. And, thanks to YouTube and iTunes, new forms of music and pop culture are facing increasing competition from the ever-more-accessible catalog of older acts.</p>

<p>In his terrific new book, "Retromania," music writer Simon Reynolds looks at how this nostalgia obsession is playing itself out everywhere from fashion to performance art to electronic music -- and comes away with a worrying prognosis. If we continue looking backward, he argues, we'll never have transformative decades, like the 1960s, or bold movements like rock 'n' roll, again. If all we watch and listen to are things that we've seen and heard before, and revive trends that have already existed, culture becomes an inescapable feedback loop.</p>

<p>Salon spoke to Reynolds over the phone from Los Angeles about the importance of the 1960s, the strangeness of Mumford & Sons -- and why our future could be defined by boredom.

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<p>Many things the article talks about are really true. My generation neverdid anything big or spectacular. The 50s had the rock n' roll movement , the 60s counterculture, 70s punk and new wave the 80s birth of electronic and synth, 90s grunge. All our society does is look at the past and say how perfect things were, but when looking now all we hear is how things sucks. Which is why top40 music is doing what has been done in the 80s, using synthesizers and computers to make music. In fact many of the songs on the radio are heavily inspired by the 80s, look at Katy Perry's video and song for "Last Friday Night" and Lady GaGa whose song and video are heavily inspired by the 80s also. And outside of poppy acts like them, take a look at Adele who is doing things that has been in done in the 60s. Even many underground acts are doing a re-hash of the past. So its not only mainstream, but also underground. Everything on the movies is a remake of the past, from comedies to superhero films. All we do is reuse, reuse, and reuse, but we don't make something new. I think technology is moving so fast, that culture can't keep up. Nothing new has happened since the 90s, and what do we do to cure our boredom is look at the good ol' days.</p>

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<p>wouldn’t the 00s be the autotune movement</p>

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<p>If people in music are trying to mirror the 80s, they are doing so miserably.</p>

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<p>I don’t know about the culture, but the government and economy sure are.</p>

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<p>^^The autotune believe it or not was done a lot in the 90s and was started by Cher.</p>

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<p>Maybe the reason people are looking back(and it’s not a lot of people; most teens are still obsessing over Justin Bieber and the like) is because music,and culture today sucks. When an artist has to grab your attention with crazy outfits or scantily clad clothes, I can see why people are begging for the old. They see that in the future, culture is not going to get better, so they reminisce on what was truly entertainment. So I say, bring on the Adele’s. I’ve been ready for it.</p>

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<p>^That’s the exact reason why culture is dying. The more people say things sucks, doesn’t that make people not wanna do anything new. Because they fear that they will be disliked. If people could stop complaining about how everything sucks and do something new that has not been done before maybe people can move forward. This is why our generation is so bland, all we think about is the past.</p>

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<p>SHOULD I GIVE UP …OR SHOULD I KEEP ON CHASING PAVEMENTS?</p>

<p>s</p>

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<p>00s = boy bands/ hip hop becoming mainstream</p>

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<p>^Boy bands are old, they’ve been around since the 50s. The modern boy band has been around since the 80s with New Kids on the Block. Hip Hop became mainstream in the late 80s, and exploded along with grunge in the early 90s.</p>

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<p>People are looking at what’s new right now. And they don’t like it. They’ve formed an opinion on what they see and hear, and see that they don’t like what they are seeing or hearing. Of course they are going to look back on the old and enjoy it again. In the past, people tried new things too. And over time, it was accepted. But today, a main factor (at least for me it is) are morals. Music is bombarded with sex and other things that is not entertaining to listen to 24\7. </p>

<p>I hope people keep trying to develop music of today. But so far, it does “suck”. In the meantime, I’ll be listening to what was good.</p>

