NPR’s Andrew Limbong talks with author Colette Shedd about her book “Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was).”
(SOUNDBITE OF BACKSTREET BOYS SONG, “LARGE THAN LIFE”)
ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
In the late 1990s, the future looked pretty bright, didn’t it? We’ve had pop stars in music videos dancing with robots in space.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG “LARGE THAN LIFE”)
Backstreet Boys: (Singing) Y’all, can’t you see? Can’t you see?
LIMBONG: We had a president talking about all this extra money we had.
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Bill Clinton: We expect the 1990-1998 surplus to reach about $70 billion.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG “LARGE THAN LIFE”)
Backstreet Boys: (Singing) Makes you larger than life.
LIMBONG: And this new thing called the Internet promises a new era of interconnectedness that can unite us all. Of course, we do not now live in a technical utopia. Instead, by 2008, unemployment rates were rising, the housing market had collapsed, and we were mired in a global war against terrorism. Author Colette Shedd calls these years, from ’97 to ’08, the Y2K era in her new book The Year 2000: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was), and she’s here to talk about it now. . Hey, Colette.
COLLETTE SHADE: Hi, Andrew.
LIMBONG: This book is much more than just millennial nostalgia (laughter). You know, there’s a – you’re basing the aesthetics of 2000 on some kind of economic argument. But before we get to that, why did you choose these years specifically?
Scheid: I chose these years because they were the years in which Americans – and I write as Americans – saw themselves as not being political subjects anymore. And what I mean by that is that by 1997, you had a few years of dot-com bubble inflation. You had this broad sense of optimism about the economy and technology. And there was a sense that all these old political struggles that had happened in the past – whether they were against racism, or sexism, or economic inequality…
Limbong: Russia. Yes.
Shadow: Yes. Russia, labor versus capital, all kinds of wars – all of these things were solved, and all we needed to do was sit back, relax, invest in the stock market and get online. Then a dramatic change occurred in 2008 because the economic consequences of the Great Recession undermined the American way of life in this regard. So, as a lot of people lost their jobs and their homes, they could no longer say, my main goal in life is to go shopping and be a homeowner, so they started looking. Some of this research has led people to more progressive policies like Bernie Sanders, but it has also brought people to Trump and to conspiracy theories like QAnon.
LIMBONG: You know, I think a lot of people might consider 9/11 either the end of an era or the beginning of a new era, but in your book, it’s kind of a turning point. I think that’s fair to say. How did the events of September 11 affect the 2000 era?
Tangent: The events of 9/11 did not fundamentally change this understanding of the role of most people in America, meaning – what were we asked to do as a patriotic duty after 9/11? I was going shopping. It was going down to Disney World. And then we were told to buy all these clothes with American flags on them and put flags everywhere and put flags on our cars. In reality, this wasn’t much different from the shopping- and pop-culture-focused lifestyle that existed before 9/11.
LIMBONG: In the book, you talk about a number of artifacts from the 2000s era, some of which are still there, like Starbucks. Another cultural artifact I’m really interested in is the H2 Hummer. And you talk about it as a way to address our attitudes to climate change. Can you read part of the sections on page 145?
Tangent: (Reading) H2 summed up a whole way of thinking about the Earth and Americans’ place on it—about the future and Americans’ duty to it. The Hummer was an unapologetically SUV, without the fig leaves of safety ratings and seating capacity sometimes offered by its more respectable counterparts, such as the Suburban, Ford Expedition, Chevrolet Tahoe, Jeep Liberty, and Toyota Highlander. Hammer’s design and colors were a garish celebration of extravagance and violence. The people who drove Hummers did so because they knew all about climate change, and didn’t care [expletive].
LIMBONG: If this is how we saw one side of the climate change debate, how do we, as a culture, see the other side – people who drove Priuses or something like that?
Shadow: Yes. Priuses were seen as a way to ally themselves with this emerging culture war. Climate change, instead of being seen as an existential problem that we all have to work together to solve, has been seen as – again, the consumer question, are you a Hummer buyer, or are you a Prius buyer? – No, how can we all work together to find a common solution to this problem that threatens us all?
Limbong: I think every generation thinks it’s unique in some way. So how did you examine yourself while writing this book and wonder, was this really important, or was I only 15 at the time?
Shadow: Yes. No, that’s a great question. I think the main reason I chose the personal essay format was that it allowed me to feel a sense of uncertainty that I returned to throughout the book. I don’t necessarily know how much of my nostalgia for the 2000 era is just nostalgia for being a teenager or being a 10-year-old, and how much is because things were really better.
However, there are actual, measurable statistics you can use to say, on a scale of To measure. But of course, when you’re talking about something like music, which – and to be clear, I’m not claiming that the music I had as a kid was better than…
LIMBONG: Yes (laughter).
Shedd: …Music today because there’s a lot of great music today. But I think something like that – and then you get into more dangerous territory because, I mean, this is all very personal.
Limbong: Yes. That writer was Colette Shedd. Her book “Y2K: How The 2000s Become Everything” was released on January 7. Thank you, Colette.
Shadow: Thanks for having me, Andrew.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE KILLERS’ SONG, “Mr. Brightside”)
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