Reader Jodi kind of beat me to it but I still want to discuss my hypothesis as to why fashion, pop music, hair-styles, etc. seem frozen in time and have been this way for the past 20 years.
There is one area of our lives that has been changing extremely rapidly. And that, of course, is technology. I look at the cell phone I used in 2010, and it looks completely outdated and very primitive. Just a little over a year ago, however, that phone was the pinnacle of complexity and sophistication. My first Kindle that I bought in 2008, looked like a miracle to me. By the side of the recently released Kindle Fire tablet, however, it is clunky and almost prehistoric. 🙂 Just 10 years ago, could anybody have imagined the ubiquity of tablets that we experience today? Just 20 years ago, did anybody who is not an author of science fiction envision this permanent sense of connectedness to the world that technology allows us to have today?
We have seen the rise and the death of Blockbuster, then Netflix. I have no doubt that we will all live to see the death of television just like we have witnessed the demise of land-lines and public phones. I still remember the time when you always needed to have a quarter on you to make a call from a public phone in case of an emergency. And it wasn’t all that many years ago. I’m talking about 2000-2001. Something tells me my niece Klubnikis will need to be taken to a museum to see what a payphone and a TV-set even are. Gosh, I’m so ancient I remember rotary phones. And does anybody want a bet that there are people reading this blog right now who have never used a rotary phone? I’m sure there are some who had to Google it.
Technology changes so fast that we need to expend a lot of energy to adapt to it. Against the background of constantly changing computers, tablets, apps, cell phones, websites, plugins, gadgets, etc., a relative stability in other areas of our lives allows us to compensate for the trauma of such rapid and constant transformations. Since the technological innovation doesn’t seem to slow down even a little, it seems like we are doomed to the same boring clothes and hairdos for a while longer.
Clarissa's Blog 
A deeper and more interesting item is the lack of change in tonality and cadence of American speech since the nineteen fifties. A person speaking in an American movie of the sixties has almost the same tonality and cadence as one speaking today but a movie from say the thirties has a totally different speech pattern for both males and females. A movie from the twenties is also quite different in speech patterns from both today and the thirties. So why do some cultural/liquistic expressions stay the same during the most recent period and yet change radically a couple of decades earlier and is this tied to technological or social change?
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Hah. That’s too profound for me. I have noticed that the movies sounded very different in the 30ies. They did in the 50ies, too. But that’s as far as I can go in this analysis.
Does anybody else have observations on the subject of cadence and tonality? I’m tone-deaf and a foreigner, anyways. 🙂
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They made movies in the fifties?! Oo
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At first the movies were “unnatural” moving-picture versions of stage plays. The acting was also “unnatural” – exaggerated, too much make-up etc. So maybe the voices gradually became more life-like.
Although I agree that technology is the one thing that keeps changing – I did point out that it’s the only reliable way to date relatively recent movies or tv shows – hasn’t that been an issue throughout the 20th century also? For example the 70’s and 80’s saw the rise of 8-track tapes (!) sony walkmans, telephone answering machines, vcrs (remember betamax?), and finally, CDs and personal computers. It is true that the rate has sped up…but not sure if I buy that it is the reason.
btw did the article you were originally reading at the spa have any hints?
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Yes, the article suggested as one of the possibilities that this slow-down was engineered by companies like Starbucks and Gap because they don’t want to invest money in coming up with new stuff or redecorating. I didn’t get that explanation at all.
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I just found the article, so now people can see for themselves: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201
It’s kind of longish, though.
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And just to keep playing devil’s advocate- think how much non-personal technology was constantly changing (and doesn’t change much now) such as cars and appliances.
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Maybe it’s because people watch TV more now, and thus our speech is influenced by how actor’s talk? There wasn’t TV in the ’30s, and people probably didn’t watch a movie everyday, so the way language developed wasn’t that strongly affected by movies, perhaps. And eventually most homes had a television, so speech would be affected by how actors spoke more. And one generation of actors would influence the way the next generation spoke, leading to less change. I’m doing a bad job of explaining this; I hope that made sense.
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Very interesting article, Clarissa!
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Haha. My first thought when reading Part I was “great, cheaper for me,” assuming I can stay the same size for a long time (not likely at the moment, haha.) But if it’s technology instead maybe staying in style will be more expensive. Oh well, haha.
I also wanted to let you know that I nominated you for The Versatile Blogger Award. http://rachelahanson.com/2011/12/27/versatility-in-blogging/
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This is so cool!!! Thank you, Rachel! I love such awards because they allow me to discover great bloggers. I also love getting awards. 🙂
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Haha, any time :). I love getting awards myself. This is super selfish, but I love being able to say “Why yes, my blog recently got (insert award name here.)” and have the person look silmutaneously (sp?) impressed and confused.
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While the overall style may not have changed, I’m very glad my personal sense of style changed between my years in high school and now. 😉 What was I thinking with the purple hair and wearing fishnets as arm warmers anyways?
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And see, people at my old high school are STILL dressing like that. NO CHANGE. I must admit I’m a fan, although I currently have naturally colored hair and prefer fishnets on my legs generally.
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