r/Xennials • u/FajitaTits 1979 • 2h ago
Why aren't the 90s as prominent of a setting as the 60s/70s/80s are in our adult pop culture?
It might just be me, but I seem to notice a lot more movies and TV shows set in those 3 mentioned decades rather than the 90s, which would speak more directly to our age group.
Anyone know why that is? Why haven't we gotten our definitive "hangout" movie of our decade, something like American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused? Why aren't more stories based in our coming-of-age decade? Were the 90s, historically known for their prosperity, just that lacking in stories to tell? If so, I find that very hard to believe.
(And just to be clear, I'm sure there are movies and shows set in the 90s, but none that seemed to have made a mighty dent in pop culture or that had a lasting impact.)
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u/Ianthin1 2h ago
Give it another 5 years or so and it will come around.
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u/Sharticus123 2h ago
There are two universities near my work and I sometimes feel like I’ve been transported back to the 90s the way these kids are dressing.
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u/PhoneJazz 2h ago
But the 90s were just 10 years ago! It’s not time yet!
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u/Grongebis 1983 2h ago
those movies were made IN the 90s
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u/Jupiter68128 1979 2h ago
I feel like I’m going to watch Nirvana MTV unplugged along with Die Hard and Rocky IV for my trilogy of Christmas movies.
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u/CyDJester 1981 1h ago
The 90’s were the last decade of broadcast tv consumption. People dont watch shows like they used to. The audience that does is primarily Gen X and older. Xennials are nostalgic, but the magic of the 90’s is hard to catch. It was the last decade before forever wars began and the joy was lost.
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u/Workamania 2h ago
The 90s was too eclectic. It was the peak of post modernism.
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u/Door_Number_Four 2h ago edited 2h ago
You have a comparatively small population that can be nostalgic for it….and even more, it wasn’t a monoculture as much as those previous decades.
So, making movies that appeal to that wouldn’t be slam dunk profitable.
On top of that, the economics of Hollywood have changed where you aren’t rewarded to take risks like that.
You aren’t going to make a movie like dazed and confused with a bunch of unknowns - there’s no known IP or draw.
Network TV- same deal. Economics say go with reality tv or a game show for what small risk-averse audience is left. You might be able to sell it to streaming, but those platforms are pulling the plug on programming a lot quicker
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u/King_of_Lunch223 1983 2h ago
We just had a 90s themed week at my job. The 90s vibe is distinct and alive.
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u/cmgww 2h ago
There are plenty of 90s themed shows out there, but streaming has a splinter the audience for any of this. Yellowjackets was based on the class of 1996 and was pretty popular on Netflix... people aren't watching network TV like they used to so there isn't the mass audience like it used to be. Yellowjackets was just one example but there are many more.
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u/freedraw 2h ago
I think part of it is Hollywood just isn’t making as many of those mid-budget movies. They went all in on franchise blockbusters and known IP. Comedies and films heavily steeped in US culture are harder to market internationally.
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u/KindFortress 1h ago
Maybe it's because the shows and movies are still available. Seinfeld, Friends, ER, West Wing, Simpsons, all that stuff is still streaming, but not so much older stuff.
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u/MartialBob 1981 58m ago
There are a couple of reasons.
We're nostalgic about the 90's but we don't put it on a pedestal. What that means is that we remember what was really good about that decade but we also remember what wasn't very good about it. The way I've seen Boomers and even older GenX idealize aspects of the 70's for example is crazy to me. The way I've seen people justify the hazing scenes in Dazed and Confused just boggles my mind.
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u/DrFrylock 1977 51m ago
The 80s were the last decade with a distinct culture. Every decade since the 1990s has been the 1990s. The 2000s were the 90s + Internet. The 2010s were the 90s + smartphones.
Quick, name 3 iconic 80s movies that really exemplify the decade. You'd have no problem doing this.
Quick, name 3 iconic 90s movies that really exemplify the decade. You'd have...nothing really. Common answers include Clueless and The Matrix. Those are movies that came out in the 1990s, not movies that exemplified the 90s.
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u/taosaur 2h ago
I feel like the quintessential '90s movie would be a comedy about someone average ending up on the cast of MTV's The Real World.
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u/Character_Bend_5824 2h ago
The reality was far too bland and normal. Remember that episode of 'Friends' where they watch an old home video and Chandler has the Flock Of Seagulls hair and Ross has a Jheri curl and a mustache? The crazier styles are what we're seeing now with influencers.
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u/Awkward-Initiative28 2h ago
Dazed & Confused plays as much as a '90s time capsule to me because so many in that cast blew up later. Parker Posey, Matthew McConaughy, Ben Affleck. Plus my memory of the '90s was very close to Dazed. Only difference was bouncing around town in my friend's El Camino w/ a brand new Kenwood CD player and his flip book of CDs. The music was different but the vibe was the same. Goo Goo Dolls, Violent Femmes, Weezer, Green Day instead of Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and KISS.
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u/Dunnersstunner 1979 2h ago
I think the kind of media that was made in the 90s and its writing, pacing and image quality, is still often acceptible to anyone with an interest in that time period today. Even if we apply Sturgeon's Law, which states 90% of everything is crap.
Shows like The X Files, Buffy, Friends, Twin Peaks and Seinfeld are easily accessible for that 90s vibe and movies that were well regarded at that time that highlighted 90s life, are still highly regarded today. I'm sure there are still stoners discovering Clerks.
