All Mixed Up

How to Subvert the Past

Welcome back to the wasteland!

This week’s post didn’t take a lot of time in the oven because I wanted to get it out as quickly as possible. The reason for that is because it’s not only a timely topic, but one I have a lot to say on. Today’s subject also contains several elements I’ve wanted to go over for some time now, and this is the perfect opportunity to discuss it all. I also recorded an hour long episode of the podcast on my Patreon on the subject, so you can also hear more about it here. Suffice to say, I had a lot to say about this topic.

I grew up in the 1990s. I think that’s very clear for anyone who has read anything from me. I am a member Generation Y (born in the ‘80s and grew up mainly in the ‘90s), also called the baffling moniker Older Millennial sometimes. My childhood memories are all encased in this decade, and impossible to remove from it. One of my own books, Y Signal, was set in 1995-1996 and I did my best to make it as accurate as possible for the story being told. Suffice to say, the decade means a lot to me, even if I am well aware of its flaws and criticize it all the time.

All this is to say that I loathe what the decade has been turned into in the modern age. Whether by my own cohort or not, it has been transformed into a theme park for bitter burnouts who also hate the era they are trying to profit off of.

I once covered the failed Netflix series Everything Sucks, which took place in 1996 and got absolutely everything wrong about it, from the fashions to the attitudes to just plain misunderstanding what normal people thought and believed back then. This turkey turned the decade into an amusement park ride of media kitsch and sarcastic eyerolls in order to sell a stock “finding yourself” story that has been told a million times before. In other words, the ‘90s shell was a cynical gimmick to sell garbage to both nostalgic adults and curious kids. The moral, as always, is that the past is terrible and you’ve always been miserable and will always be miserable in every era to come. That isn’t true, of course, but it’s the only reason these uncreatives use any 20th century time period to tell a story. They have no other story to tell.

Unfortunately, that failed series is not alone, as the video above highlights. In the years since, cynical nostalgia revisionism has only gotten worse. With the rise in physical media, vinyls making a comeback, and older TV and movies being enjoyed by younger generations than ever before, it is clear there is an interest in What It Was Like. Unfortunately this means propagandists and opportunists are using this thirst as a way to poison the well.

You might wonder why this subject annoys me so much, and I’ll tell you: I don’t like the decade I grew up in treated as a playhouse for cynical hipsters stuck in 2000s irony poisoning posturing to fool around in and lecture me over. This isn’t just about historical accuracy, but about general respect for both the people who lived in that era and those who want to know about it. Basically, I hate lying, and that’s all this amounts to.

I should also clarify that I’m not criticizing works that aren’t 100% accurate. That is not the argument being made. When doing a period piece, things will go wrong. It happens. The difference is in the authorial intent: why those inaccuracies exist.

For instance, I once read a Dean Koontz book that took place in 1997 or so and it was fairly accurate to the time period (which it had to be before the time jump to present times for the latter half of the story) and more or less got it right except for a single mention of Pokémon cards, which were not on these shores for another year. The author probably got them confused with the game and assumed they came out at the same time and would be just as popular. He mentioned other things that were correct from what I could recall, but that wasn’t. This, however, was not a big deal because Mr. Koontz tried and he did his best to treat the time period with basic respect. The book is good, too. Therefore, it doesn’t matter.

The opposite of the above example is a piece of hackwork that cynically exploits the time period as an aesthetic to cash in on blanket “nostalgia” to sell the audience phony memories and attempts to rewrite the past to suit their own selfish ends. Material like the above Everything Sucks is like this. It’s meant to sell a lie wrapped in a candy coating of an era it doesn’t understand. Another product like that failed series is the recent Mixtape movie-disguised-as-a-video-game.

For those unaware, Mixtape is a “video game” that was made to invoke ‘90s nostalgia, though from what I heard the writer director of it did not even grow up in America, where the thing takes place. Regardless, there’s no defined year, but you can parse it down to being around 1997 (again with that year) simply due to the music selections and the level of technology mentioned. There is no file sharing mentioned, which means it has to be before 1999. Though even that gets dicey (more on the subject later). The selling point of the game is to fool burnout adults into misremembering what the ‘90s were like and tricking Gen Z kids into thinking this is what it was really like back then. There is no other selling point here. Why else would you tell the story?

It certainly isn’t the gameplay, as there is basically none. I can’t even say the soundtrack is a selling point, because it is oddly chosen and extremely inaccurate to the time period. More on both of those later. For now it’s enough to say that “recapturing” the era is its selling point, so let us talk about how it fails at that before anything else.

Mixtape lives or dies on whether it successfully inspires nostalgia in ‘90s kids or not, so let me start this criticism out first as a ‘90s kid.

