What Comes Around?
- Brian Thomas
- Jul 20, 2004
- Series: Other
I watched the new Pepsi Smash concert series on television recently because I wanted to see one of my new favorite bands – Rooney. This Southern California quartet performed their catchy, Beach Boys influenced songs admirably and were the best act of the night. But as much as I enjoyed their music, it was their appearance that interested me more. Clad in 1970s fashion with haircuts to match, the band looked like they should have been on the cover of a Grand Funk Railroad album rather than performing on the WB in 2004.
“What comes around, goes around” may be a cliché phrase, but it applies in this case. It begs the question, why pop-culture repeats the same trends in fashion, music, and film?
I am not one to point the finger, without first pointing it at myself. I am guilty of retro-repetition. As I write this, I have on the same blue Puma sneakers that I wore as a child in 1979. At the age of seven (I'm dating myself here) I was not concerned about the hip-ness of my footwear. My main concern in life was getting the Millennium Falcon for my birthday. But twenty-five years later I am concerned about my image, so I purchase what are considered “hip” shoes. But the question remains: Why? Why are these particular Puma shoes considered cool again? Why are Rooney, or the Strokes, or the Stills, or any other band whose name begins with “The” obsessed with retro style?
The best starting point would be in the term “pop-culture,” since popular culture defines what is “in” and what is “out”. Culture is often defined as the particular way a society acts and thinks, as manifested in their laws, beliefs, and art. The term “pop-culture” is then related to what has been popularized by mass media as being important to a culture in its broadest sense. Pop-culture is a tricky thing, because what is popularized is not necessarily driven by the actual culture in which it is being promoted. This popularization is driven by product manufacturers, market-place elitists, journalists, and advertising executives. So the music I listen to, the movies and television programs I watch, the products I spend my money on, the clothes that I wear, and even the way I wear my hair is something that has been carefully planned out and marketed to someone of my gender, age, and race. Therefore, I am wearing 1970's blue Puma sneakers, because at some point a product manufacturer and advertising executive got together and planned out how best to entice me to think that these Puma shoes once again would help me be cool (which I'll admit is no small feat). They advertised via the television programs, magazines, and placed these shoes in stores that market demographics suggest would best reach a person of my social status (i.e. Gen-X white dude). Therefore, pop-culture reflects the broadest forms of laws, beliefs, and art; which are not necessarily the best a culture has to offer.
In most cases then, pop-culture is really nothing more than consumer-culture. The things are popular because we buy them. My eight-year old daughter and friends would not have come to the conclusion that they needed new dolls with over-sized heads and the lips of Angelina Jolie to make them happy of their own volition. She was content with her boxes of other dolls she already owned until the commercials interrupted her viewing of Lizzie Maguire, displacing her sense of contentment. The girls playing with the “new” Bratz dolls on Nickelodeon are having such a good time. “If only I could have these Bratz dolls, my friends and I could also have such good times,” she thought to herself. And thus pop-culture continues from generation to generation – from the Millennium Falcon in 1979 to Bratz dolls in 2004.
Popular culture has multiple origins. A principal source is the set of industries that make a profit by inventing and promulgating cultural material. These include the popular music, industry, film, television, radio, video game publishers, and book publishing. But this still doesn't answer the question. Why do these industries keep repeating what they market and sell? Most cultural trends seem to run in 25 year cycles. Why? Why aren't they creating new trends? In 1979 I thought that by the year 2004, I would be flying in something equivalent to the Millennium Falcon and that the world would look more like the Jetsons rather than the Jeffersons.
HISTORICAL IGNORANCE?
Some would say it is a matter of historical ignorance. We are not a culture raised on a steady diet of history. Yes, we now have the History Channel, but who watches it? That particular demographic targets my eighty-year old, WWII veteran Grandfather, along with the manufacturers of Depends and Metamucil (hardly a moving force in setting cultural trends). We do tend to repeat the same social problems over and over. But as bereft of historical knowledge as we are today, I don't think knowledge of the past is the answer, because we are aware of the fact that we are repeating historical trends in pop-culture. I know that my Puma sneakers have already gone round the carousel of coolness. I know that Rooney sound like the modern equivalent of the Beach Boy…and I'm pretty sure Rooney are aware of this fact, too. Do I care? No. I like my sneakers and Rooney.
We're not completely ignorant of history, we just don't care much about it. I was singing the song “Superstition” the other day and my daughter was amazed that I knew one of her favorite songs. I told her it was a very popular song written in the early 70s by Stevie Wonder. She was astonished, because she had thought the song had its foundation in the soundtrack of the recent film Haunted House, as performed by Raven Simone. Does my daughter care that Raven is ripping off Stevie Wonder? No. She just likes the song and it doesn't matter where or when it was written.
UNCREATIVELY CREATIVE?
If it's not historical ignorance, then maybe the wells of creativity have dried up? Maybe its like the writer of Ecclesiastes said long ago: “ What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.” In other words, there's nothing new to do. Everything that can be said has already been said; everything that can be done, has already been done. So what's left, but to reinvent the past? Maybe that's how the postmodern world will be creative. We'll find new ways of making old things relevant again. That's a form of creativity, right?
I'm not certain there is one definitive answer to this dilemma. But I'll keep looking for it while I sail along the Consumer River making port calls at Retroville and Cyclical City in a vain attempt to remain popular. Rock on Rooney – rock on!
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