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342 lines
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| | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | |
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| |________________________________________________________________| |
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|____________________________________________________________________|
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...presents... _Beverly Hills 90210_ as Nostalgia Television
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by Crystal Kile
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>>> a cDc publication.......1994 <<<
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-cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
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____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____
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|____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|
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The full title for this work is "Recombinant Realism/Caliutopian
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Re-Dreaming: _Beverly Hills 90210_ as Nostalgia Television" and was presented
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at the 1993 National Popular Culture Association meeting in New Orleans for its
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"Television and Postmodernism" panel. Crystal Kile is in the Dept. of Popular
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Culture/ American Culture Studies Program at Bowling Green State University,
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Bowling Green, Ohio 43402.
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______________________________________________________________________________
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My life as an instructor in the environment of the undergraduate popular
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culture studies/television studies classroom is roughly contiguous with the
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life of the wildly popular FOX series, _Beverly Hills 90210._ Over the past
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three years, I have read literally dozens of informal response papers and
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formal essays in which students have attempted to engage and develop some
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critical angle on the series. What I have found is that my best efforts to
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stress to them that "the metaphoric real world displayed on television does not
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display the real world, but displaces it" (F&H 48) and "television does not
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represent the manifest actuality of our society, but rather reflects,
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symbolically, the structure of values and relationships beneath the surface"
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(F&H 24), seemed to have been for naught when the show at hand is _90210_.
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Well over 80% of my students' essays about the series could be condensed to
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three sentences: "I can totally identify with Beverly Hills 90210. It is the
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only show on television that really addresses the issues facing young people in
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America today. It is an important show because it is so realistic."
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Conversely, the most popular anti-_90210_ student response, a response that
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generally makes itself most felt in classroom discussion, is that _90210_ is a
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stupid and unimportant show, a "fluffy chick show" as one student so concisely
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put it last semester, because it is so UNrealistic (read: because everyone is
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so rich and good-looking and all of the problems are tied up at the end of the
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hour). What I want to present to you today is my take on why the _90210_
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debate, wherever it takes place, from the classroom, to the pages of
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_Entertainment Weekly_ or _Vanity Fair_, to the _90210_ newsgroups/mailing
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lists on the Internet and CompuServe, seems to rage around the topic of
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issue-oriented "realism." I want to question what might be at stake in
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interrogating the "realism" (or the "unreal" pleasures) of this youthcult TV
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phenomenon. This is a textual reading of the series, one which puts into
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dialogue the ultimately conservative ideological work of _90210_ and the
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peculiar postmodern aesthetic strategy contextualizing it. In short, I want to
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argue that _Beverly Hills 90210_ is what Frederic Jameson, were he to deign to
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deal directly with the medium, might call "nostalgia television." If this
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weird elision of youthcult and nostalgia seems to you a bit pernicious, well it
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should.
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On the way to establishing that _90210_ is both of the postmodern moment
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and "not of the moment," it is important to say a word or two about the
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contexts from which the show emerged. In many ways, _90210_ is a response to
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the genre of affectless, consumerist, violent, post-punk youthcult literature
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that emerged in the mid-1980s. The best known of these works, Bret Easton
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Ellis' _Less Than Zero_, the novel as well as the bomb of a movie that was made
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of the novel in 1987, is perhaps _90210_'s closest relation, its
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"twentysomething" sibling. For those of you unfamiliar with the work, the
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milieu of _Less Than Zero_, like that of _90210_, is upper-upper middle class
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Los Angeles youth culture. But that is where the resemblance ends. The world
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that Ellis' so numbly and plotlessly conjures in one of cocaine, anonymous
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bisexual promiscuity, the best brand name goods, ritual murder, absent
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families, and young men prostituting themselves to pay off drug debts. In the
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best tradition of the "L.A. literature" from Nathanel West to Joan Didion to
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Black Flag, it is apocalyptic. As a cult youthcult text, it elicited alarm.
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My favorite response to the novel/this genre is UGA professor Sanford Pinsker's
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1986 Georgia Review essay, "The Catcher in the Rye and All That: Is the Age of
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Formative Books Over?"
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Pinsker needn't have worried. When _Less Than Zero_ was filmed, it was
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transformed into a morality tale, one which eerily prefigured _90210_. In the
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film version, the subjectivity-less "anti-protagonist" of the novel is
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transformed into a young hero who rides back in from college in the East and
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tries to save his friends from coke and nihilism. The bi-prostitute, coke
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addict friend, beyond redemption, dies at the end & the hero's girlfriend goes
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back East with him. In my experience of teaching the novel and the film
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together, the point being to emphasize the "conservative" dynamic at work in
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the production of popular texts such as films for the youthcult market, I have
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found that my students greatly prefer the film version of _Less Than Zero_, the
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version from which any critique (however affectless) of late consumer
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capitalism has been excised in favor of emphasis on individual morality, much
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for the same reasons that they want to insist in the "realism" of _90210_.
