Make the 2020s the 90s, but better maybe
Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder, in 1994’s ‘Reality Bites’
Dear Gen Z, or whatever the hell they’re calling you guys now,
Since there’s no such thing as ‘time’ now, Sunday is Wednesday and 11pm is the new 10am, I took the liberty of revisiting the Nineties one entire weekend. I thought I might return with some tips on how to navigate life in the 2020s, or just warm fuzzy feelings for you to comprehend just how simple things were once - and can be again. You’ve been dealt a hard card by this pandemic thing and I’m with you; even when you play Drake, and Future, and mock me whether or not I nail the trending new dancing move.
I saw Reality Bites, Punch Drunk Love, Kicking & Screaming, and Dazed & Confused - all movies directed by very capable auteurs - and for a time, Gen Z, I escaped this wretched fever dream we call 2020.
All of these pictures have aged gracefully, and so have their respective supernovae. Winona Ryder, who you know as the sassy mom on Stranger Things, was the most beautiful creature you ever saw - and still is, honestly, if you’re roughly my age. You’re not, Gen Z, but there’s no need to be a smart ass about it. Just know that grown men deserted their responsibilities at decent jobs to take her places, albeit pretend men and pretend jobs and pretend places. Ethan Hawke was beautiful too, and beautiful men read beautiful books to impress beautiful women. There were no likes, no retweets, no ‘tough’ DPs: just literary classics, my dabbing friends.
Men with depressive tendencies were tasked with writing them. They looked pretty cool doing it. They hankered after impossible women, who broke their hearts then fled the country, sometimes simultaneously. They drank things in glasses with rocks, in college, and they gathered up a bunch of experiences to turn into chapters of books. They argued with their writer friends, because they were surrounded by writer friends, about writer problems, writer girls, and writer hang-ups about the universe. All the bands then made music with actual guitars.
One of those men with depressive tendencies goes by the name of Paul Thomas Anderson, and is still one of the finest directors operating today. But you wouldn’t know this, Gen Z, because you’re always making fun of my taste in movies. You think Adam Sandler didn’t turn in a dramatic performance ’til, like, last year - but you’re wrong, pilgrim. PTA shot him at odd angles, in dream-like light, in sinews of fury, many years ago, and the work holds up. It shows you how powerful a simple man can make himself in the name of love: in the name of something, anything, to believe in.
That’s not all, though. Come back with me one time and behold the women: they paid the rent for slob boys - they drove those same men to craft them terrible songs, horrid poems - they, too, bullied the freshmen in high school. They seized what they wanted, and no one told them when or how or where they could go ahead and do so. Isn’t that an exciting preposition, Gen Z? All of it? Women in charge; women with real agency; women making men completely vulnerable. If we’re going to remake the world a little, don’t you want to see what it looks like with your crush lording over everything?
I can’t tell you to turn off all the social media nonsense. I can’t tell you when to begin your (ahem) scientific experiments. I’m just saying maybe run them on paper, with a pen, or a paintbrush, or (hell) a candle wick when the lights go out. Maybe upload all that onto the social media once it’s good and ready. Surprise me a little bit. Surprise the world. Make everything the Nineties again, but better.
Yours,
Uncle Cholls.
Editor, The Grab.
