The '90s were a weird time.
And HuffPost's Candice Frederick has a great new series, The '90s Notebook, about culture in that decade. There's tons to unpack: the 1992 L.A. riots and how comedy responded; the dominance of MTV and the conformity it promoted; the whiteness of fashion; the last great era of the movie soundtrack; and more.
We talked to Candice about the series, the '90s and what looking at past culture shows us about the present.
What inspired you to delve into the '90s for this series?
I'd just been reading so many one-off articles reappraising certain aspects of the decade that provoked so many feelings for me. Like, deep levels of self-reflection, very fond nostalgia and holding myself accountable as, essentially, part of the culture back then. After each one, I kept thinking something like "I remember this differently," or "There's far more context to that story or era," or simply "Yeah, that happened — and just like that." So I felt the need to sit and process these thoughts in a more comprehensive way with this series.
The '90s were an extremely formative decade for me, so naturally I feel some affection for it and instinctively want to explain or even defend it to those who weren't there, while at the same time still processing it on my own. But I think overall I am fascinated by the way memory works and reshapes events from the past.
The series is very much about me trying to dig into why certain things happened, or why certain people rose to prominence back then, through this pop culture analysis. Because it was (and remains) heavily influential. Also, as we continue to reflect on this time period, I am particularly interested in examining contradictions of humanity in the era of the morally resolute. We are far more complicated than I think we like to admit.
Things are not always black and white, and as I go through this series I realize that they never were. It's sitting in this reality that we have been both part of the solution and part of the problem — and giving ourselves grace as we process and maybe try to challenge that.
You wrote about both the good aspects of culture in the decade and the toxic ones. What are you most nostalgic for about the '90s?
So much! And of course nostalgia can conflate, and sometimes even erase, toxicity. But I think the clothes (Contempo Casuals was major for me) and the music (pretty much everything on MTV) immediately jump to mind. TGI Friday nights on ABC, changing up my braids every month. But I can listen to a song by the Goo Goo Dolls or Missy Elliott or TLC or Sheryl Crow and it can immediately bring me back to a certain moment. And that makes me smile.
All of the topics you reflect on are still relevant now, like toxic fandom, Black comedians' handling of race, and more. What do you think has changed most within what you wrote about?
I think social media has changed us irrevocably, for better and worse. Like you said, most things have remained the same, but the way we respond to those things — and the fact that we feel empowered to respond to them at all — is vastly different.
Plenty of folks talked about the way "In Living Color" really broke the mold back then, or that Abercrombie was hella white. But these things, including the white cis- and heteronormative almighty MTV, were so inherent in our culture that you almost forget that they happened. Like, there was little space to really examine how these things showed up and influenced an incredibly impressionable generation. And now we have the words to really discuss these things as they were.
I feel like words are emboldened more than ever these days, and I wanted to create space to really make good use of that as I reflect on one of the most misunderstood eras in history.
Ending on a fun note: You also wrote about film soundtracks. Can you recommend one?
Just one??? Since I have to choose, I'll say "Boomerang," because I had the cassette and played it right into the ground. Side A to Side B perfection.
