One of my all time favorite Onion articles is from 1997 and it’s titled “U.S. Dept. Of Retro Warns: ‘We May Be Running Out Of Past’.” It starts with:
“At a press conference Monday, U.S. Retro Secretary Anson Williams issued a strongly worded warning of an imminent “national retro crisis,” cautioning that “if current levels of U.S. retro consumption are allowed to continue unchecked, we may run entirely out of past by as soon as 2005.”
I thought the idea was hysterical at the time and in subsequent years, as I went to “Culture Club” in NYC and saw how quickly the 80’s seemed “cool” again, I’ve thought more and more about it. Walking home from the train today I saw a kid rocking Reebok Pump sneaks with a Seattle Supersonics hat that looked straight out of 1989 and boy was I taken back to Junior High. Nowadays, people are walking all over NYC with hot pink and electric blue Ray Ban-ish shades that make them look right out of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and I’m wistful for own “youth” at the ripe old age of 34.
While it seems that the Onion’s 2005 date in the article was off a little bit, their vision of a nostalgia gap is coming true, and it’s not just evident by looking at what the “kids” are wearing these days. The kids themselves are pining away for their own “childhoods.”
Case in point, today’s NY Times has an article titled “The Good Ol’ Days of 20 Years Ago” which talks about how Nickelodeon, bowing to Millennial pressure on FB and other places, will be airing “classics” from the 1990’s. Yup. Classics from the ’90s. The gap is closing, and closing fast!
“Are 18- to 34-year-olds too young to be nostalgic? Evidently not. Starting next Monday, TeenNick, part of the Nickelodeon family of cable channels for children, will start rebroadcasting old series from the 1990s that are considered classics by young adults. That’s right: classics from the 1990s.”
Art imitating life imitating art. Love it.