Vanity Fair have a really interesting article about the design rut Fashion, arts, entertainment, popular culture, style etc finds itself in and why.

It’s easy to say “fashion’s cyclical”, but Kurt Anderson’s article nicely reminds us that it didn’t use to be so; and it’s easy to think about the innovations in technology that have driven us forward, leaps and bounds, in the last 20 years (or even 10, as a recent article referred to on TheScrapBook reminded us)… but actually this “progress” is a fallacy – we’ve not moved on. Not in the last 20 years, we havent.

I have long thought about defining recent decades in terms of significant musical innovations. It’s no a hard and fast science, and I wont pretend that my timings are accurate nor specific to the year, but consider these broad moments of decade defining/influencing popular musical history:

1947 – Rock’n'Roll

1957 – Rock music

1967 – Disco

1977 – Punk

1987 – Dance music (even that’s

1997 – ? Sampling culture? Maybe…

2007 – ?? Erm…

Perhaps Hip Hop is 2007+ given its ubiquity today… but it’s surely more 1987+? And that’s part of the point that Anderson’s article makes. Certainly, “Sampling culture” plays into that hand.

This broad decade-defining should cause lots of debate (which I welcome), and I admit I’m brushing over all sorts of sub-genres – New Romantic, Pop, Grunge etc etc etc – to make the point, but to refer to Anderson again, the last 20 years has not been innovative in music, and where it has it’s been exceptions that prove the rule.

Below is an excerpt of Anderson’s article about the stagnation of popular culture over the last 20 years, and I urge you to read the full piece.

Try to spot the big, obvious, defining differences between 2012 and 1992. Movies and literature and music have never changed less over a 20-year period. Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna, Adele has replaced Mariah Carey—both distinctions without a real difference—and Jay-Z and Wilco are still Jay-Z and Wilco. Except for certain details (no Google searches, no e-mail, no cell phones), ambitious fiction from 20 years ago (Doug Coupland’s Generation X, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow) is in no way dated, and the sensibility and style of Joan Didion’s books from even 20 years before that seem plausibly circa-2012…

If, in 1990 or 1980 or 1970, you’d examined a comparable picture from 27 years earlier—from 1963 and 1953 and 1943, respectively—it would be a glimpse back into an unmistakably different world. A man or woman on the street in any year in the 20th century groomed and dressed in the manner of someone from 27 years earlier would look like a time traveler, an actor in costume, a freak. And until recently it didn’t take even that long for datedness to kick in: by the late 1980s, for instance, less than a decade after the previous decade had ended, the 1970s already looked ridiculous.

There are, of course, a few exceptions today—genuinely new cultural phenomena that aren’t digital phenomena—but so few that they prove the rule. Twenty years ago we had no dark, novelistic, amazing TV dramas, no Sopranos or Deadwood or The Wire or Breaking Bad.Recycling bins weren’t ubiquitous and all lightbulbs were incandescent. Men wore neckties more frequently. Fashionable women exposed less of their breasts and bra straps, and rarely wore ultra-high-heeled shoes. We were thinner, and fewer of us had tattoos or piercings. And that’s about it…

Part of the explanation… is that, in this thrilling but disconcerting time of technological and other disruptions, people are comforted by a world that at least still looks the way it did in the past. But the other part of the explanation is economic: like any lucrative capitalist sector, our massively scaled-up new style industry naturally seeks stability and predictability. Rapid and radical shifts in taste make it more expensive to do business and can even threaten the existence of an enterprise. One reason automobile styling has changed so little these last two decades is because the industry has been struggling to survive, which made the perpetual big annual styling changes of the Golden Age a reducible business expense. Today, Starbucks doesn’t want to have to renovate its thousands of stores every few years. If blue jeans became unfashionable tomorrow, Old Navy would be in trouble. And so on.

Capitalism may depend on perpetual creative destruction, but the last thing anybody wants is their business to be the one creatively destroyed. Now that multi-billion-dollar enterprises have become style businesses and style businesses have become multi-billion-dollar enterprises, a massive damper has been placed on the general impetus for innovation and change.

“A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

Psycho (1960)

If We Dont, Remember Me is a beautiful, poignant and not un-creepy collection of film clip GIFs and quotes. I’ve put the freakiest ones after the jump,  but there’s a sexy one in there for you too.

Funny and insightful article about running and films, by Mark Oppenheimer at The Believer magazine.

No American eight-year-old thinks it would be cool to be a distance runner someday. If he becomes one, it is not the realization of a dream, but the acceptance of reality…

In cross country, even championships are a bit disheartening, even when you win. There is no World Series–style pile-on. And there will be no cheering, for cross-country running takes place almost entirely out of sight of the fans, who can see the action only at the starting and finish lines. And, therefore, there are no fans, save the runners’ girlfriends. But they have no girlfriends, because they are runners. Or perhaps they are runners because they have no girlfriends.

Read the full article, exploring nerds, mediocrity, Runner’s World, Marathon Man,  Juno, Chariots of Fire, flight vs fight, and resort-town nymphs.

I’m crying with laughter. Genius comedy intro from Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes 2011.

“It’s going to be a night of partying and heavy drinking or as Charlie Sheen calls it – breakfast!”

“Seems like everything was 3D this year, except for the characters in The Tourist!”

Further highlights include:

“Please welcome Ashton Kutcher’s Dad – Bruce Willis”

“(referring to Mark Zuckerberg’s $7bn net worth) Heather Mills calls him ‘the one that got away’”

“Iron Man… Kiss, Kiss, (Bang, Bang)… Two Girls And A Guy… What are they? Pornos?… He has done all those films, but many of you in this room probably know him from such facilities as the Betty Ford Clinic and Los Angeles County Jail. Robert Downey Junior!”

None of those beat “The Walking Dead” gag about Hugh Hefner, though! (Combined with De Niro’s face!)

Brilliant.

Someone’s posted Jorgen Leth’s A Sunday in Hell on youtube. Not sure it’ll be up there for long… take a look, classic stuff!!

…beautifully shot short to accompany Rapha’s recent collaboration with Paul Smith.

BASSWEIGHT is a feature length documentary that offers an unparalleled insight into the subterranean world of Dubstep.

Skream, Benga, Kode9 and Mary Anne Hobbs are just some of the key players who have contributed, reflecting on the movement they’ve helped shape.

Find out more here: www.thesrk.com

You can pre-order your copy now at: www.bassweightdvd.com

“A beautiful snapshot of a fledgling scene.. you can feel the energy and the momentum in every frame.. ”
Mary Anne Hobbs

“One of the best documentaries made about the full spectrum of Dubstep.”
Kode9

“Bassweight could mark an important shift in how breaking-music scenes are presented.”
Kieran Yates (Guardian Music Blog)

“Best depiction of the Dubstep sound and culture yet.”
Joe Muggs (mixmag)

“Everyone seems to have a view on what dubstep is these days, but this is one of the first real insights to the genre on film”
Benjamin Hill (MTV / The Wrap Up)

Useful reference of “interesting” and “creative” things currently being memed around the internet.  The usual augmented reality, word-clouds, projections and interactive videos are paired with new examples, grouped into areas of Audio, Movies, Visual, Art, Physical, Light, Tech, Politics, Sport, Books, History, and of course straight up, old fashioned, Advertising.

MAXENCE CYRIN – piano covers of pop-ish tunes, and lays them over silent movie clips. The above clip is Pixie’s Where Is My Mind coupled with “The mysterious Lady” (1928) with the great Greta Garbo.

Also does covers of Daft Punk, Beyonce and others. Maxence Cyrin’s new album “Novö Piano” is out soon.