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And the associated Kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rumur/malls-across-america
Wow. Weird. In 1989 exactly, one of my friends came to my dorm room in college and said to me and my roommate completely out of the blue “Hey, I got my camera and 2 rolls of film. Let’s go take pictures at the mall.”
We then proceeded to do just that. It wasn’t exactly anthropological or just observing like these are. We actively engaged in the pictures. Jumping in and posing in store windows along with mannequins. Climbing on and riding kids quarter rides. Trying on ridiculous or inapropriate clothes. And assorted other wacky things.
I still have them all, in order in a photo album at home. Other than maybe 1 or two small things though (I think I was wearing big puffy high tops, and my roommate had on a questionably washed jean jacket) I don’t recall anything being too ridiculous dated or embarrassing.
We actually got kicked out of more than a few stores simply for taking pictures.
When you were doing that, I was playing with Ninja Turtles under my mom’s Deptfort Mall pushcart, blissfully unaware of the cultural revolution happening all around me.
You… are… so…. OLD.
I just opened up another societal/philosophical connundrum without thinking. I was going to retort to your comment about being old by saying that I may be old but at least I got to experience original pop culture and not the picked over, regurgitated detritus that has been passed off since the early 90’s.
But then I realized that’s ridiculous because since that point we have the internet and it’s assorted gadgetry which are the greatest things ever and which couldn’t come close to anything I had in my younger days.
Then that just got me wondering why, in large part (obviously not 100% but very large part) as the means of communication and creativity and technology have increased, why has originality in all of it’s attendant pop culture mediums (music, movie, tv) by and large decreased. Even things from the past 20 or so years that I love and enjoy and appreciate and like I’m the first to admit are the furthest thing from original and all pretty much are just more populuarized retreads of things that came before.
Again I don’t mean that 100% and across the board. But as a general statement. And I think I can intercept the obvious criticism to my point by saying that I still maintain a fair degree of contact with pop culture for someone my age and it’s not like I’m sitting here saying “Nothing good has been made since I became an adult!!!”. It’s more the degree to which pop culture is much more referential, nostalgic, or regurgitated (even when it’s good).
Sorry. I know that’s a big hijack.
I think the answer can be summed up as essentially “over-exposure.” There just not enough outsider art. That’s what was so great about that brief period of the 90’s when alt-music really was an alt— it was a bunch of old dudes like you who grew up without internet in boring suburbs with little exposure and got to make up whatever they wanted without too much outside influence molding what they thought was cool.
They usually had a very direct, traceable lineage because, well, they just didn’t have many CDs and they fully absorbed the few punkrock albums they could get their hands on. Their work goes through the creative tumbler of boredom and ignorance and comes out a beautiful, unique little gem.
To me, the clearest example of where this goes south is Girl Talk, and the failure of my peers to pick up how and why it is such a massive creative failure just makes me sad.
I think that’s the bulk of it. There’s no such thing as “outsider” any more. Every niche, every sub-culture can be connected to and picked up on via increased communication. I think that leads to just a lot of cross referenced influence, and it also leads to a dearth of outside influence because it’s just much too easy to stick to one’s own group or niche or sub-genre or whatever and still feel fulfilled.
When I was growing up there were exponentially fewer records released in general and fewer bands. So you almost had to go outside of what your deal or your scene was.