The 00s: Where’s The Identity?
Human Traffic was the super hyper-active, quintessentially 90s party film about five pill-popping, out-of-their-heads friends who live only for the weekend. Monday to Thursday it’s work, boring, mundane, pointless, a waste of time—then the weekend comes: 48 hours to cut loose and live for themselves. No boss, no rules; anything goes, so long as it’s fun. Watching it now it’s a bit dated, but one thing it does more than ever–and will continue to do as time goes on–is show up the gaping chasm dividing the culture which existed then and what exists today. The 1990s were about going with the flow, breaking boundaries because we could. Trainspotting, Nirvana, illegal raves, they all played their part.
This got me thinking: if Human Traffic was a symbol of the 1990s, then what is the symbol of the 2000s? We’re not exactly going to run out of time to decide this any time soon, but come on, it’s been ten years already and we’re almost exactly where we started, aren’t we? I’m struggling to think of one film which, in twenty years time, could be picked out as quintessentially 00 material. Everything that’s come so far can be easily divided into obvious categories: American comedy, Hollywood blockbuster, Art-house cinema. Anything in between is either a throw-back to the sixties or seventies, or too unspecific to have really made an impact. Maybe it’s something to do with it being the start of a new Century, who knows? It does seem sad to think of the 2000s as the time of animated cinema, but if not that, then what else? War films? Avatar? As interesting, realistic and relevant as The Hurt Locker was and Avatar can be considered ground-breaking in certain ways, I can’t help but think that we’ve been robbed so far. If something doesn’t happen soon then the 00s will become identity less. It makes my skin crawl to think of a future conversation where a child asks his grandmother what the start of the 00s was like; the last words I want to come out of her mouth in response are X Factor and Property programmes.
Before I go, I just want to give a shout out to this amazing website that I found called enigin digital. If any of you are interested in super nerdy things that I tend to like, then you should really check it out!