The 2000s: Hindsight is 10/10 - Postmortem

Note: This is the conclusion of my ongoing series of my top ten albums and movies of the 2000s. The links are as follows:

My Number 10s
My Number 9s
My Number 8s
My Number 7s
My Number 6s
My Number 5s
My Number 4s
My Number 3s
My Number 2s
My Number 1s

This project started from an insight that was music-based. It was inspired by a realization that the reason I am forever enamored by 80s British Indie (or anything that sounds like 80s British Indie) is because it was the kind of music I was hearing back when my innocence was still relatively intact.

This project turned out to be more film-centric. If I was honestly going to try to understand what this decade meant to me in terms of pop culture, I had to look at the things that I loved most during that span of time. And in this case, it was film. The top 3 on this list ("Lost In Translation", "Before Sunset", and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") could easily be my top 3 of ALL TIME, regardless of decade.

So what these two Top 10 lists ultimately say is that, in the 2000s, music was mediocre while film truly rocked. Film, as it turns out, is my new British Indie. "Lost In Translation" is my new The Sundays. Sofia Coppola is my new Harriet Wheeler.

Or at least that's how it seems to be.

I was hoping to get some perspective out of these two top 10 lists. Instead, they left me cold. On the surface, it tells me that I was very much into melancholic art, naturalism, and minimalism. But I don't know what that means. I'm not sure what my favorite things say about me. I'm not sure about that anymore.


My favorite book right now is the one I'm reading: Chuck Klosterman's "Eating the Dinosaur". My favorite quote from that book, by far, is this (emphasis mine):

"The more media someone consumes, the more likely they are to take their interpersonal human cues from external, nonhuman sources. One of the principal functions of mass media is to make the world a more fathomable reality - in the short term, it provides assurance and simplicity. But it has a long-term, paradoxical downside. Over time, embracing mass media in its entirety makes people more confused and less secure."

In four sentences, Chuck Klosterman was able to explain why my lists were both confusing and elucidating. Confusing, because it turns out I was seeking comprehension through "nonhuman sources". Elucidating, because it now makes sense why I've been clinging to pop-culture, not just in this decade, but throughout my entire conscious life: it has made my life "a more fathomable reality".

The 2000s were just a continuation of that trend. I have fallen in love six times this decade and have experienced heartbreak more than twice as much. All of those experiences were tough to grasp and swallow. But watching Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray kiss each other goodbye made more sense. Watching Ethan Hawke spill his guts out to Julie Delpy after eight years of separation was easier to do. Seeing Maggie Cheung look lost after Tony Leung walks away was far clearer and unmistakable than all the exits I've encountered in this decade combined.

When I started digesting pop artforms in the 80s, the memories they carried were vague and bordering on fake, which makes them pleasant up to this day. But now, more than 20 years have passed. Pop culture has a long-term paradoxical downside. As I digest these pop artforms as a 30-something fan, all I see are memories that are real but no are no less vague. I have all these experiences vaulted in my head that are getting increasingly disparate from the vast discographies and filmographies stashed in the same cluttered space. And the distinctions between the ideals and the realities are getting more and more blunt.

I'm not sure how much the items on my list reflect either of those two distinctions. Did I like Death Cab For Cutie's "Marching Bands of Manhattan" because it reflected the reality of a specific heartbreaking experience or because it represented an ideal emotional clarity that the specific heartbreaking experience lacked? Did "Before Sunset" and "Lost In Translation" portray my ideal romance? Or did those two movies construct my ideal romance? Am I even capable of thinking or feeling anything that weren't constructed by pieces of pop culture?

I can deconstruct all the songs and all the movie scenes that I loved for the past 10 years, but none of them would get any clearer. I will always view them through a filter that was created two decades ago; that same filter through which I listened to all of those songs by The Railway Children, The Smiths, New Order, Prefab Sprout, and The Sundays. I will always inevitably demand a more fathomable reality from the world. As I grow older, the more will its antithesis become apparent. And I better get used to it.

In closing this project, I feel like quoting Death Cab For Cutie this time (since they were the only band to appear on my list twice, I think they've earned it):

"So this is the new year...and I don't feel any different.
So this is the new year...and I have no resolutions".

Do I like this song because it expresses how I feel? Or do I like this song because it expresses what it makes me feel? I'm not sure anymore. This is the new decade. And I (still) have no resolutions.