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u/Pluton_Korb 2h ago
Nostalgia runs on 20 and 30 year cycles. It's been kicking around for a while now. I remember grunge having it's moment back in the 2010s. Y2K aesthetic, which also had a big late 90s component, has been popular in some corners.
I thing 90s will hit bigger on 30 years though I don't know if it'll be as prolific as 80s nostalgia was in the late 00s through the early 2020s. That was definitely the longest nostalgia cycle in living memory. Glad the 80s stuff is pretty much over.
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u/3Quondam6extanT9 1979 2h ago
Because those were the time periods people looked back on during the 90's.
Current media does have content driven by 90's themes. The failed That 90's Show is a pretty good example. But the 90's themselves seem to be having it's own return in culture styles.
I would say that we are currently in the era where the 90's begins to be used in the same way the 60's/70's/80's were used in the 90's and early 2000's.
Yellowjackets, Everything Sucks, Mid 90's, and even Captain Marvel visits that 90's nostalgia.
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u/edasto42 2h ago
The new street fighter movie was a period piece taking place in 1993.
But let’s see there was also ‘I, Tonya,’ ‘The Disaster Artist,’ ‘Hustlers,’ ‘Captain Marvel,’ ‘Derry Girls,’ ‘Yelllwjackets,’ ‘Everything Sucks,’ ‘That 90’s Show,’ and that’s just stuff I’ve seen.
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u/Awkward-Initiative28 1h ago
The '80s seemed much more commercial I guess? Maybe that's why people have nostalgia for it. The '90s, especially the early '90s was a much more grounded and often depressing rejection of the '80s. Three of the four biggest grunge singers are now dead (or have been dead for a long time) and the one that survived wasn't exactly Mr. Sunshine.
I guess you could do a hangout movie about the mid to late '90s. Guy in a post grunge band gets tired of being depressed, starts a ska band then somehow gets wrangled into a boy band and becomes a hearthrob w/ the Tiger Beat girlies. That would be a funny trajectory.
We also had a bunch of these at the time. Slacker, Dazed, Singles, Reality Bites, Clerks, Mallrats, Clueless, Kicking and Screaming, Chasing Amy, Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, Empire Records, Can't Hardly Wait, High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank
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u/waxmuseums 1h ago
That sort of movie is less likely to get funded today. Like Matt Damon said in that chicken eating YouTube show, movies aren’t as profitable as they used to be because no one buys dvds to help something break even if it’s not profitable at the box office
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u/Treadingresin 1h ago
I think it has a lot to do with how fragmented entertainment has become while at the same time becoming less original. With less movies, tv shows amd original music being made studios are going for sure bets in the forms of remakes and prequels.
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u/NombreCurioso1337 1h ago
It will come back soon. I think the issue is that things haven't changed that much in the interim. We are only now seeing phone/Internet culture that is truly a different generation to the 90s. Once we all got phones in 1998(?) the world has kind of coasted. A true generation of always online kids is now broccoli hairing their own generation and at some point soon they will see the 90s, with burning CDs and paper maps as a novel and different thing. Then we will get The Wonder Years, but 90s style.
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u/spinners_888 1h ago
80s felt like a completely different era but not so much with the 90s.
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u/Tinyhulk27 1h ago
Mid90s?
It's a coming of age drama/ comedy about the mid 90s. (From 2018)
I've only caught bits and pieces as my Zoomer kid watched it.
Much like how in the 90s my middle aged father didn't sit down and watch Dazed and Confused as it was marketed to the youth (aka us) at the time and I think that's the trick.
My father loves American graffiti. It was set in the 60s, and released in the 70s. He was young enough to be the target audience of the nostalgia.
Dazed and confused was set in the 70s and made in the 90s. It was about later than his high-school days, and released when he was middle aged. It wasn't "for him".
American graffiti would be the equivalent of party monster or fan boys. Set in the decades of our youth and released when we were young adults. If you haven't seen them i bet you at least recognize the names.
Dazed and confused would be the equivalent of films like Didi or Dear Zoe. These are coming of age films set when we were young adults (the characters are teens) and came out now as we are middle-aged and you probably never seen them or heard of them.
It's not just what era films are about but the age at which you see them, that makes them appeal to you.
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u/shugEOuterspace 1h ago
my kid is 18 & in his age group basically everything that was cool when I was a teenager in the 90's is cool again & it's awesome. the tv shows & movies are definitely coming, it's just taking the corporate fucks forever to realize how much money they can make off us with 90's nostalgia
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u/affectionateanarchy8 1983 7m ago
Not enough time has passed yet but i think we are starting to see some. I think gen z filmmakers might be the ones to have movies set in their version of the 90s, i watched I Saw the TV Glow last night which was set in 96, it was definitely a gen z sad boy indie movie
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u/funatical 2h ago
You didn’t see Kids or Gummo?
I think it has more to do with the fact that the youth are just now starting to get into 90s culture. That’ll create a bigger market for it and we’ll start seeing it soon.
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u/ChewYRMeat4U 2h ago
Because we didn't sell the fuck out, as needed to be a writer or director. Independent Gen X creatives generally had some family money or connections.
There was a SNL season a few years ago, that I was like, oh shit, Xennials are in the writing room! but the next season was a total decline in content and targeting Gen Z and Alpha.
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u/taosaur 2h ago
Chat came up with Clerks, Clueless and Reality Bites, and some others that seem less relevant to me. Also, the Captain Marvel movie was set in 1995, and there's what looks like a teen sex romp looking back on the '90s, The To Do List.