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So if the 90s celebrated the 70s, when we get to the 2010s will we celebrate the 90s celebrating the 70s? Meta-nostalgia. How po-mo.
I think the nostalgia thing is largely a phenomenon of marketing. The people who were the youth culture in the 80s are now in a position to choose what's marketed, and they go with what they know and what they think was fun and great from their own youth. That, and it's cheaper to appropriate past styles than to develop new ones. Plus, it's interesting for the current youth to ironically appropriate past generations' youth culture and put their own twist on it - I'm not so sure it's nostalgia on their part as much as ironic comment and subtle mockery. But I could be wrong. I "came of age" (hate that phrase) in the early 90s and was a hippie chick - tie dye and peace signs and all that, and I seriously was nostalgic for a time when protest seemed to make a difference and people were interested in more than wearing Guess jeans. But would I have been so nostalgic, or have chosen that era, if the 60s hadn't been marketed to me at the mall?
Come to think of it, I'm still a sucker. I've just regressed to vintage 40s and 50s, but that is deliberate ironic comment on my part. Nothing so jarring as a 40s outfit and purple hair to make people go "?????".
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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