I often like to categorize eras. Being a sports fan, that isn’t incredibly difficult. For example, looking back at recent time periods in the NBA, we had the Magic/Bird era, then the Jordan era, then the Shaq/Iverson/Kobe era. We’re currently
I often like to categorize eras. Being a sports fan, that isn’t incredibly difficult. For example, looking back at recent time periods in the NBA, we had the Magic/Bird era, then the Jordan era, then the Shaq/Iverson/Kobe era. We’re currently in the LeBron/Wade/still Kobe era and the next era on the horizon appears destined to be led by Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose.
Football, baseball, hockey, tennis — they can really all be broken down into very distinct time periods based on either the key participants or the style of play.
In pop culture, it gets a little more difficult. Some eras are amazingly clear, like The Beatles era or the disco era.
I was recently trying to come up with the musical artists that would be closely identified with the past two decades. Once we got past the 80s, it doesn’t seem to me that we truly have these clearly-defined eras anymore.
It could be said that the most impactful album of the 90s was Nirvana’s “Nevermind”, which was released in 1991. Many have such strong feelings about what that album did to the musical landscape, they feel that no other option is even worth discussing.
Yet I’m not sure how much that album still resonates today. There was also a huge mainstream wave of hip hop that took hold and has continued to grow. Where does “Nevermind” rate as far as staying power when compared to other albums like Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ready to Die,” Wu Tang Clan’s “Enter the Wu-Tang” or Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”?
Sure, there was plenty of commercial bubble gum with Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys and NSync all becoming uber-famous in the late 90s, but as time wears on, the sheer volume of great music that came out during that time — from Sublime to The Fugees to Radiohead to Pavement to Black Star — is pretty solid and difficult to label.
Personally, I think the past decade was a much more clearly-defined era with hip hop really taking hold as the biggest force in music entertainment. That’s not to say other genres haven’t been creating great music, but hip hop is no longer a counter-culture, it is the standard for everyone else to measure against.
The torch bearer has been Jay-Z, who built a franchise and enterprise that would have been completely unthinkable less than 10 years prior. Not only was his personal success astounding, but if you look at many of the other top hip hop acts who reached incredible acclaim, like Kanye West and Rihanna, many are where they are because of his influence.
In movies, the 2000s seemed to be broken into two major categories — either superhero flicks or comedies that stemmed from the Judd Apatow crop of talent.
I know, I know, there were plenty of other successful blockbusters that didn’t adhere to these two templates — “No Country for Old Men,” “Avatar” and “Inception” are just a few that come to mind (although the basis for “Inception” may have been lifted from an old “Ducktales” cartoon, though I don’t know that I’d call Uncle Scrooge a superhero, despite the swimming pool full of cash).
But just look at the number of superhero/comic book films that were made in the past decade: “X-Men,” “X2: X-Men United,” “Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2,” “Spider-Man 3,” “Daredevil,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” “Hulk,” “Catwoman,” “Hellboy,” “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,” “The Punisher,” “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight,” “Fantastic Four,” “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” “Ghost Rider,” “Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2,” “Watchmen,” “Kick Ass,” “Wolverine” and probably more that I missed.
It was very odd to me, because I was never a comic book enthusiast, but all of a sudden, respected actors and movie reviewers were talking about the depth and morality of storylines that had been originally designed for adolescents.
Am I the only one who found that bizarre? I mean, a good movie is a good movie and some of these films were just, flat out, good movies. But I would have never seen this coming 15 years ago. If the 1995 version of you was told that Robert Downey Jr. would star in a movie based on a comic book, you would have absolutely assumed it was a straight to DVD release (which, as Kramer said, makes you the premiere).
Actually, it was fantastic and a smash hit. See how clueless we are about where the pop culture dial will turn?
As the current decade still gets its legs under itself, who knows what era we might be headed into?