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So, what's up in _90210_? What is the ideological spin of the series?
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Upon what cultural mythologies is the series built, and how are they connoted
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in the text? How do the writers work the issue of "realism"? What aesthetic
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strategies do they deploy to allow them to deal at this moment with this litany
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of "contemporary issues": teen alcoholism, a parent's addiction, teen
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sexuality, drinking and driving, date rape, eating disorders, racism, classism,
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child abuse, adoption, obsessive relationships, drugs, AIDS, steroid abuse,
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teen suicide, breast cancer, finding oneself the victim of a violent crime,
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toxic waste dumping, gambling, the divorce of one's parents?
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In a July 1992 Vanity Fair story about Luke Perry and _90210_, Barry
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Diller, then-chairman of FOX television, himself an alumnus of the real Beverly
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Hills High, remarked, "I always thought that a serial-like series about Beverly
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Hills High was a great idea, because I thought it was a small town in both
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sensibilities and borders -- very small town -- while at the same time it was,
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after all, Beverly Hills...[The glitz of Beverly Hills] is just the carny
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barker outside the tent, getting you into the tent. Once you're in the tent,
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you go, 'Oh my God! You mean this is really about families? [_90210_] is
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about family values, but from all different aspect ratios." Ahhh...but the
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show really isn't about "families," but about a family, and not a "Beverly
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Hills family," either. _90210_ is about the Walsh family, a nice, upper-middle
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class Midwestern family that moves to Beverly Hills when Walsh, an investment
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counselor/accountant of some kind, receives a promotion. Introducing this old
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fish-out-of-water premise, the very first ad blurb in TV Guide about _90210_
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read: "The nice, normal Walsh family just moved from Minneapolis to Beverly
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Hills. It might as well be Mars." Initial episodes of the series revolved
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around twins Brenda and Brandon Walsh's negotiation of and adjustment to the
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opulent fast lane of West Beverly Hills High social life. The Walsh kids are
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initially status-struck, especially Brenda, but slowly come to realize how much
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their new friends envy their "boring housewife mom" and everpresent dad. The
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Walsh family is the only stable nuclear family featured in the series. Master
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mediators , crisis managers, and instillers of values, the elder Walshes become
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surrogate parents to their children's friends, and in some cases, to those
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friends' parents. In short, from their very traditional home, the Walshes
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clean up Beverly Hills. Condensing it ever further, we could express the
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dynamic this way: Midwest redeems Sin City. In what context is this redemption
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"naturalized"?
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I subscribe that the popular genius of _90210_ is that while it is
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superficially topical and relevant, while it addresses some of the tensions and
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themes addressed in 1980s youthcult fictions about and from L.A., it also
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evinces a deep, yet blank "nostalgia for the "kinder, gentler," "California
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youthcult mythos" of the late 1950s and early 1960s, nostalgia for the myth of
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Southern California as paradise for Midwestern WASPs, as Gidget-land, as
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Disneyland. This "nostalgia" is, in large part, the pleasure of the text. In
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the moment of 'Just Say No" and sex=death and MTV, this wildly popular
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re-visioning of the "traditional" Caliutopian white youth culture fantasy, the
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mythically mediated fullness and "realism" of the show speaks peculiarly well
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to the "postmodern subjects under construction" who consume it weekly. In a
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January 1992 article in GQ, TV critic Gerry Hirshey put it this way:
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"...Aaron Spelling knows America. His wife may wear $4 million in jewels
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to lunch with the girls, but this TV Croesus is better connected to the weary
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workaday heartland than any Democratic hopeful with a pantload of consultants,
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pollsters and focus-group transcripts....[This is the] big populist secret of
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[Spelling]. I think that he loves his children madly, beyond reason. I think
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that, like anyone facing postnuclear child-rearing, he's scared to death for
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them. Daddy's true colors have produced a mammoth hit."
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In _Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism_, Frederic
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Jameson diagnoses the symptomatic nature of postmodern texts such as _90210_
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this way:
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"...the postliteracy of the late capitalist world reflects not only the
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absence of any great collective project, but also the unavailability of the
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older national language itself.
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In this situation, parody finds itself without a vocation; it has lived,
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and that strange new thing pastiche slowly comes to take its place. Pastiche
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is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style,
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the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is the
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neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives,
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amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that
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alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy
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linguistic normality still exists.
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...this situation evidently determines what architecture historians call
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"historicism," namely the random cannibalization of all the styles of the past,
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the play of random stylistic allusion, and what Henri Lefebvre has called the
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increasing primacy of the "neo."