The story concerns soon to be high school graduates named Stacey, Slater, and Cassandra. They were supposed to go on a road trip, but Stacey (the game calls her by her last name “Rockford” for some reason instead of her first name) decided she needs to go to New York to catch some kind of soundtrack programmer (this plot point is very vague, I’m doing the best I can) by running into this woman she has never met randomly in the street so she can get a job making mixtapes as a Music Supervisor professionally. Therefore she has to leave tomorrow morning for this one extremely vague chance to define her future. Yes, this is the inciting event of the story.

I will talk about the absurdity around the music later, but for now I want you to remember that this is 1997. While she has a computer that certainly has Windows 95 on it, there is nothing saying she has the internet. It’s not even mentioned. Even if she had the dialup internet required, how would she know any of these things about this random music industry woman’s daily schedule she wants to run into? It’s never explained. Given that, again, this is before the internet was ubiquitous and there was no social media, coming across even vague information would not have been easy, never mind a random employee’s personal schedule in a place like New York. Anyone who lived in the 1990s in North America would know how hard it was to get any deeper information on anything you liked. Again, it isn’t even like the character is a computer whiz. It never comes up.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, by the way. No one talked the way any of these kids talked in the ‘90s. No one used the expression “Big if True” in the ‘90s. No one liked things ironically for “cheese” in the ‘90s. No one talked in stilted smirking above-it-all aphorisms that would make Joss Whedon blush in the ‘90s. All of this is hyper irony hipsterism that emerged out of the 2000s. The writing is no different than flops like Dustborn or Forspoken, or even older punching bags like Life Is Strange. Unless you believe teenagers have been talking exactly the same with no differences for the last 30 years, it’s obvious this is fake and put on.

Everything about this game is dated, not because of the era it’s supposed to take place in, but because it feels like a product of the empty-souled 2000s that produced a million Ramona Flowers wannabes. It would be like if the anti-80s slander of the ‘90s were still the default of today, or if tastemakers still stereotyped the ‘70s as disco world with giant mustaches. It’s an outdated frame that should have been discarded years ago, but still it persists.

The tired revisionist ‘00s hipsterism is what makes this fall so flat. The core trick is to present nostalgia full of winking nods to tell you that the person writing this is just as uninvested as you should be because nothing means anything. Don’t ever be invested, don’t ever stick your neck out and try, just do as little as possible and convince others that you should be rewarded for doing it, or, like, you know, realize it’s not for you. If ‘90s nostalgia is not for me, someone who grew up in the decade, then who is it for? I am the exact audience for this, which is why I’m going to tell you why it doesn’t work. The ‘90s might not have been a pristine decade, but it was not this dead-souled as outdated ‘00s irony hipsters portray it as. Accuracy should not be this hard.

Not to mention that there are countless hours of home movies from the 1990s, in contrast to previous decades, one could watch for research. It should be the easiest decade to get right, and yet is the one portrayed incorrectly the most. There are also actual films from the decade starring kids and teenagers one could watch, too. They might not be 100% accurate to the times, but they are far more accurate than nostalgia pieces being made today. When the kids from the Mighty Ducks sound more mature and realistic than these supposed teenagers do, in a zany kids comedy of all things, something is very wrong with what you’re doing. Fulton Reed might have had a ridiculous slapshot, but he still talked like a normal person. No one in Mixtape does.

All this to say is that I hate that ‘90s kids are not allowed to have our own Stand By Me or Wonder Years. By that I mean a TV show or movie that legitimately tries to adapt the time period as accurate as possible. We can’t even get a Dazed & Confused or That ‘70s Show (both made in the ‘90s, ironically), a more comedic take that at least treats the decade with respect. We can’t get anything at all that actually even tries. It’s all dated ironic hipster-brained slop from burnouts who can’t leave their warped 2000s philosophy behind. Instead of something made to try to understand the past of an era of real people, we get smirking backwash slop slathered in lies. It’s hard not to get even a little miffed at this repetitive pattern of disrespect.

The 90s kid factor is only part of it: what of the music? After all, the game prides itself on nostalgia for the ‘90s and music as well. Music is part of the title, even. Surely this means the soundtrack is a mix of songs teenagers from the ‘90s actually listened to. You have an unlimited budget for your “indie game” to get songs in perpetuity that not even Rockstar could get for the million selling blockbuster Grand Theft Auto games, after all. Accuracy here should be even easier with that crutch. How could it possibly fail on that level?

Well, it does. Spectacularly, even.

To be fair, Mixtape doesn’t fail because the songs are necessarily bad. It fails because it undercuts its own nostalgic selling point (the entire reason this is being made) by completely disconnecting with the music selection of what ‘90s kids listened to. Let me explain what I mean by this, because it’s hard to get across in only a few sentences.

