Why the 2000s are dominating books, music, and movies today.
On a recent episode of Anne-Helen Peterson’s Culture Study podcast, the author Xochitl Gonzalez waxed nostalgic for the end of the Bush years. Working in New York at the time, the author of Last Night in Brooklyn recalled edgy fun in public parks, livable working conditions in media, civil political discourse, and a robust, creative nightlife.
“When was the last time that the economy felt so hopeful, and the country felt so hopeful, and everything felt abundant?” Gonzalez mused. Then she answered her own question. In 2007, “you really could have a life.”
This was all by way of introduction. Last Night in Brooklyn, the third book in the author’s “informal Brooklyn trilogy,” is set at exactly that moment when the air was thick with #Hope. But given the invitation to remember the mid-aughts, I couldn’t help but notice Gonzalez isn’t alone on her cultural branch. For those with eyes to see, Obama-era city nostalgia is everywhere in pop culture right now.
Behind door number two, we’ve got the feeds buzzing with Lena Dunham takes again(!) on the heels of her second memoir’s publication. And Famesick is a pure time machine, conjuring a moment (c. 2012) when Girls ran Greenpoint, and Jack Antonoff held tyranny over the airwaves. Meanwhile, on the big screen, we’re shimmying back into cerulean accent pieces for another shot at the Devil last glimpsed in 2006.
