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dolorosa_12Oddly 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.)
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.)
