Word: gens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nouveau Retro VH1 is Gen X nostalgia central...
Specifically, with really cheesy pop culture. Gen X developed its identity by being compared, usually unfavorably, with baby boomers. In part, the standard critique was that Gen X's culture was inferior--its music phonier, its ideals shallower, its icons pettier than those of the 1960s. True or not, as this cohort pushes 40, it has perversely rebelled against this gibe by embracing it--remembering its tackiest, most disposable childhood icons most fondly of all. If Gen X-ers turned nostalgic much earlier than the 30-year-olds of decades past, maybe it's because, inundated with video, musical...
...answer: recycled culture. Gen X had demonstrated an early appetite for nostalgia--witness That '70s Show and the Brady Bunch movies--and the network courted it with I Love the 70s and I Love the 80s, limited-run series in which moderately famous actors, comics and musicians riffed on mass-culture icons from Kojak to Kajagoogoo. The series riveted twenty-and thirtysomething channel surfers, as though tripping a Manchurian Candidate--like synapse. In just over a year, VH1's ratings jumped more than 100% among 18-to-49-year-old viewers. (Also, of course, recycling culture is faster--and often...
...channel's success is in capturing the tone of Gen X nostalgia, at once snide and affectionate. Executive vice president Michael Hirschorn calls VH1's focus not "nostalgic" but "retro," which he defines as less "sentimental and teary." (Although one could reasonably define it as "I am so not old enough to be nostalgic.") "The channel had been in a baby-boomer mode, which was very serious about music," he says. "We turned that into 'Let's have fun with pop culture...
...usual, the Onion had it right. The satirical paper ran an article in which the "U.S. Dept. of Retro" warned that because of Gen X hipsters' fixation on nostalgic kitsch, "we may run entirely out of past." Recycled culture is becoming a staple of other networks like Trio and E!, and sources of retro are becoming more recent and repetitive. On a recent afternoon, VH1 had talking heads snarkily dissecting Enrique Iglesias and t.A.T.u. videos on All Access: Most Awesome Makeouts. Four hours later, talking heads on VH1's All Access: Awesomely Bad Videos were snarkily dissecting the same...