The global isn’t over. The lighting devices remained on, the planes stayed in the sky, and when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, PC systems around the world were ready to handle the investment of the years that began with “19” and years. that started with “2” It’s not that the 365 days that followed needed help to be frantic: the 2000 error was a failure, but PCs were still controlled to wreak havoc, as their users were increasingly connecting broadband speeds in everyone else’s music libraries, available through the software. that would become the number one public enemy of the record industry in the middle of the year. He may simply argue until he feels sad about when a new decade, century or millennium begins, but with Peanuts expected to end in February 2000, the old 20th century blankets and protective blankets were already beginning to fade. one-handed. Meanwhile, the United States was about to decide on a new president; no one can suspect that resolution 2000 ultimately belonged to the U.S. Supreme Court.
But poorly labeled MP3 lists, the symptoms of comedian e-books and bizarrely drilled voting holes are just 3 portals to see through 2000. As is the culture of The A.V. The club’s annual summer flashbacks, we started the week of the year 2000 by rebuilding the year 20 years ago through the works, characters and pop culture occasions that explained it. It’s not a complete chronology, but a mosaic of art and media that shouts “Year 2000!” Today. To paraphrase an old piece of Late Night With Conan O’Brien that continued for (and even after) of the year in its title: it’s time, once again, to look back.
The past?
That’s right, let’s take a look back. Until 2000.
The year 2000 did not invent the unhappy enlightened brother, a beautiful culture of postmodern sadness that dates back to the days when “modern” meant, like ancient Rome. But in fact it provided a lot of fuel for the gloomy fire, either in the form of Dave Eggers’ meta-serious “memories,” a heartbreaking work of astonishing genius; Romantic Labyrinth by Mark Z. Danielewski, House Of Leaves; or Chris Ware’s technically impeccable monolith for his own misery, Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth. The literary works of genius all, laser directed on the type of reader (typically masculine) for whom the “genius” is the highest compliment, the 3 books have an undeniable price and merit. After all, it is not your fault that they have been thrown so close to each other, or that seeing the 3 on a user’s shelf constitutes a red flag so large that it is visual from space. Call it the best literary typhoon, for others who would never be surprised to see something as “pedestrian” as This summer’s perfect storm in theaters. [William Hughes]
In a year in which forecasts demanded chaos and uncertainty, The Sims arrived on time, providing a virtual ointment to the PC player who was thirsty for control. Electronic Arts has controlled to take advantage of the innate preference of the general public to play God with a derivative of Sim City that allowed users to create synthetic lives ranging from the banal to the absolute chaos. In its rapid popularity, The Sims served as a wonderful equalizer between budding players and skilled players: each player had theories about mapping the ideal home, getting the best task and combining the right cocktail of personality features to create the ultimate disgustingly rich character. . In addition, it is the infrequent game that placed PCs as the “console” of selection and laid the foundation for one of the most successful gaming franchises of all time. [Shannon Miller]
After a series of small strokes and a diagnosis of colon cancer, Peanuts author Charles Schulz announced his retirement in November 1999. But such is the upcoming regimen of writing paintings and drawing a strip of newspaper that new portions of the life of Charlie Brown and his friends continued to appear in the newspapers for a few months later, in the year of Peanuts’ 50th birthday. When the calendar pages passed, there was a snowball war for the New Year, Schulz’s hand was too shaky to make the lyrics, but his paintings are unmistakable in their content. (Snoopy looks at his ammunition with interest above the legend “Suddenly the dog learned that his father had never taught him to throw snowballs.”) Two days after his sleep, an honest sign from the cartoonist they called “Sparky” expressed his gratitude. to his readers, editors and characters – a letter played on the latest original Sunday Peanuts, surrounded by some of the band’s indelible photographs and jokes: the Flying Ace of World War I, Snoopy fleeing with Linus’ safety canopy (with Linus still attached) Array and old Charlie Brown, frozen in the air as Lucy pulls the ball out from underneath him. Schulz had been joking a little that those avatars of supernatural wisdom and boredom of the past 20th century would be him, and they did, occupying a place in the funny pages and seasonal queues of television, even today. But then there’s this: Charles M. Schulz died at the age of 77 on February 12, 2000, a day before Snoopy sat in front of his typewriter for the last time. [Erik Adams]
