final draft
some interesting changes
Christina Barrett
some interesting changes
Christina Barrett
Professor Geoffrey Richard Reiter
ENG 152 N3
10 March 2019
A Cultural Famine or Like When the Dinosaurs Died Out
Modern culture went down like the Titanic in the late 1990s, an irretrievable mess occurring. Trends that were very special became unpopular as the 2000s crept around the corner. Culture can be found significant in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the Late Boomers were born and went through childhood. Adulthood for Baby Boomers can be seen as the 1980s and early 1990s. Children of Early Boomers did not experience much love and are now grown up with culture that sunk like the Titanic. We should try to touch base on this issue by covering the bases that apply.
According to Gordon, a big influential factor of even the 1960s was concentrated from England (no page numbers specified in the ebook.) This is an important issue because even today England has released a lot of its feelings via the U.S., encouraging us in our pop culture to be more expressive. For example, the Beetles, an English legend of a band, became popular in the 1960s, and even today kids are still dazed over them, in some way they can't seem to handle, as of yet, like life just isn't as sweet as it was for Baby Boomers or Late Baby Boomers. Gordon also accredits the U.S. to folk music, like being integrated into pop and maybe how it is involved the style of new age music, and mentions the strikingly acclaimed city of New Orleans to spice things up some. These are all obvious suggestions as to the sentiment Gordon has concerning the 1960s. Then, he ends the chapter on music with references to popular icons in classical music, like the late Pavarotti. So, Europe and music are important factors into what gave people the expectations they had of people who were born by the beginning of the 1960s.
Schwartz says something big that changed the world in the 1990s was in the 1980s when computers were coming out (15.) The 1990s are also known for the Cold War being fought off (64,) and war with the Middle East seemed to come to permeate the atmosphere. Terrorism was another political term of the 2000s because of 9/11 in 2001; George Bush Jr. often spoke into the mid-2000s of our children coming home. Schwartz also posted a picture of the Spice Girls for the chapter on 1997 (309,) which was a big year as it was when modern PCs with the internet hit, which looked more like the TV screen than a calculator or old Pac Man game. The kids from the 1980s and 1990s were happily sent off to have their own lives via work (404,) if all went well, or to follow our dreams in college or from childhood and for some the ability to do "anything you set your mind to." In some ways, that wish came true, but in its intended sentiment it seems not to have, for some reason; people are competitive and want to hurt others before they settle down and decide not to fight anymore and don't care about other people. So, there is an obvious descent of culture, like we had conflicts to represent our heyday and a sending off in bittersweet-ness, in accordance to what our lives were like.
There are occurrences in life that are important that are affected in important times, all people being important, too. One example is to think about Europe in the face of racism in the US and the musical skills had by the US and obviously certain countries in Europe, even as early as the 1960s, which shaped the world as Baby Boomers grew up then. The 1980s kindled interest in computers and the online world, and the 1990s itself was a war between culture clashes and the stress of technology. The end was that Baby Boomers grew up and lost responsibility and that people who grew up in the 1990s were hopefully sent off with well wishes as they entered independence and adulthood. The experience of going through the 1990s was a tumultuous sequence of entertainment and the comforts and glorification of technology, which mainly ended up leading to bittersweet-ness and nostalgia from the past.
References:
Gordon, Dee. The Little Book of the 1960s. No Location, No Publisher, 2011.
Schwartz, Richard Alan. The 1990s. New York, Facts on File, 2008.