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Nostalgia films [Jameson discusses texts as diverse as Body Heat, American
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Graffiti and Raiders of the Lost Ark] restructure the whole issue of pastiche
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and project it onto a collective and social level, where the desperate attempt
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to appropriate a missing past is now refracted through the iron law of fashion
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change and the eminent ideology of the generation. [George Lucas's _American
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Graffiti_ was the inaugural film in this genre]....More interesting, and more
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problematical, are the ultimate attempts, through this new discourse to lay
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siege...to our own present..." (17-19).
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There has always been a certain "nostalgia" element to _BH90210_, most
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notably the much remarked-upon resemblance of the character Dylan McKay, a
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loner, surfer, heir to a multi-million dollar fortune and proud owner of a '62
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Porsche, to James Dean. Still, having followed _90210_ since its premiere in
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October 1990, I must admit that I was quite shocked to turn on my TV on the
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evening of July 11, 1991 to see the likes of this (CLIP OF SECOND SEASON
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INTRO). A variation on this first summer season intro remains the show's
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regular intro to date. In any case. the first episode of the show's first
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summer season, titled (no kidding) "Beach Blanket Brandon," saw Brandon give up
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his counter job at "The Peach Pit," a neo-fifties hamburger place which comes
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to figure very prominently as the characters' primary hangout during the show's
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second and third seasons, to work for the summer at The Beverly Hills Beach
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Club. (Sounds like some cheesey club in some landlocked Midwestern town to
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me...). The plot of the episode that followed this one was lifted almost
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directly from the 1984 nostalgia film, _The Flamingo Kid_. Keep in mind that
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this major shift in the tone of the series took place in the series timeline
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immediately after the infamous and controversial (and, yes, "realistic")
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episodes during which Brenda and Dylan have premeditated prom night sex and
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then experience a pregnancy scare. It is also notable that during this arc of
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summer episodes, Andrea's and Brenda's teen libidos do battle over a summer
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school drama teacher played by Michel St. Gerard, the actor who portrayed the
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young Elvis Presley in the short-lived 1990 ABC series, _Elvis_. It may be
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true that, as Michael Angelli wrote in the July 1992 issue of _Esquire_,
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"Frankie and Annette are way, way dead. Gidget's gone. Mike Love's playing
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the White House.
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Today's beachboys are tattooed savages wearing a million dollars worth of
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endorsements, soundtrack provided by the Butthole Surfers," but one could never
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tell that from watching _90210_. Notably, Brandon Walsh's payoff for a summer
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of hard work as a cabana boy at the BHBC was a pristine 1965 Mustang
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convertible to replace "Mondale", the Ford LTD beater that he totalled in the
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first season "drinking and driving" episode.
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During the second season of _90210_, the scripts continued to deal with
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big "issues of the week," but the secondary nostalgia text developed so
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extremely during the summer episodes continued to assert itself rather
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forcefully. As already noted, it is during this second season that the Peach
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Pit, jukebox in the corner, faux-50s decor on the walls, chrome shining, is
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foregorounded as a site of action... sort of like Arnold's was in _Happy Days_.
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The fiftiesish personal styles of the two central male characters, Brandon and
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Dylan, fit right in with the decor, while the more "contemporary" (whatever
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that means here) styles of the other characters were more or less absorbed and
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naturalized into the retro setting as the season wore on. Its reality so
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constructed around the warmth of the Walsh home, a mostly white high school,
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the beach and The Peach Pit, _90210_, its cosmos thus insulated, continued
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unflinchingly in its role as youthcultural bard, the most remarkable episode
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being the one in which a young black man is brutally harassed by the BH police
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while on his way, on foot, to visit his girlfriend, the daughter of a black
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family who had recently moved in a few doors down from the Walshes. Typical of
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the good, liberal, assimilationist manner in which _90210_ glosses all issues
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of ethnicity, we never saw these characters again after the _90210_ regulars,
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particularly Brandon, cast as a crusading reporter for the school newspaper,
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confronted issues of racism though contact with the featured black "guest
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characters." While the "Other" may get the occasional guest spot on the
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series, he or she is summarily excised after he/she has taught the _90210_ers
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some lesson about life. Such has been the fate not only of black characters,
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but of Chicano characters, gay characters, disabled characters, merely geeky
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characters...you get the idea. Similarly, though the writers from time to time
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emphasize the class differences within the core group of characters, the sorts
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of issues about class and status-consciousness that colored the series' first
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season, are for the most part wholly glossed over by the second season as the
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Walshes have somehow become more "at ease" with Beverly Hills.