The point of Mixtape is to sell nostalgia to a mass of people who actually lived in the time period in question. This means the soundtrack should have things teenagers listened to at the time, specifically delinquent loser kids since this is what the main character ostensibly is supposed to be. and yet the soundtrack comes across as, yet again, a 2000s hipster’s music selection. ‘90s kids did not listen to almost any of these songs. The game fails monumentally on getting this aspect right. It fails so badly it ruins any hint at nostalgia its trying for.

To get to the point: No teenager in 1997 was listening to music from 1969-1989. You might have been, as in you as an individual or a few of your friends, but this was not how teenagers listened to music in the ‘90s. It was a constant battle to be seen as fresh and cool. The ‘90s were defined by an endless series of fads and no one wanted to be the one caught listening to old stuff, because it meant you were not cool. That’s just how it was.

As an example, I had to convince a friend to listen to Led Zeppelin, of all things. He didn’t listen to “old music” back then. Beaming over discovering Boston’s self-titled in a used CD store was considered weird for a teenager. Isn’t that music for old people? None of the people I’m talking about were hipsters, either. Hipsterism wasn’t really a thing for teenagers. All of my examples were ordinary kids. They did not listen to old people music.

If you want to get the era right, the soundtrack should be songs from the era it was in that kids listened to. Even if its something as varied as Megadeth’s “Sweating Bullets” or Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept” or at least something that was playing on the radio in 1997. Rap, ska, swing, jangle pop . . . there was a lot, and Mixtape contains absolutely none of it.

The point is that this is what the majority of these kids listened to back then. If you want to connect through nostalgia then you need to connect to what the majority of the people at the time were doing, even if you weren’t. No teenager was putting Rainbow, Stan Bush, Rush, or Devo, on mixtapes in 1997. Kids at the time would have thought they were old people music. I know because I saw it for myself. You would have been seen as a massive weirdo for listening to “your parents’” music. It’s only in the 2000s with the combination of irony music hipsterism, file sharing, and the rise of video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, which helped introduce younger generations to this stuff that changed this perspective around. In the 90s, it was very different.

On top of this, there is the practicality of how a teenager in a small town would acquire this music in the first place. Vinyl was a relic and forgotten by teenagers in 1997 and cassettes were already fading. They bought CDs. If anything, the ‘90s were the decade of the CD. Therefore, the local music shop is probably the only way the main character is getting music, which would certainly only contain newer music since, again, vinyls were shoveled out by that time and not everything old had been re-released on CD yet. This is a lot to keep track of, but, well, of course it is. It’s a lot of work to get things right, but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t expect people to try.

If the answer to inaccuracies is “Don’t think about it” then why am I tasked to think about any of this? Does any of it matter at all? If it doesn’t then why was this made in the first place? If you aren’t taking the music seriously, then why should I?

Lastly, in regards to music, why does the main character have burned CDs in 1997? They barely existed then due to insane cot and availability, and were in no way common until the 2000s around the time file sharing was. I know because I was burning mix CDs myself at the time. Yes, they existed in extremely rare places, but again, this is not a common or shared experience. Most people only started burning CD once Napster blew up. Why are burned CDs in a nostalgia product that is trying to sell common and shared experiences? No mass group of people were making mix CDs in 1997. On top of it, why is the movie game then called “Mixtape“ at all then? The soundtrack used in the story is on a burned CD. It’s all so baffling.

This is also supposed to be a “video game” that takes place right in the center of the Golden Age of the medium, and yet video games play absolutely no role in the character’s lives. None of them, not even side character. Everyone in my class growing up in the ‘90s from kid to teenager played video games, owned a console, or knew someone who did. They were massively popular among the under 25 set. When Tony Hawk Pro Skater came out my entire class was buzzing about it, and that close to the time this movie game takes place in.

You have the premise of a nostalgic video game supposedly centered on the ‘90s and you don’t include your own supposed medium in it. I don’t even think the rental store included in the game carries video games. They’re just not there at all. Strange choice. Then again, Mixtape features none of what games at the time did. There is no challenge, no lives, no score system, and no fail states. So what makes it a game when it doesn’t contain what even Sierra adventure games from that same era had? It is possible to pass entire sections of this “game” without touching the controller. So why is it considered a “game” or “interactive” at all. It even gets the part where you rewind the cassette tape with a pencil wrong. It not only ignores video games as a medium, it isn’t one itself. No wonder game journos love it. They’ve wanted movies with minimal button presses instead of video games for decades now, and here is something that gives them the bare minimum.

We went through how Mixtape failed at reflecting the ‘90s, how it failed at using nostalgia, how it didn’t get the music right, and how it failed at being a video game or even paying tribute to them, so let’s move on to the last one: the writing.

