The urban yuppie aesthetic of the late-80's to mid-90's isn't discussed much
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Date: February 20th, 2018 11:51 PM Author: shivering gas station rigpig
there doesn't seem to be all that much NOSTALGIA for this whole aesthetic, even though it was big for a while and had a lot of money behind it. by this, i'm talking about the whole cultural complex of smooth jazz/soft rock, media/TV shows, and marketing campaigns focused at the sub-elite urban/suburban striver-class during that era. i'd say the aesthetic began to coalesce toward the end of the 1980's, and was on its way out by late-1995/early-1996, as pop music became more electronic and the internet bubble expanded.
it's kind of difficult to find examples to use as "platonic forms" of this stuff, since it was kind of diffuse and tended to lack an aesthetic core. it was more like a mood - slightly anesthetized, inoffensive, clean, meant to slide easily into the background so that you could focus on your work. this print ad captures some of the spirit:
https://i.imgur.com/xBkE4BK.jpg
notice how there really IS no background here - there appears to be a hill or something to the right, across some indistinct waters, but those features have been smoothed out so that they become a texture rather than a landscape. the calm coloration and vague nature theme recalls the commercial form of the "new age" aesthetic popular at the time.
the music was similar, which is perhaps why most of it has vanished from the cultural imagination. it included songs like "house of stone and light," musicians like kenny g and enigma, and lots of landscape imagery of beaches or places other than your office:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upJxt64uRWg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_VcZsax4Z0
this music tended to DALLY with other styles (like R&B or rock) without actually BEING them. eg, the use of R&B or jazz-style horns but within the general idiom of the style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS2Hp9Ck9mQ
or "bluesy" guitar lines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_QGJE94iOM
TV media included shows like murphy brown, mad about you, and a variety of long-forgotten adult-oriented drama series like "homefront" or "midnight caller."
i feel like this whole cultural epoch was more important than we assume - this stuff was a sort of distilled, syncretized expression of a culture for people whose deracination meant that they had lost their own.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35449979) |
Date: February 21st, 2018 8:58 PM Author: Mind-boggling cyan telephone
Excellent post, and I get what you're getting at, but it's hard to encapsulate, as you suggested.
I think this was also reflected in early 90s movies, rife with bland nonthreatening performers like Kevin Kline, Andie McDowell, Alec Baldwin (before the bloated scumbag phase), Matthew Modine, et al
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35456541) |
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Date: March 1st, 2018 3:56 PM Author: confused ruby striped hyena
wholly shit.
stopped reading and threw my touchpad out of a 27th story window (its ok) when the second one started quoting the first one about Frasier not being "unique" compared to fucking FRIENDS.
here's the real answer: frasier's fans are neither 1) the birdbrains who make nostalgia pinterestcupcaketampons for friends or 2) the (((people))) who retcon cultural history to serve whatever their current shtick happens to be; they are straight(ish), male, goy intellectuals.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35515748)
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Date: March 1st, 2018 4:12 PM Author: confused ruby striped hyena
sure, plenty of jews watched frasier. but it doesnt resonate in the jewish soul the way seinfeld does. (seinfeld's the "the inexorable triumph of banal, amoral soullessness in a modern society of rootless cosmopolitans" IS jewish soul, such as it is)
but it has little appeal for those who would use it as a prop for the narrative. ie, nobody besides askav is posting hot takes about frasier or the importance of its unexpected renaissance in 2018/continuing moral relevance/profound aesthetic achievement that until now has gone unnoticed/etc.
clearly it would be absurd to say its dated in the way that murphy brown or mad about you are dated (because they always sucked).
edit: see further explanation of frasier's goy audience; its the dog that doesnt bark more than anything
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35515850) |
Date: February 22nd, 2018 1:03 PM Author: Lime Bossy Windowlicker
This was an era of sade and twin peaks and people's furniture was black and white and heavily lacquered. People owned fishtanks and waterbeds.
There was also a very short club music scene with deep voiced black female singers, and that was all gone by 1995.
