Saturday, February 12, 2022

retrotalk2022#6 - the Nineties

 













Chuck Klosterman  has been getting some blow-back recently for the above observation, made in a Vulture interview around his latest opus The Nineties: A Book  - i.e. the idea that there was no epistemic essence to the 2000s or indeed the 2010s

Forgive me but it does feel like a thought that's been around the block a few times already - c.f. me on  the Noughties as a Zeit without a Geist, similar formulations by Mark Fisher, or indeed this 2011 Vanity Fair  article by Kurt Anderson. 

But I guess these are the eternal returns and endless recycles of our recursive culture, innit

3 comments:

Caroline said...

haha he sounds so out of touch. I wonder what he considers "obscure." What a clown

Ed said...

Leaving aside the general point, I think his specific claim about comparing a 1990 movie to a 2022 movie is obviously wrong. Digital cinematography and CGI have made a very visible difference to the look of mainstream cinema over that period. That specific quality of digital images - somehow simultaneously over-bright and muddy - is the instantly identifiable signature of popular cinema since about 2010 or so, the visual equivalent of Autotune.

SIMON REYNOLDS said...

yeah there is a totally a look isn't there that will seem very distinct and era-bound in a decade or two

not just the quality of the digital images either - there's all the excessively mobile camera movements, absurdly agile. drone shots.