The best way to describe the writing of Mixtape is that it’s written by someone who doesn’t remember the ‘90s, loves ‘80s “cheese” ironically, and still thinks ‘00s hipsterism is cool instead of annoying like it’s been for the last quarter century. No one acts like a person here. The main character is a vapid selfish idiot who talks like a listicle from Cracked circa 2004. Her guy friend is trying to channel Bill & Ted with quirk chungus random one-liners that make no sense while adding nothing to what little story is here. The two of them only seem to be friends because it’s convenient and have nothing in common aside from their generic hatred of normal people, because these stories always have to star losers and never actually contain normal people except to sneer at them. The other girl is possibly the worst one, a psychotic narcissistic airhead with anger problems brought on by a cartoon strict dad stereotype that folds the instant she threatens criminal activity on him. Every other character is a non-entity that all talk in the same repetitive cadence.

The story, such as it is, contains pointless asides, one-note minigames, and dialogue straight out of a Scott Pilgrim fanfic, all on the way to . . . nothing. Whatever story just ends suddenly because it decides to. There’s no real climax or satisfying denouement. It just stops. Perhaps you’re supposed to take away that life is fleeing so always take a chance. That might work if the main character didn’t initiate this story of leaving her hometown for a stupid reason that will never work out and would have been stopped if a single person had bothered to mention that impossibility. So no it’s a series of pointless absurdities that would have been easily avoided if anyone had decided to be what hipsters like these hate more than anything in the world: normal.

You see “normal” people have problems, too. They have fears, hopes, and dreams, and they actually do matter. “Freaks” who choose to be freaks, who choose to reject normality because they think they are above it, are not more interesting people for it. Those who fall through the cracks by accident or unwillingly, then work to find their way out of the dark, are more compelling characters than those who wear their deliberate anti-social posing like a badge. You could be normal but you chose different because you’re Special and Better. Good for you. You have nothing of substance to offer anyone, normal or on the fringes, because you just admitted to believing you are above them. You have no story to tell that will connect to those you dislike..

That, if anything, is the ultimate failure of Mixtape‘s story. It wants you to care about people who don’t care, people who would actually hate you. It wants sympathy for the unsympathetic. In short, it a whole lot of nothing for those who believe in nothing.

All of this comes around to the fact that right now the past is popular even with younger kids. They want to know it better. Products like Mixtape are trying to sell them a past that never existed. They’re lying to them to sell product and profit off a past they never experienced themselves. These kids are looking for honesty, for hope, and maybe a window into a world they never knew to add onto their own: and they’ll find none of that here. They can tell, too. You’ll find plenty of clips online of streams, reviews, and Vtubers, dogging it for its “Millennial writing and humor.” They can see through it all, and that’s certainly a good thing. It’s saying this doesn’t work anymore.

The original intent of this whole project, however, still rubs me the wrong way. It’s indicative of a generation that won’t move on, and I’m not talking about the 1990s. I’m talking about the revisionist brain worms that cause nonsense like this “game” to be made in the first place. That didn’t exist in the ‘90s and no one needs it to exist now.

Much has been made of “grifting” in the current entertainment spaces. One aspect of it not elaborated on is the reason it is so prevalent is because those doing it have no respect for the people they’re trying to wrestle money out of. They only want money and kudos from cliques of people like them. They have no interest in normal people, which is why they have no qualms fleecing them.

If these irony poisoned types don’t want to sell honesty, then what are they trying to sell and why is it so important that you buy it from them? Every piece of art exists for a reason. Why does this lie exist to do? Who is it for?

Nostalgia might be a feeling as much as it is a time and place, but if the feeling is built on a lie, then you have been lied to by the feeling. Lies are fake which in turn makes the nostalgia phony. To what end is this lie meant to take you? What benefit do you get beyond giving money for a product pumped out for consumption? How does it benefit you, in the end?

The reason I live in a wasteland is because of lies like Mixtape, because of those who care nothing of truth or honesty beyond what they can get materially. The reason ‘90s nostalgia exists is because so many people want to get away from the grifters crowding in on all sides to hose them and are looking for a window to a world different from this one. For the jailer, to sell the key to another cell, then lock it up and say the prisoner is now free, is an evil act. It is wrong.

You might ask why all this matters. Why do you care so much about your past, old man? It’s just a product: either consume it or shut up. I care because it’s fake, it’s cynical, and I am well within my right to loathe an attempt to cheaply exploit my past and lie to my face because it’s easy. Art should mean something, even a silly throwaway video game, and it is silly to not expect more. At some point we need to expect more than the bare minimum.

You deserve more than to be exploited. We all do, and asking for a little bit more from people you are giving money to should be normal. What is all this for, in the end, anyway?

Hopefully more than this.

Check out the 10th Anniversary issue of Cirsova for stories of fun action and adventure! My story Infinite Alley is in this one: a story of time loop madness in a cramped place. Check it out today!