90210 Outtake
I'm writing a story for Netscape pegged to the demise of The O.C. I cut out the following tangent on 90210; I'm pasting it here to remind myself to revisit this theme someday.
For those who haven’t caught up with Aaron Spelling’s masterwork lately, here’s a brief refresher. The first three of the show’s ten seasons focused on Brandon and Brenda Walsh, Minnesota-bred teenage twins played by Jason Priestley and Shannon Doherty, who are transplanted to Southern California when their accountant father gets a promotion. Though 90210 devolved into a sub-par soap theatrics sometime shortly after the gang graduated from West Beverly High, the show was praised early on for its ability to deal with “serious issues” such as poverty, substance abuse and AIDS and still attract teens with its soapy packaging and cool veneer.
A typical episode had straight-arrow Brandon, apparently the only white teenager in Los Angeles whose parents demand he pay his own car insurance, getting a job as a bus boy in a trendy L.A. restaurant with a kitchen full of undocumented workers. When Brandon discovers his comrades are making less than minimum wage, he raises noble hell about the working conditions and quits. Just then, Brandon’s rich schoolmates Dylan happens to stop by the restaurant, invites Brandon to take a ride in his mint condition 356 Porsche Speedster, and hooks him up with a job as a waiter at a non-corporate 50’s theme diner staffed with white people. Brandon thus gets to take a stand against immigrant exploitation and quit a job that violates his principles, and simultaneously find salvation for both his bank account and his pride in an imaginary space based on 50s cultural myth. Beverly Hills 90210, at its peak, pretended to be about the lives of ordinary kids in a extraordinary setting; in actuality, it was about extraordinarily self-rightous teens in alternate reality which filtered early-90s culture through Baby Boomer nostalgia.
For a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon, see an excellent essay in the academic journal Bad Subjects, in which author Crystal Kile pins 90210’s nostalgic bent on pre-millenial tension.
For those who haven’t caught up with Aaron Spelling’s masterwork lately, here’s a brief refresher. The first three of the show’s ten seasons focused on Brandon and Brenda Walsh, Minnesota-bred teenage twins played by Jason Priestley and Shannon Doherty, who are transplanted to Southern California when their accountant father gets a promotion. Though 90210 devolved into a sub-par soap theatrics sometime shortly after the gang graduated from West Beverly High, the show was praised early on for its ability to deal with “serious issues” such as poverty, substance abuse and AIDS and still attract teens with its soapy packaging and cool veneer.
A typical episode had straight-arrow Brandon, apparently the only white teenager in Los Angeles whose parents demand he pay his own car insurance, getting a job as a bus boy in a trendy L.A. restaurant with a kitchen full of undocumented workers. When Brandon discovers his comrades are making less than minimum wage, he raises noble hell about the working conditions and quits. Just then, Brandon’s rich schoolmates Dylan happens to stop by the restaurant, invites Brandon to take a ride in his mint condition 356 Porsche Speedster, and hooks him up with a job as a waiter at a non-corporate 50’s theme diner staffed with white people. Brandon thus gets to take a stand against immigrant exploitation and quit a job that violates his principles, and simultaneously find salvation for both his bank account and his pride in an imaginary space based on 50s cultural myth. Beverly Hills 90210, at its peak, pretended to be about the lives of ordinary kids in a extraordinary setting; in actuality, it was about extraordinarily self-rightous teens in alternate reality which filtered early-90s culture through Baby Boomer nostalgia.
For a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon, see an excellent essay in the academic journal Bad Subjects, in which author Crystal Kile pins 90210’s nostalgic bent on pre-millenial tension.
posted by karina at
11:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home