I’m really high on 90s media right now, especially science fiction and thrillers, but like… That’s not a time of happiness. The 90s was about mistrust and paranoia coming after an era that tried to slap a veneer of prosperity on everything, at least for Americans. But it’s comforting to dip into stories of this time in which people just accepted that things are fucked, and I suppose companies were seeing the tide turn and investing in media that explored those themes.
But I can still remember the fear, living through riots in Los Angeles and a strange sense that this could all come crumbling down. Being a kid, I’m sure I couldn’t grasp what adults were experiencing then, nor how much worse it was in other parts of the world. It seems safer now than it ever was in the 90s, but I think we can all see that there’s a sort of veneer being pulled over our eyes again to distract from the economic and social disparities that drive the anger and actions that can make places feel unsafe.
So being the simple person that I am, I ultimately just wonder what kinds of stories you’ll tell in ten, twenty years. How will these times lead to the media ahead? What are we fucking up now that’ll lead to the stories of tomorrow?
