By John Sarvay
They had their chance four years ago—longer if you believe that the 90s actually started in the 80s. Their miscalculations about the decade are visible in the January 1994 cover date issues of America’s popular magazines, particularly those magazines geared toward the young, groovy consumer.
Many of these publications have launched the new year by relaunching, and attempting to redefine, the decade affectionately known as “The 90s.” The years 1990 through 1993 may be excused from the table, the rest of the decade is ready to chow down.
Yet, with few exceptions, the editorial staffs of the nation’s hipper-than-thou publications seem ready to force-feed their readers the same tripe they’ve been grazing on since the 80s. As they sally forth with their ill-defined rants to reclaim the decade, many of these publications appear as lost as the readers they hope to lead from the wilderness. “What is cool? What is hip?” they ask, groping for meaning in the 90s.
To ask such questions simply thrusts more mindless fumbling into this maelstrom of cultural confusion that few of America’s consumers accept, much less control. And the magazines’ overtly confident attempts to answer the question are as refreshing as the breeze from a passing train in a subway. You can smell the oil.
Reading the January issues of Details, Esquire and other groovy magazines, it is easy to imagine how the counsel to Richard Milhouse Nixon felt when he gazed sternly into the cameras and growled, “I am not a crook.” Yeah, right, they snickered.
Details and Esquire magazines, in particular, present the two sides of the vast publishing enterprise geared largely toward white males at either end of the Generation X spectrum. Details demands a return to the good, old days when young men could beer-bong away the Reagan years at the Delta Phi house. Esquire shows its age with a heavy sigh of resignation: Nothing is hip anymore.
Details, in spite of its not-so-unique captivation with angry punk poets, groovy new cities and shiny electronic gadgets, starts its abbreviated decade with a muddled tirade, a declaration of war. The target: political correctness. Its crime? It has caused Details’ staff (and presumably its readers) to “live our lives without any real expectation of decisive action and with every expectation of being censured for trying to achieve it,” pens editor-in-chief James Truman. At least we’ve stopped blaming our mothers for our lackluster lives.
Alienated, lonely and adrift. No wonder this magazine for virile, college-age boys with disposable income feels threatened by political correctness. A trend that throttled down months before Details’ new decade started in 1994, political correctness is a safe target for a publication known for its masculine wiles. In 1994, gays still aren’t welcome in the military, the underclass is more underfoot than under consideration and the glass ceiling has been reglazed. Don’t worry, guys, your income will soon be on its way back up.
Esquire joins the redefinition quest, as well. Contributing editor John Berendt argues that “it’s getting harder to stand out from the crowd.”
In a true-to-form, mid-life crisis approach to modern culture suitable for a “magazine for men,” Berendt laments the death of the Arthurian Eighties when going too far could still draw chuckles from an appreciative, well-fed crowd. Nothing cures bad humor like a good recession, eh, Mr. Berendt?
The lament is modern repackaging of Biblical proportions: there is nothing new under the sun. The moans wear like last year’s wave of banter about the hordes of shiftless twentysomethings, the classically faceless generation these magazines seek to attract.
The blending of entertainment, information and communication so eagerly pursued by media conglomerates in the 80s was sure to have this effect. Even at the culmination of this lackluster year of changlessness, a year shaped by greedy men with clouded vision, one could expect far worse from the media than such a tepid declaration of rebellion (So popular among youth!) and a celebration of the cult of entertainment.
There are no new lessons being taught by the media in this last decade of a lesson-saturated century. What the entertainment industry -- and the government, business and religion industries -- has known all along is that the huddled masses are very easily led. Lemmings do not, as the myth implies, die after taking that sharp, cold plunge into the sea. They emerge on the opposite shore, wet, exhausted and as stupid as when they first leapt from the cliff.
As the popular media continues to grope for new meanings and new definitions for hipness in this abbreviated decade, expect one constant: Failing to learn from their efforts, many of these magazines will come up as short in 1994 as they did in 1993. They will fail because they continue to grope without feeling at the periphery for shock, bluster and acceptance.
Esquire, Details and many of their peers cry for a revolution built on the altar of consumption. Their revolution is an artfully packaged dodge toward meaning and money, a bipolar message that grips business, government, religion and community in this decade.
What these magazines offer is a rebellion against nothing, resting on the same foundation as the 80s: crap sells when it is diluted with soda water and served with brie.
Hipness in the 90s is not slick and colorful. It is not about celebrity. It is a quiet and unassuming rebellion. Hipness is about quality.
Quality is something quite different than efficiency, which is the characteristic given it by corporations in recent years. Hipness in this decade will be judged by different characteristics and standards.
Hipness is a thoughtfulness that transcends profit and a compassion that sidesteps the bottom line. It is a cynicism that is not dismissal, but rather a recognition of flaws without an acceptance of their validity.
Hipness is a consideration of others that does not seek to abandon the race to get ahead, but makes the race more competitive by making it more equal. Hipness is a distrust of monopoly, a suspicion of popular truth. Being hip in the 90s is a commitment to march to one’s own deliberate beat.
If there is one lesson that the first years of the 1990s has taught, it is that efficiency breeds mediocrity.
As the media joins the rest of society in revisiting the decade once again in 1995, it could stand to take heed of a lesson or two imparted by the first half of the 90s:
Efficiency kills. When the controls are managed by a handful of faceless entities working exclusively for profit, quality disappears. Industry is the corporate equivalent of structured playtime, and dead wood will always float to the top. In the Nineties, entertainment is dying, the media is dying, communication is dying. Politics and religion are dying. As people resurrect these social and cultural entities, they must remember the importance of community.
Cruise control equals mind control on the information highway. Like the entertainment world, the communications industry exists to make money, so look both ways when crossing the information highway. Look for the information at your fingertips to become less vital. Important, useful information will be replaced with fun, useless information. Glean what you can, speed often and hit a few pedestrians. Hunter-gatherers are the future.
Fundamentalism kills community. Like a gun, absolute belief is a great community builder until it is leveled at your head. A distrust of what is different kills in America just as well as it kills in Sarajevo and the Middle East. Temper strong values with tolerance and flexibility. Inequality breeds isolation.
Networking is shallow and false. It is useful like a condom: one use and easy to throw away. Never take without giving and never discard people on purpose.
Never trust a revolution that promises profit.
