 |
| Somehow I don't see him bursting into song... |
Most fads are certainly recognizable at the peak of their popularity. The current vampire craze can be traced directly back to the Twilight books (its origin), but the craze only came to the forefront of popular culture with the release of movies based on the books. This fad has matured now (I hope), and many people—mostly men—are glad that it seems to be deteriorating.
The final and critical stage of disintegration is similar for fads as well as rhetorical situations. As a rhetorical situation example, in the 60s after JFK's assassination, there was much talk of a government conspiracy behind the murder. Decades later, in the early 90s, a film was made putting forth similar arguments and bringing up the issue again. While a situation like the debate over JFK's assassination had disintegrated (as far as most of the public was concerned), there were those who would resurrect the issue later on.
Similarly, in popular fashion, back in the 80s "wayfarer" sunglasses were made famous by television stars like Don Johnson, and became an essential fashion accessory for men. They eventually fell out of favor, but nowadays on campus one doesn't have to look far to see them being worn again, even as frames for regular prescription glasses. Though wayfarers are not as popular now as they once were, the fad has been resurrected.
It seems that fads for popular consumption, as well as issues for public discussion, go through a similar life cycle, only to be resurrected again by future generations. I guess it's up to the next few generations to decide if Edward Cullen really is immortal. I, for one, will be teaching my kids to let him rest in piece.
"let him rest in peace..." HERE HERE! AMEN!
ReplyDeleteSecond that. Let him be done for.
ReplyDeleteDang, I wrote a huge comment and it wouldn't let me post it and now it's gone, all gone.
ReplyDeleteSo I was saying how this is an interesting topic, and that I've thought about this before too, the resurrecting of old fads and stuff. But I think that a lot of the times, particularly with the wayfarers example and things of fashion, that these fads are brought back as some kind of ironic comment on society by hipster nihilists or something. For example, some guy who suddenly thinks that record players are awesome. He probably never grew up with one, he probably doesn't think that they're any better than CDs or MP3s, and he doesn't have any sentimental attachment to them, but because they're so un-cool, they've now become cool. So is it the same fad that's being brought back if there's different motives behind it? That record players are the fad is incidental, the real fad is bringing old un-cool stuff back and making it cool again, which is an entirely new fad. A more analogous fad would be the iPod, because as the record player was, the iPod is simply the next cutting edge technology for playing back music. In the same way, maybe the whole JFK thing was brought back because conspiracy theories are now cool, who knows.
Anyway, nice blog.