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<p>Boy bands weren’t really a movement in the '80s. Neither was hip hop in the '90s (definitely characterizes the '00s more than the '90s. Also, pop in general characterizes early '00s [Britney, Christina Agruilera, JLo]…I’d say actual rap was more popular in the '90s, with artists like Tupac & Dr. Dre. Usher, Kanye West, and Black-Eyed Peas are more hip-hop).</p>

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<p>Sex has been in music for a long time. I can’t use the “look at the underground scene” because that’s getting real old. But many of the concepts used today have been used heavily in the past. The scantly clad women has been around in the 90s. This happens because we live in an image obsessed society. If people don’t like what there hearing don’t buy it, people are buying these things, and what to the record labels do. Make more of it, the simple concept of “supply and demand”. If people did what they did in the 70s with killing off disco, and the 90s of killing off dance pop, maybe, just maybe. We can have a youth awakening.</p>

<p>^I’m talking about the world not America. Boybands in the world never died off, they became uber popular in the 80s and 90s. More so than the 2000s. Boybands died in 2001. Hip hop reached its peak by 2004, by 2005 its started to lose popularity fast. Dance pop and synth pop, which was popular in the 80s has made a massive return on the music charts. Look at Lady Gaga and Britney Spears two artists that are pioneering it into the mainstream.</p>

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<p>That’s all pop-culture is, really. I don’t see why it’s bad – each generation adapts old classics to its own means. Take the Cinderella story, for instance – the 50s had the film Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, which was later remade in the 90s with Julia Ormond (and don’t forget Pretty Women or A Cinderella Story or other recent spin-off films). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, written during the Jazz Age, was remade into a film not too long ago. </p>

<p>The song “On the Floor” by Jennifer Lopez was taken from a song called “Lambada” by Kaoma from the 80s, which, in turn, was taken from an Afro-Bolivian music group that released the same song ten years earlier. </p>

<p>There many more examples; I don’t see why Reynolds is making such a big deal out of an epidemic that’s been around for ages.</p>

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<p>^^ Unfortunately, sex has been integrated into culture for a long time. But back then, it had a limit. Also, they did have sex, but there was also talent. Today, you can autotune, dance like a hoe on TV, and be called a star. </p>

<p>As for the 90s, my tastes in music starts to get shorter in that era. And the 80s, though a few groups and acts somewhat saved the 80s.</p>

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<p>That is very true. TV shows like “Happy Days” (70s) and “That 70s Show” (90s) and many other were about the past. But the major difference is that there was not an over saturation of them. Look now, on TV we see reality shows, and shows about the past. The movies are bombarded with remakes, films about the past, a vast majority are nostalgia. Sure there were songs that were inspired by the past, during the 60s-90s. But look at the songs now, most of them are things that’s been done, time and time again. </p>

<p>There’s a vast difference between, every now and then, and over saturation. Right now is the latter.</p>

<p>^The whole sex thing started as a way to protest censorship, it got kind of out of hand.</p>

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<p>Now themes of sex and money are dominating American culture. These are the two thing Americans nowadays value the most among others which can certainly be considered cultural decay. As the world is becoming more homogeneous, these two desires are gaining headway.</p>

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<p>@smorgasbord- I just listened to Lambada’s version on YouTube. Interesting. Did JLo give any recognition?</p>

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<p>First off, Adele isn’t American culture. Well, she started off in the UK. 2011 is another “British Invasion” in my opinion with a lot of UK acts mainstreaming over here.</p>

<p>We are moving forward though. Technology Has become our culture. Apple, Google, and Facebook/social networking have made their own impact in our generation.</p>

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<p>smorgasbord brings up another point I forgot to add. **“Sampling”[b/], people began sample in the 60s. But in the late 70s, it began to be done way too much. I can say that about a good 60% of songs today are using a sample from the past. This whole looking at the past has been doing around since the 60s.</p>

<p>^And that’s a bad thing. The article brings up, how technology is hurting our culture. When technology takes over too much, that will be the death of us. We are too reliant on the internet to do things.</p>