Groups separate and update members all the time, however, it’s hard for a public upheaval as brutal as Destiny’s Child: Beyoncé Knowles enthusiasts LeToya Luckett, LaTavia Roberson and Kelly Rowland ‘Bills Bills’ and ‘Bug-A-Boo’ enthusiastically listened to MTV and BET to watch the start of the ‘My Say Name’ video and locate two new faces Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin, instead of Luckett and Roberson. The news that Luckett and Roberson had been updated after accusing the band’s director (and Beyoncé’s father), Mathew Knowles, of retaining the band’s profits came as a surprise to everyone, adding Luckett and Roberson, who said they didn’t realize they were. not there until they watched the TV video like the rest of the world. And as it would be, Franklin would last only six months, and with the release of “Independent Women (Part 1)”, the new quartet was officially a trio. [Patrick Gomez]
Celebrity can be a type of bird and egg scenario: make the words “J”. Lo’s dress conjures layers of strategically draped gauze because Jennifer Lopez is noticed, or is Jennifer Lopez noticed by this dress reminiscent of Versace? Lopez was in the midst of her transition from famous actress to world superstar in 2000, and argues that the feeling she caused when she walked the red carpet at the Grammys that year was unintentional, her public relations must have been thrilled around the world. bleak reaction to his attire. The parodies were immediate, as Trey Parker of South Park paid tribute to “the dress” by dropping acid and going to the Oscars with the same design a month later. But his ultimate enduring contribution to pop culture takes the form of Google Image Search, which, according to Google Ceo Eric Schmidt, was encouraged through an increase in searches for photographs of Lopez in this impression of the open jungle the day after the ceremony. [Katie Rife]
Stephen King’s been hailed as something of a prophet over the past few years, first for having depicted the dangers of a Trump-like president in 1979’s The Dead Zone and then for his take on a government’s catastrophic pandemic response in 1978’s The Stand. But King was also at the forefront of another modern-day phenomenon: digital publishing. In 2000, King’s Riding The Bullet became the world’s first mass-market e-book, going on to sell more than 500,000 copies. Inspired by its success, the author thought to see what might happen if he uploaded a book to the internet without the help of a publisher. That’s when he started dropping chapters of a new novel, The Plant, online. “My friends, we have the chance to become Big Publishing’s worst nightmare,” he wrote on his website. Fans were asked to pay $1 for each chapter downloaded, though they could also download it for free, and if at least 75% of readers paid, he’d keep writing. The experiment started strong, but according to The New York Times, King bailed after less than half of readers paid for the sixth installment. A failed effort, perhaps, but one that reverberates today—the number of authors self-publishing digitally grows every year. [Randall Colburn]
Before Survivor brought the audience to Borneo, Making The Band ushered in the new era of real television, transporting the audience to an equally ruthless place: Orlando, Florida. From Bunim / Murray Productions – the Real World – Making The Band team implemented the voyeuristic lens of the MTV clip to global boy bands, especially the maker Lou Pearlman, Trans Continental Records, founded on Sunshine State, which gave birth to Romulus and Remus from their millennial pop tour, Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync. Telegraphing his sense of media and his penchant for (often illegal) plots, Pearlman was the unlikely anchor of the series, as youngsters competed for five spots in their next organization of troubled children. Although the screen season was released to MTV (and then gave the reins to Diddy), Making The Band represented netpaintings tv’s pioneering foray into narrative and un scripted programming, bringing the genre to the general public while crystallizing our obsession with young pop idols. It should be noted that the result of the paintings of the first season of Making The Band was O-Town, whose ultimate logo lasting in pop culture is “Liquid Dreams”, a hit full of innuendos that can still blush to the listener. [Cameron Scheetz]
