Retro is the Bee’s Knees
Posted: September 9th, 2009 | Author: John | Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »Has “retro” always been so cool? Is “retro” fashion/music/culture “cool” because it’s nostalgic for the past or critical of it? Or both? Or is this phenomenon the expression of awareness of participation in a continuum of tradition? Why do people think it’s so funny to make fun of 1950′s advertisements?
Would AMC’s Mad Men be so popular if it was set in the 1980′s? Why do remakes of old movies make money? Besides repeating a proven formula, is it because we want to re-interpret our past? Hollywood has a full slate of remakes (Gawker) coming up.
All these questions keep me up at night since I’ve been hearing the 1920′s flapper expression, “the bee’s knees,” which seems to be gaining popularity as a synonym for excellence. Paul Schneider (co-star of the new movie about John Keats, “Bright Star”) said it the other day on a Telluride Film Festival panel. It followed on a conversation with a friend I happened to have that very same day about this expression.
Mad Men is the bee’s knees. And this blog is the cat’s meow.
Euphamisms are the lion’s tits.
Also, “Bright star”
Very good post, John. I suspect that some cases (though probably not this one), the fad for retro fashion/history of the relatively recent past is simply self-indulgent. For instance, Baby Boomers trying to relive Woodstock. Yes, Woodstock was important, but honestly, why celebrate Woodstock 40 years later?
In this case, though, I suspect that we have a bit of an inferiority complex with regard to our own pop culture. After all, back in the 1960's people were revolutionizing pop culture (isn't the essence of pop culture revolution, after all?), not imitating the flappers of the 1920s. But now, where's our creativity? We're supposed to be creative revolutionaries, but we really aren't.
Well, excuse my rambling.
I think that pop culture is not always revolutionary. MTV may think it is. I think it goes through phases of status-quo, copy-cat formula and swings into revolution and then that becomes the status quo. I suppose something like antithesis into synthesis. Is that Hegel? Well, as our economy and politics suggest, it's about time for another revolution… and I think people like Wendell Berry and Ron Paul are the seeds of much larger movements to come.
Maybe I overstated it: the essence of pop culture is at least to want to seem revolutionary, creative, anti-authoritarian, etc.
And yes, pop culture eventually becomes mainstream (respectable even?), but it still wants to be revolutionary.