Rock & Rule

[griffeytrek]

They seemed oddly obsessed with rock and roll in the 70s and before you say the movie was released in 1983 I'll remind you that it started production in 1978.

When it comes to musicals, the 80s had a big obsession with the 70s anyway. Either by being in love with it, or despising it.

I think it's more we characterize things like music by decade. When the actual musical cycles tend to run more off cycle on the mid decade marks. Music from 1976-1984'ish is much more of a set piece than music from 1980 to 1989, for example. Generally the front half of a decade is mixed in with the back half of the decade before, and said decade doesn't find its own voice until the mid point. Which then lasts into the next.

[Deledrius]

They seemed oddly obsessed with rock and roll in the 70s and before you say the movie was released in 1983 I'll remind you that it started production in 1978.

When it comes to musicals, the 80s had a big obsession with the 70s anyway. Either by being in love with it, or despising it.

I think it's more we characterize things like music by decade. When the actual musical cycles tend to run more off cycle on the mid decade marks. Music from 1976-1984'ish is much more of a set piece than music from 1980 to 1989, for example. Generally the front half of a decade is mixed in with the back half of the decade before, and said decade doesn't find its own voice until the mid point. Which then lasts into the next.

You're not wrong, but frankly I think it's probably a fool's errand to pretend that musical shifts care one bit about arbitrary numbers.

[CrypticMirror]

The eighties/nineties split is a special case. The end of the Cold War was such a huge social paradigm change that it reshaped everything, even music, and it occurred right on the end of decade almost to the year. It made the eighties so very different from the nineties in a way that nothing else did.

[Deledrius]

Absolutely, that example is a great exception.

[Drooling Iguana]

The eighties/nineties split is a special case. The end of the Cold War was such a huge social paradigm change that it reshaped everything, even music, and it occurred right on the end of decade almost to the year. It made the eighties so very different from the nineties in a way that nothing else did.

And then 9/11 happened just after the '90s ended.

[CrypticMirror]

The eighties/nineties split is a special case. The end of the Cold War was such a huge social paradigm change that it reshaped everything, even music, and it occurred right on the end of decade almost to the year. It made the eighties so very different from the nineties in a way that nothing else did.

And then 9/11 happened just after the '90s ended.

It was more Iraq that signified the end of the nineties than 9/11, the latter was a terrible shock, but for the first couple of years it looked like it might be a relatively quick war in Afghanistan conducted in a spirit of international goodwill followed by a period of healing and rebuilding(and that OBL would be arrested and put on trial). It was only when it became clear that it was going to drag on, and, worse, the US/UK were going to go on a rampage across the whole middle east and nothing their citizens could do to protest was gonna stop them that things soured and the international alliance fell apart along with the rise of hate group attacks on brown people. That was the end of the nineties there, the end of what had been called the end of history.

[Beastro]

They seemed oddly obsessed with rock and roll in the 70s and before you say the movie was released in 1983 I'll remind you that it started production in 1978.

When it comes to musicals, the 80s had a big obsession with the 70s anyway. Either by being in love with it, or despising it.

I think it's more we characterize things like music by decade. When the actual musical cycles tend to run more off cycle on the mid decade marks. Music from 1976-1984'ish is much more of a set piece than music from 1980 to 1989, for example. Generally the front half of a decade is mixed in with the back half of the decade before, and said decade doesn't find its own voice until the mid point. Which then lasts into the next.

All culture since at east the 40s has been that way.

TV shows from the late 50s have more in common with the early 60s than the early 60s shows have with the late 60s. Think of the shift from serious, introspective black and white Westerns and shows like the Twilight Zone to colourful, silly stupidity like Gilligan's Island and Green Acres.

It's a reassuring thing for me as I thought I despised the twenty years of the 60s and 70s when it's only really the ten years from '65 to '75 that really get my back up.

That was the end of the nineties there, the end of what had been called the end of history.

The 90s were set up to fail because of that arrogant sentiment. It's like declaring the tide is obsolete and is done effecting the sea, which then continues right on ebbing and flowing. The Modern Era is a great tower crumbling, but within it, the 90s is its own bittersweet one that set itself up for failure.

[CharlesPhipps]

Yes, REALITY BITES is kind of a movie that actively pisses people off.

Ditto RENT.

Because the perspective of people not struggling enough financially to care about "selling out" as a matter of survival really irritates the audience they were aimed at.

The affluent 90s gave way to the Recession, Housing Crisis, and all those horrible wars.

[Beastro]

The affluent 90s gave way to the Recession, Housing Crisis, and all those horrible wars.

Hey, it was a Second Belle Epoch. I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Like putting your hand out the car window and feeling the wind flowing through your fingers.