Wednesday, February 11, 1998
Decade downers one can’t forget
Political follies, fashion flops never fail to repeat throughout
history
By Sonia Ortega
The ’50s had the Communist witch hunt. The ’60s had Vietnam. The
’70s: you decide between Nixon or bad fashion. The ’80s had
Reaganomics and, well, even more bad fashion. When our children are
going to college, what will make us shake our heads in regret when
we think about the ’90s?
The repeal of affirmative action is at the top of my list. The
debate has been rehashed a million times, so I won’t rehash it yet
again. It is still too soon to tell how the new policy will take
its toll; all arguments are still speculation at this point. It
will be more memorable as a sign of the conservative backlash than
anything else.
How about political correctness, the movement we all love to
hate? I don’t think being PC is such a bad thing, but it becomes a
problem if people can’t communicate honestly with those around
them. (Really, some of the names people have concocted for
themselves are ridiculous.) It’ll give us a good laugh down the
line.
The soap opera known as the Clinton administration won’t slip
quietly into the history books, but that’s already gotten enough
media press, so I’ll leave it at that.
The attempt to ban smoking in bars will be remembered, for
better or worse. It harkens back to the Prohibition era, even
though this is not the best comparison since people are still
allowed to buy and sell cigarettes. I’m all for the ban, but the
wimps in Sacramento are ready to throw in the towel, and it’s
hardly been a month. I suppose some will regret the ban was ever
passed, and others will regret that it didn’t last. Maybe in a few
decades a nicotine-inclined genius will design a cigarette that
doesn’t give off second-hand smoke. Or we could make smokers walk
around with giant fish bowls over their heads so they could save
all that second-hand smoke for themselves.
Gov. Wilson’s rampage to rid California of the Mexicans is
something I’ll definitely think of with regret. He may call it the
fight against illegal immigration, but we know what’s up. Passing a
law that kicks children out of school and denies people health care
is inhumane and shortsighted, and what’s worse is that Proposition
187 passed by a landslide. I don’t know how I’ll explain that one
to my kids when they take California history in fourth grade.
Another thing I’d like to see in the history books and out of
the law books is the death penalty. The United States needs to stop
those mad Texans. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976,
the United States has executed 435 prisoners. Nearly one-third of
those have been in Texas. Karla Faye Tucker helped bring the
injustices of the death penalty to light; the spectacular media
coverage made people think about whether or not they supported her
execution. Sometime in the future I can only hope that the American
people will regret this unfortunate chapter in our history – the
return to barbarism embodied in capital punishment.
I am sure I am missing some political and socially conscious
event, and I would love to hear any suggestions. I won’t even
tackle the global scale, even though Iraq certainly deserves to be
mentioned. The situation hasn’t panned out yet, so I’ll hold my
tongue. But now let’s move to the fun stuff.
Who will forget when the fashion designers of the world
collectively smoked crack and put grunge on the runways? Those
dreary clothes should have stayed in Seattle; we can blame their
emergence on the explosion of Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Right now
haute couture is trying to piggyback another musical fashion:
techno. At least rave fashions are funky and colorful. Grunge is
just plain ugly. And we will also regret the heroin chic that
graced runways – anemic women wearing makeup to make their gaunt
faces look even more sunken. In the future I hope that this
practice of parading skinny women around in clothes no sane person
would ever wear will be seen for the absurdity it really is.
I’m thinking that alternative rock will be remembered as the
sound of the ’90s. That alone won’t cause much regret, but all
these copycat bands are really annoying. Ska has a lot of copycats,
although technically ska has been around for much longer. It hasn’t
been as successful in the mainstream, either.
Hairstyles that we’ll regret? I think those chunky highlights,
skunk stripes, will look very ’90s in about 20 or so years. Along
with those claw clips that every young woman is wearing. And that
whole Jennifer Aniston hair frenzy that happened. I never saw what
was so great about that hairstyle.
There are some ugly shoes being sold nowadays. All the
huge-soled, chunky and clunky footwear will certainly give our
ancestors something to laugh about. A lot of the styles are a
throwback to platforms of the seventies; apparently we haven’t
learned our lesson.
Movies: "Showgirls" and "Waterworld" were some pretty big flops.
And I hope Americans look back with some embarrassment at their
crazy obsession with Jerry Seinfeld. The final episode is such an
event that NBC is charging more for commercials on the final
Seinfeld episode than it did for the Super Bowl.
After all this chattering, I still haven’t come up with the one,
unifying thing that we will regret when we think about the ’90s. I
know the decade isn’t even over yet; we are still too close to the
events to see them objectively. But this decade is an important
one, since we stand on the brink of the new millennium. Perhaps
after the "me" generation in the ’80s, the ’90s will be remembered
for its general apathy. Am I wrong? Who knows. We’ll all find out
in a few decades.Ortega is a fourth-year film and television
student. E-mail her at sortega@ucla.edu.