20/20 Retrospective: The more than two decades have given Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich enough to recognize that appearing at Napster headquarters and offering around 335,435 usernames that would have downloaded Metallica tracks on the service was perhaps not the smartest PR decision. of all time.” But that’s how things got worse in the weirdest, most surprising music fight of 2000, when anti-authorities like Ulrich and Dr. Dre seemed to look like their labels (or at least their lawyers) compared to their fans, attesting to the Senate and the courtroom that recorded the biggest leap in music evolution since MTV robbed them of album sales and copyright. Never think that the lead artist on the mission soundtrack of Mission: Impossible II (that’s how all this caught Ulrich’s attention and society in the first place) was the last to be really harmed through online wrestling; that satirical beards in both aspects of Metallica v. Napster department gave the impression that all parties involved had looked too much at South Park. In the end, the advertising tricks and sketches of the VMA simply distracted the real culprits who killed the advertising single, increased the costs of CDs and continued to adopt a more intense contentious pose. Ulrich’s “street fight” tactic. [Erik Adams]
In 2000, Oprah Winfrey made her mark on television, e-book clubs and sometimes film tickets. So why not the magazine headlines too? Media mogul presented O, The Oprah Magazine with a discreet canopy where Winfrey herself relaxes in a chair. The name read: “Live your best life / Start here, now,” which worked as a project for both factors to follow. Or he presented some of Oprah’s favorite things, such as Ottoman trays and comfortable pajamas, as well as recipes, e-book recommendations and various tactics to eat healthily, talk wonderfully and disband, all with the goal of attracting her readers (especially women) to their ideal maximum existence. Or she turned the television personality Oprah into a lifestyle guru, and with wonderful success: she surpassed the sales of more established women’s magazines a few months after its release, and lasted at a time when many print publications have declined or even disappeared altogether. Oprah highlighted her involvement in the magazine by appearing, solo or with a special guest like Michelle Obama, both in one and both canopy for more than 20 years, with a remarkable and recent example. The Cover O of September 2020 features a portrait of Breonna Taylor through the artist Alexis Franklin, along with the descriptor “Murdered by the Police / His Life Matters” and a quote from Winfrey herself: “When you turn to the blind aspect of racism, you become a partner of it. [Gwen Ihnat]
Is David Arquette guilty of WCW’s unhappy death? You’ll hear it. After all, the company was acquired through WWE less than a year after the actor became their world heavyweight champion. However, to say this is to forget about the other points of its decline. Careless and overly inflated payment days, for example. Or the lack of oversight of its main stars. Or, for God’s sake, that Jay Leno game in 1998. David Arquette did not destroy WCW, however, his triumph in the call and the upcoming consequences are indicative of this era of abuse of the struggle by celebrities, and the growing displeasure of the public for her. What made Arquette’s victory so bratty was not that it was Arquette, but was little more than a marketing trick for Ready To Rumble, a forgettable comedy that, in the call of consumerism, took over the constant booking. However, the outrage over Arquette’s victory is almost quaint two decades later. These days, WWE sacrifices its daily wrestlers for celebrities, whether it’s semi-retired legends like The Rock and Goldberg or actors like Stephen Amell of Arrow, who might not be there the next night. Arquette deserves to have been a lesson, however, today’s WWE is as in love with celebrities as WCW. And the numbers keep going down. [Randall Colburn]
The televisive hitale of gay kisses on screen spans only a few decades (its story of openly gay characters doesn’t go back much further), starting with the modest same-sex kiss between L.A. Law’s bisexual character, C.J. Lamb, and a direct colleague; this pairing got nowhere. Mariel Hemingway planted one for a selfless Roseanne in 1994, but the most common thing is for her to laugh. It wasn’t until 2000 that the prime-time audience witnessed a gay kiss that seemed even passionate from afar. The youth drama Dawson’s Creek saw Jack McPhee (Kerr Smith) temporarily explore his sexual orientation from the beginning, but in the end of the third season, “True Love”, he shared his emotions with his girlfriend/prom, Ethan (Adam Kaufman). , and sealed the admission with a kiss. He is chaste compared to what the boys would do in Showtime’s Queer As Folk adaptation later in the year, and he performed through two heterosexual actors, however, it remains a vital step in LGBTQ representation on television. And that almost didn’t happen: the WB first fought showrunner Greg Berlanti for transmitting the kiss. Only when he threatened to leave, the net gave way and some other barriers broke. [Danette Chavez]
