The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

The 1980s had been the penultimate step in an evolution happening throughout the twentieth century, increasing in speed after the Second World War. There was now complete integration between the notion of living a normal life and the ubiquity of how the larger culture was packaged and presented by the media. This, in many ways, was the crux of the Generation X conundrum—how (for example) was it possible for a person to reject the illusion of advertising if their only concept of authenticity had been constructed by advertising? How was it possible to see politics as separate from entertainment if the defining president of their adolescence had started his career as an actor? In the same way twenty-first-century adults would grow comfortable with classifying their own personalities as “brands,” late-twentieth-century adults nonchalantly accepted the possibility that their principal social function was to serve as consumers. Dick Morris helped Clinton realize this intellectually. But Clinton’s natural inclination needed no instruction. He understood what people wanted, and not just in a material sense. His enemies labeled him Slick Willy, as if Clinton were constantly trying to unload a used Buick. What he was really selling was a less tangible commodity: the signifiers of empathy. Yes, he was a kind of salesman, because that’s what postmodernity required.