What’s Old Is New Again

Fashion and broader pop cultural trends seem to go in cycles. I have been thinking that there are two motivating factors for this seeming eternal return.

One is that young people grow up exposed to media which portrays to them the values of their parents’ generation. When the young people are still young, they are largely unaware that there are values embedded in media, and they just enjoy it for its own sake. They do not realize they are becoming indoctrinated, nor what the values are that they are being indoctrinated with. Many people, in fact, never leave this state as they grow older.

Others, however, grow up to become cultural creatives. These are people who grow up with a more conscious awareness of media, the values which are embedded in it and how they are embedded. They become adept at understanding new media and technology faster than other people. They become responsible for the generation of new media. And they become well able to deconstruct the media which they were raised on.

I would theorize, then, that when things that are “retro” become popular again, it is because the cultural creatives have come of age, becoming conscious of their own past, and of the media which they were raised on and the values espoused by it. So when you see stuff from the 1970’s or 1980’s especially (and soon the 1990’s, as those kids get old enough) displayed in a sort of funny “ironic” way, it is often meant to signify, “Hey, we have figured this out. We have decoded the values system which were inlaid into these cultural artifacts, and by extension into us by our parents’ generation.” It is both an acceptance of and a challenge of those techniques and values. By becoming conscious of them, the next generation of cultural creatives can then modify and update those techniques and values within the new cultural artifacts they create.

The other drive or impulse behind things that are retro turning into contemporary fads I think would probable be classified more on the conspiracy end of the spectrum. My speculation is that, whether or not it happens intentionally (ie, by some conspiracy), by bringing cultural ideas and images back into contemporary circulation, we inevitably strip them of their original context and re-apply them into our own cultural meaning. Thus we end up with strange hybrids such as “That 70’s Show” which purports to be about a historical time period and cultural setting, but in reality is much more indicative of our own current mindset than anything which really happened back then. It is a sort of historical revisionism, except we end up wearing the clothes and imagery of the time period being revised, rather than keeping it at a distance. Instead of the historical “The holocaust never happened,” it is more a case of “The holocaust isn’t happening” - if you catch my meaning, that is.

And admittedly, you may not catch what I mean. I may not even… quite. It’s one of those sort of weird theories that is kicking around in my head and I’m trying to wrap my mind around it. When it takes the final shape its meant to take it may not even look like this. I may revise it into something totally different…