No one, adding to executive manufacturer Mark Burnett, knew what to expect when they placed 16 Americans in Borneo and asked them to do so. Or rather, Burnett’s Survivor was expected to look a little more like the Swedish series on which it relied, Expedition Robinson, on which the competition judged their survival skills more than their strategy. But at the premiere of Survivor on May 31, it became clear that U.S. competition would put alliances in a price above merit when they voted for a $1 million prize. The competition-reality strategy was in its infancy (a candidate actually voted for others in alphabetical order), however, the audience temporarily invested in building alliances and backstabs, with 51.7 million people who logged in on August 23 to see, as the bitter jury Sue Hawk put it. it. Array Richard “The Snake” Hatch devours Kelly “The Rat” Wiglesworth. Forty seasons later, and it’s still hard to finish that first outing. [Patrick Gomez]
In the late 1990s, superhero films appeared to be strictly child-only, and Joel Schumacher’s Batman-Robin camp festival seemed to put the ultimate nail in the coffin of the heroes of the film comedian e-books in 1997. (Give or take a Blade.) Therefore, it is a lesser miracle that the X-Men have been given the soft green, and even larger than him, as intelligent as he is. Of course, the effects have aged poorly and their speed is frankly lumpen compared to today’s MCU shots. But as our own Tom Breihan said of this agile advent and average budget of mutants on the big screen, “it essentially created a rough style for the Marvel cinematic universe 8 years before its birth. And it showed that, in fact, there’s room for that, for the serious, superhero. Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm and Rogue were superheroes of a more fashionable era, with their mature discussion and cool black leather outfits. Honestly, what would you prefer, yellow spandex? [Alex McLevy]
“Apparently, there’s another exhibit across the street, but it’s sold out.” The speaker: Rage Against The Machine singer Zack de los Angeles Rocha. The “other exhibition” was the 200 Democratic National Convention at staples Center in Los Angeles, for which the political-minded organization provided a counterprogramming, giving an informal concert in the fenced “protest zone” that served as a buffer among the protesters. and delegates. Despite a large police presence (some loaded with tear-fuel canisters) and a crowd of noisy spectators, everything seemed rather non-violent, until the government ordered the crowd to disperse at the end of the exhibition, prompting “an illegal gathering.” The resulting closure between the police and the crowd resulted in what the losers called a “mini mutiny,” with police firing rubber bullets at fleeing supporters. At the time, observers compared the occasion to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago; By 2020, you are very unlikely to look at the photographs and not think about protesters attacked by police and unidentified federal forces in American cities today. Different decades, the same dissenting soundtrack: when citizens took to the streets this summer to ask for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other victims of state-sanctioned violence, Rage Against’s 1992 self-titled album was reinstated on Billboard Two. album of a hundred graphics. [Gwen Ihnat]
The next time you feel failed, think of it that way, at least you’re not the Blockbuster executive who stopped buying Netflix. This unfortunate moment in media industry history was made public through former Netflix monetary leader Barry McCarthy in 2008, when he revealed in an interview that he and a handful of Netflix executives had traveled to Dallas to meet with blockbuster’s then-CEO, John Antioco, in 2000. There, they submitted to sell Blockbuster the Netflix call and let Netflix manage the online presence of the video channel. The sale price? $50 million. Blockbuster said no. 20 years later, Netflix is valued at $194 billion, while Blockbuster drinks with a single store in Bend, Oregon. However, this is rarely the most humiliating component of the story: after rejecting Netflix, Blockbuster signed an exclusive 20-year on-demand video contract with Enron (yes, this Enron), who, when not hiding his cooked books under Star Wars references, hoped to break into telecommunications. Do you feel better about your choices? [Katie Rife]
