Remembering 1994
[ This post is 2 years late, I realize. But I am turning the corner. Catching up. ]
I had been waiting for 1994, the year I could legally buy and consume alcohol in public.
I think of ordering cold drafts of Guinness as a 21 year old in 1994. I remember going to clubs in Boston every chance I had that summer to hop on a commuter train from Stoughton. But I also think about world events.
Bill Clinton did his best to contain North Korea and its golfing dictator for another 10 years or so. The ANC cruised to victory in South Africa’s first ever free and fair election. The Hutus began a brutal genocide against the Tutsi.
My focus, as usual, is on media. The movies of 1994 were full of artistic embarrassments and failures. But the music was fantastic.
I'll start with the music, because god damn. After some really amazing triumphs in 1993, 1994 just took it to a higher level. At the time, I was still catching up with Automatic For The People, The Chronic, Songs Of Faith And Devotion, Check Your Head, In Utero, and Midnight Marauders. But it was time to dive into a new year of albums. I had a little more money in my pocket in 1994, working more hours and being more confidence in my job as a busboy every day I was back home from university. In no particular order, here are some of the new albums I purchased in 1994:
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Sticky Fingers (1994 Virgin Records Remaster)
Exile On Main Street (1994 Virgin Records Remaster)
The first 6 Genesis albums (20-bit remastered and de-noised)
On the television side, it was mostly shit. Friends is a feeble attempt to shoehorn MTV's The Real World into a tired sitcom format (complete with a laugh track). It promoted my future city, sure, as did Seinfeld. But it was a shit show. All we really had was My So Called Life, Homicide Season 2, The Simpsons seasons 5 and 6, and Deep Space Nine, seasons 1 and 2. I think Voyager got good, but not in season 1.
And for movies, we had a very mixed bag. I wouldn't call 1994 to be peak 1990s. I vote for 1995 and 1999 for that.
Movies in 1994 included
The Shawshank Redemption (I only put this here because there's no escaping it)
And let me stop right there. Forrest fucking Gump. One of the worst films Hollywood has ever made. It manages to offend just about everything and everyone. It offends history, women, civil rights, the process by which culture and society changes, cinema, the mentally ill, black people, and even white people. Being There (1980) is brilliant. Forest Gump is a giant bomb of offending material. It's poisonous. Robert Zemeckis did it. He made a nostalgia-flavored blockbuster that was worse than the offensive Back To The Future (1985). He may have made three good movies in Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000), and Flight (2012). But am I every going to watch those, knowing he co-wrote 1941 (1979), and directed Back to the Future and Forest Gump, do I dare?
