Maybe it’s just the pregnancy hormones talking here, but I watched a little Reality Bites tonight and it made me ache for my youth in a not-so-superficial-how-fast-can-this-life-go-by-and-why-are-things-so-different-now kind of way.
It’s crazy to think that this movie is 20 years old. That I went to see it in theaters as a teen, bought the soundtrack as one of my first CD purchases, and listened to it over and over the summer going into my first year of high school. But beyond the usual “Wow, I’m old,” realization, watching Reality Bites hit me in the gut because it’s such a well-preserved capsule of a time period when everything seemed possible—not just for me, but for society, you know?
The 90s may have been the grungy uncle of today’s ironic hipsters, full of sarcasm and greasy hair, but there was an idealism there that just feels so quaint and out-of-reach now. Watching Winona Ryder quit her job and turn down a big TV offer in the name of integrity didn’t seem like a stupid decision then. It seemed like something a 22-year-old could do in 1994 because there would always be other options. In 2014? Any recent college grad with a job that pays the bills in a remotely related field to their major would be deemed INSANE for not toiling away in misery or sucking up the dumbing down of their art in the name of making a dent in their student loans. Sad. So very sad that the nostalgia has morphed into something far more bitter.
Yes, I miss the days when baggy t-shirts were a fashion statement. I miss alternative music and smoking butts in a coffee house and flannel. I miss not having a cell phone. I miss being 14 or 24 or shit, I’ll even take 30 at this point. But what I really miss is that feeling that the most important thing was being true to yourself. In the 90s, we could afford to feel that way. Not so much today.
The Olive Gal
green of skin, black of heart
