What Were the Aughts?

Every recent decade in American life has a distinct persona in my mind. These personas are of course oversimplified, but I think they do get at each decade's overall zeitgeist.

For instance, the 1950s were a time of delirious, family-friendly, button-down conformity, celebrating, in a very PG-rated way, a sudden surplus after decades of depression and war. It was about cheerful bouncy-haired housewives in impeccable dresses delighting in their ironing, while their gray-suited and gray-fedora-ed husbands with square jaws stopped at bars for cocktails on the way back from their jobs in insurance. Children in coonskin caps were wowed by musicals and cowboy movies, and the dark underbelly of life was carefully sequestered from view.

Again, this is a necessarily oversimplified view. I realize that this does not at all describe the situation for African-Americans under the thumb of Jim Crow, for example. This is more the image of the decade as it wanted to be seen.

The 1960s represented a dramatic overthrow of the 1950s, as those kids ditched their coonskin caps in favor of sex, drugs, and political awareness. Baby boomers experienced their youthful rebellion phase in a big, dramatic way. Bland conformity was replaced by wild experimentation. Patti Page was replaced by Janis Joplin. Tucked-in shirts and buzz cuts were replaced by bell bottoms and long hair. The swellness of Eisenhower was replaced by the idealism of hippies. Everything was up for reinvention.

By the 1970s, the idealism of the 1960s waned but the sex and drugs kept going strong, making for a sleazy decade. The 1970s were about the dark side of the new cultural freedoms, often to great artistic effect, like in movies like "Taxi Driver" or the music of the Sex Pistols. But just as often, the new cultural freedoms were taken too far, resulting in a sort of desperate, grainy, pea-green-and-mustard-colored depravity. The decade was a like a 30-year-old guy who is still partying like he did in his college days. There are still a lot of interesting things to explore, but it all takes on a sadder cast, gaining an undercurrent of dashed aspirations, of hanging on too long, of needing more and more stimulation to get the same old feeling.

In the 1980s, the baby boomers switched back to the clean, family-friendly ethos of the 1950s. Children were again central to culture. Movies were Spielberg instead of Scorsese. Music was Michael Jackson instead of Led Zeppelin. "The Cosby Show" replaced "All in the Family." Shameless consumerism was back in a big, shiny way. This time, the self-indulgence that characterizes baby boomers translated into a lust for money instead of sex and drugs.

As the baby boomers finally receded from a central place in culture in the 1990s, their children, Generation X, made their mark. This time, the self-indulgence that had characterized each of the last three decades was criticized, if not exactly overturned. Grunge rejected consumerism. Liberal idealism was again on the rise. Irony replaced sentimentality. It was time for independent film, fancy coffee, and flannel shirts. I don't know if this attitude lasted the whole decade, but if you had to pick one ethos from the 1990s, I think this would be it.

And then you have the Aughts, from 2000-2009, which were ... what? Terrorism and Bush dominated politics, but I don't really have a good idea of what the culture at large was. I can't give you iconic movies or TV shows or music. It just seems like there was a lot of everything. Am I wrong here? I suspect I am  -- I suspect I'm sort of like baby boomers in the 1990s, to old to be relevant or even terribly aware. Any ideas?