The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

Within any generation, there are always two distinct classes: a handful who accept and embody the assigned caricature, and many more others who are caricatured against their will, simply because they happened to be born in a particular year.

Contemporary critics tend to be appalled by the film’s themes and won’t even engage with the premise, often unaware of its unusual scope of influence (it inspired a song by Iron Maiden, a video by Foo Fighters, and a character in The Simpsons).

For all of the twentieth century—and particularly in the decades following World War II—the volume of manufactured consumer art had exponentially increased. The volume was now vast enough to replace the natural world in totality. A fixed reality was no longer needed; there was enough unfixed reality inside a single Blockbuster to sustain the entire cinematic multiverse. Content could be made from content.

Area codes were introduced in 1947. The lowest digits were assigned to regions with the highest population density, based on the principle that people living in highly populated areas would make more phone calls and should have to “work” less (this was the era of rotary phones, when dialing a number could hurt your index finger).