I liked this surreal era. No idea how it just evaporated
But this is also American psycho era so we've not forgotten it
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35461111) |
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Date: February 22nd, 2018 1:22 PM Author: Lime Bossy Windowlicker
Then Rodney king, for sure, and rap/hiphop just got harder.
There was a huge black influence, not just in music and TV but also in fashion. White people wore cross colours https://goo.gl/images/sN6XCB
And watched the NBA. Popular music was boys II men and en vogue. This was slightly past Whitney Houston popularity but blacks were still white washed but influential
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35461348) |
Date: February 22nd, 2018 3:31 PM Author: Chestnut indirect expression coldplay fan
Would you say Clark Griswold’s neighbors in CHRISTMAS VACATION embody this aesthetic?
How about DONNA in the later seasons of Halt and Catch Fire?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35462480) |
Date: February 22nd, 2018 3:57 PM Author: fiercely-loyal office
in clothing, it seems to have been peak infuence for The Gap, which was really high quality buckwild running shit then.
in interior design, it seems to be a streamlined version and logical conclusion of richard gere's office scenes in pretty woman, a takeoff on business grey. Soft, pastel pinks. The silvers and golds as trim. Thin leaf plants, either real or fake. Dads office had all of that, it was a really comfortable room.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35462738) |
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Date: February 22nd, 2018 5:07 PM Author: shivering gas station rigpig
new wave and the 80's yuppie aesthetic was a bit before this epoch. that scene probably peaked around 1985. around then, there was a band called "Nu Shooz," which began as an actual 12-piece band in the late-70's, but adopted synths and sampling technology to create an extremely streamlined and slick version of "dance music" in the mid-80's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ1tBVtYOBc
this song was an early progenitor of this whole early-90's aesthetic - it managed to "sand down" the irregularities and peculiar tones of a genre like 80's freestyle/R&B into a more generic product. critics at the time wondered if the song had been generated by computers.
if we follow this trend, we end up with albums like "Dollars and Sex" (1991) by the English band The Escape Club. they had a late-80's hit with "Wild Wild West," but their follow-up album was pure smoothed-down aging yuppie bait:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9mEYZxkDsM
notice how the album's "rock" song is not really a rock song at all, but more like a generic regurgitation of all these aesthetic themes on "rock" mode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV7RJXLwTvA
a lot of bands released singles in this mode during this era. here's "love at first sight" by styx:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6oUbKRok6o
notice how it sounds like a digested and reformatted version of their "real" music. and yet, i don't think the genre was "fake" in the sense of something fraudulent; i think it had its own interior logic - to be vaguely comforting, vaguely 'sophisticated,' suitable for polite company, and, somehow, not TOO memorable - keep things out of the foreground of memory; act more like a blanket. and there was a lot of emotional "demand" for this stuff at that time.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35463379) |
Date: February 22nd, 2018 4:48 PM Author: metal razzle station boltzmann
'Lexus' cars came out of this
whenever i think of that period, i think of this stereo i had that was painted w/ like grey *texture* paint, so it was almost like concrete-looking, so it looked... i don't know, understated and *sleek* and *modern*... and people had so many random black & white pictures hanging everywhere.
and commercials were randomly in 'tasteful' black & white, or Madonna/George Michael videos, etc.
w/ a random NEON streak splash of colour.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35463229) |
Date: March 1st, 2018 4:24 PM Author: shivering gas station rigpig
i'd say that one of the important way-markers in the development of this style was the song "Lily Was Here," by Candy Dulfer and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnTxmgWXt64
it was released in late-1989, and became a pop radio hit in the US in 1990. it was actually written as background music for a film, but by that time, the psychoemotional style described in this thread was ready to gobble it up on its own.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35515931) |
Date: March 2nd, 2018 10:47 AM Author: lavender beady-eyed reading party
As mentioned already, this is the vaporwave aesthetic. Not that that's mainstream but it exists.
CHILI BOWL HAIRCUTS | BUTTON UP SILK SHIRTS | PAGERS
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#35519945) |
Date: March 5th, 2019 3:44 AM Author: Supple sex offender doctorate
Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” and “Book of Days” fit in here somewhere
For the same reason the “Pure Moods” compilation CD was such a big hit
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3899144&forum_id=2#37880667) |
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