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But still, we have to consider that which is simply not permissible in the
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L.A. that the _90210_ writers have so carefully constructed. You have no doubt
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noticed that I have yet to really mention the female characters of _90210_:
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Brenda, Kelly, Donna and, occupying a different space in the text as the token
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intellectual in the group, Andrea. Rather, it is the young male characters,
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their styles, activities focus the nostalgia subtext of the series. Not
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surprisingly, the nostalgia subtext of the series implies a gendered hegemony
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in which the existence of the female characters is determined by their
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re-action to the actions of the male characters, be they boyfriends, fathers,
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stepfathers, or just-friends, and by the clothes that they wear. In the
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contexts of the series, contemporary female adolescent ambition has been easily
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clawed back into "nice girls'" nearly exclusive obsessions with romance and
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fashion. What/who cannot exist, then, in the _90210_ world? Brandon's "fatal
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attraction" Emily Valentine, the dark side of postmodern teendom incarnate,
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that's who. The development and resolution of the Brandon Walsh-Emily
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Valentine romance is a crystal-clear example of the ideological implications of
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the "nostalgia" subtext of the series.
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When viewers last saw Emily Valentine, Brandon was paying her a Christmas
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visit in a mental hospital. When we first saw Emily Valentine, she was riding
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up to the doors of West Beverly Hills High School on her motorcycle. At this
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time, September 1991, _90210_ was at the height of its popularity. Emily
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Valentine had short, tousled, bleached blonde hair with dark roots, she dressed
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butch, was sexually aggressive, wore interesting earrings, turned both Dylan
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and Brandon on and, in short, was the only character on the show who might
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reasonably be expected to know the names of all the members of L7. Emily, we
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learned had a very un-Walshlike upbringing. Many of her emotional problems
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resulted from having been bounced from city to city, from Cambridge, to San
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Francisco, to L.A. to San Francisco, et cetera, whenever her father, identified
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only as an editor of radical newspapers and journals, took a new job. Emily,
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then, was coded as a nightmare child of the Sixties generation, as a "bad"
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postmodern teen.
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Nowhere in the series is the conservative function of show's nostalgia
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subtext more clearly illustrated in the 11.14.91 episode, "U4EA," in which
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Emily leads "the gang" on an excursion away from the safety of The Peach Pit
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into what is supposed to represent the druggy bowels of the LA club scene. The
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clip that I'm going to show you now highlights the way that this episode set up
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the contrast between the safety of _90210_-world and "the real world." (CLIP)
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Later in the episode, Emily slips Brandon some Ecstasy (or U4EA) under the
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pretense of "bringing them closer together." Brandon indeed experiences
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extreme U4EA, but ends up having to abandon his car outside the club when the
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joint is raided. When he and Dylan return for it early the next morning (even
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hung-over, Brandon must be at work at the Peach Pit by 7AM), they find the '65
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Mustang trashed and stripped. Moral: contemporary or "postmodern" LA is a
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dangerous place. This moral is emphasized over the next couple of episodes
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when Emily goes into _Fatal Attraction_ mode after Brandon breaks it off with
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her for dosing him. After she threatens to self-immolate on the Homecoming
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Float parked in the Walshes driveway, Emily finds herself in the custody of
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mental health professionals and that is that.
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The gang goes back to The Peach Pit and back to the beach where they
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remain, more or less firmly anchored to this day, even as the series, now in
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slow decline, has become more conventionally soap opera-like in its emphases.
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For example, in a juicy little intertextual bit from this past season's
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Brenda-Dylan-Kelly love triangle, we saw Dylan and Kelly frolic la James Dean
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and Natalie Wood (or is it la the video for that Paula Abdul song) outside
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Griffith Observatory.
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If we accept Fiske's and Hartley's assertion that the bardic utterances of
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television drama are organized and encoded "according to the needs of the
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culture for whose eyes and ears they are intended," and that the conventions of
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seeing and knowing that govern individual dramas code and (re)produce a
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culture's assumptions about the nature of reality or anxieties about the nature
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of "reality," then the realism of _90210_ is a fascinating realism. It is a
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dual realism. As a topical, and "meaningful" youthcult television series,
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_90210_ faithfully and pleasurably addresses issues of great concern to a
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teenage and young adult audience coming of age in a postmodern moment. But in
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a peculiarly postmodern fashion, the realism of the series turns back on itself
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to reveal that the mode in which television as a mediator of the postmodern
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chooses to deal with the postmodern and specifically with postmodern youth
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culture is le mode retro, a mode that implies inertia and containment, the end
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of ideology, politics, history. A mode that implies a flat-line panic about
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the future. This, for me, is the troubling thing about the "realism" of
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_90210_.
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_______ __________________________________________________________________
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/ _ _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842|
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((___)) |Cool Beans!..........415/648-PUNK|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362|
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[ x x ] |Metalland Southwest..713/579-2276|ATDT East...........617/350-STIF|
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\ / |The Works............617/861-8976|Ripco ][............312/528-5020|
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(' ') | Save yourself! Go outside! DO SOMETHING! |
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(U) |==================================================================|
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.ooM |Copyright (c) 1994 cDc communications and Crystal Kile. |
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\_______/|All Rights Reserved. 07/01/1994-#262|
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