While it is true that it cannot argue the validity of the MTV Video Music Awards, the annual exhibition has long been a forged opportunity for artists to squander their biggest and craziest concepts, which are probably too complicated or too heavy for Recording Academy quilts. Shirts. Array The list of performers of the VMA 2000 is a microcosm of some of the most enduring pop artists of the time, who are added ‘N Sync, Christina Aguilera and Nelly. But it was Britney Spears who made the biggest mark that night (more or less with Rage Against The Machine, Tim Commerford climbing the landscape to protest Limp Bizkit’s victory for the most productive rock video), arriving at Radio City Music Hall with the project of getting rid of his unimpeachable image. and introduce a new era of pop celebrities. And he completed all this by cutting a torn dress to reveal a dazzling flesh-colored bra before making a song with a similarly stripped arrangement of “Oops…” I Did It Again.” Although the dress was thought to be a debatable selection for an still emerging pop princess, the courageous performance, advanced choreography and ability to command a production on such a large scale cemented her prestige as an industry icon. She also set a higher bar for this specific stage, one that only she provided After that, is no longer a question about whether Britney would honor the VMA scene, but how she would overcome herself and what she would put in doing so. [Shannon Miller]
Although Eminem was too pleased to use his radio-friendly contemporaries as fodding for his infamous demolitions, the rapper looked more like them in 2000 than he wanted to admit. The bleached effect and the iconic white tank top? The oversized adjustment ego known as Slim Shady? He had become a pop star, and the Marshall Mathers LP’s record good fortune only cemented his transition from an incendiary paria to a classic style of disgruntled (white) men. For better or worse, Eminem was fully aware of his public belief and tried to dissect this new fame into perhaps his ultimate feat of productive storytelling. With a sample of “Thank You” through Dido, “Stan” uses two perspectives to tell the story of a narrow Shady devotee who becomes uncontrollable when his fan mail receives no response, ignored by the user he cares most about. The tragic conclusion of the song makes it even more ironic that this dark parable of celebrity obsession has given An Oxford and Merriam-Webster an approved call to incredibly unwavering fandoms. Lacking its original context, being a fan is now a source of pride, which says both about reducing Eminem’s cultural importance and about our culture of destructive celebrity worship. The stars would possibly fade, but “Stan” is eternal. [Cameron Scheetz]
America was not far enough down the road of blending politics and celebrity to elect a reality-show host president in 2000. But a few more bricks were laid when Bush v. Gore became the biggest political story of the new millennium in November 2000. As news of the Florida recount disseminated, first through news channels and then late-night monologues, two humble specks of paper emerged as the stars of this drama: the hanging chad, or a paper punch that didn’t completely separate itself from a paper ballot, and the pregnant chad, or a punch that didn’t go all the way through the paper, leaving only an indentation. As often happens, over time these technical terms became pop culture punchlines, gradually transforming from an existential crisis for the American electoral system to a recurring bit on How I Met Your Mother by the end of George W. Bush’s first term. [Katie Rife]
There had never been good luck as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and there has not been since. Ang Lee’s radical and romantic return to the wuxia genre came to American cinemas a few weeks before Christmas, expanding into a huge stream and generating more than $100 million at the national box office. Had the Matrix, launched a year earlier, aroused America’s appetite for ballistic kung fu display, regardless of the language spoken through its martial artists? Or is it possible that no language barrier extinguishes the strength of Chow Yun-fat’s smoking star, Michelle Yeoh, and a young Zhang Ziyi, in its small-group functionality? Whatever the explanation, a country traditionally opposed to subtitles has gone out en masse to see an epic, talkative, meditative and shameless adventure of yesteryear made entirely of Mandarin. Twenty years later, no film made in another country and in a language other than English is one shot away from the unprecedented American recipes of Crouching Tiger, not even that new, runaway one, that will attract crowds in Asia. (Parasite will have to settle for some other ancient milestone, which Lee’s blockbuster cannot claim; he lost the biggest hit in the Hollywood Sword Show of the Year, Gladiator.) [A.A.A. Dowd]
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