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Is it fair to say that American culture peaked in the 80s/90s?

posted 4 years ago by [deleted]
7 replies | jump to latest

You just think of all the legends that era had and how they were creating things that were new and ground breaking.

Both cinema and music were always breaking new grounds.

Think of the excitement of a Michael Jackson video premiering. Or seeing the morphing effects in Terminator 2 for the first time. Or CGI dinosaurs stampeding in Jurassic Park.

And big stars seemed the the norm.

Now there aren't any really amazing, ground breaking artists.

It's hard to see something that hasn't been done before.

All we can do is comment on how the CGI is getting marginally better.

Art isn't getting better. Music and cinema can only hope to do as good as what's gone before.

The biggest selling song of 2020 was WAP, which stands for 'Wet Ass Pussy'. I guess that's ground breaking, a song that is completely vulgar and shocking yet trended. Maybe that's telling about how we are needing of something new, ANYTHING new, in order to feel like we're creating again.

I'd say I'm coming across as an 'old man' but you should see how many kids comment on video clips or movies on youtube saying 'I was born in the wrong era!' and they're just talking about the 90s.

It's crazy.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 4 years ago

So is it a wet ass or a wet pussy?

[–] Indiscipline (778) 4 years ago

Yes, that's a solid post and I agree completely.

[–] Artisan (3464) 4 years ago

People don't need to pay to see films or listen to music anymore that is one huge difference as well as the ways we can access the entertainment we like. In the 90's and before that we were limited to video rentals, the radio and TV, you may have had cable depending on where you were too. But generally we were all watching and listening to the same stuff.

So now to get our attention they give us WAP except it still doesn't make much of an overall impact as AC/DC still goes to the top of the charts which to me means, that many of us still want good old fashioned entertainment. But Hollyweird and the entertainment industry prefer to tell people what they want rather than give people what they want.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Besides epic blockbusters, Hollywood is finding it harder and harder to make money with movies. When you look at what a rental or movie ticket cost back in the day compared to now, you can see that the margins were much higher.

Apparently when VHS first came out, it was like $100 for a movie and people paid that!

[–] Artisan (3464) 4 years ago

I remember the short lived laser discs were around $100 at the time to own a film and a laser disc player cost around $1000 in Australia anyway that was the early 90's.

In the 80's a rental for a new film would be $3-5 overnight. Never bought movies back then but from what I read they were about $50 in America.

VHS came out in the late 70's so I guess it would have been a very expensive and exclusive thing at the time like a lot of new devices.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I only ever saw one video store with Laser discs to rent. It didn't last long.

Strangely in 2004 I went into a pawn shop in Paris and there was lots of them. I gathered that laser disc took off there.

[–] Furienna (3377) 4 years ago

And I guess that you just explained why I mostly listen to music from older decades.