The 2021 MTV Video Music Awards returns to Barclays Centre in New York City. The time-honored tradition of halfheartedly streaming the ceremony in the background whilst devoting all attention to ravenously gorging Twitter hot takes is in full swing.
Scrolling through the Twitter timeline, feeling insane. “Dove Cameron IS the moment,” “Camilla Cabello ALWAYS understands the assignment,” another figure-hugging Mugler on Megan Fox, Olivia Rodrigo in SS2001 Atelier Versace, self-referential pink plaid on Avril Lavigne? who are all these beautiful people? Charli D’Amelio? Have I aged out at 24?
“If you told me this was a VMAs red carpet from 2002 I’d believe you,” tweeted Nylon Editor-In-Chief Alyssa Vingan. Bleak.
If you told me this was a VMAs red carpet from 2002 I’d believe you. pic.twitter.com/Rf5bX2rMLe
— Alyssa Vingan (@alyssavingan) September 12, 2021
Everything feels finite and claustrophobic. How long have we let Y2K nostalgia control the zeitgeist? Juicy Couture tracksuits, Von Dutch trucker caps, low-rise jeans, sparkly resin butterfly-shaped jewelry, it’s everywhere. I get it, nostalgia is fun, the 2000s were especially carefree and cringe-y. I don’t want to sound like a killjoy, but haven’t we been riding this Y2K beat since like, 2017?
The MTV VMAs felt so glorious because they were so ballistic. Camp! boundary-pushing! ballsy fashion. Rose McGowan nearly-naked in a floss-thin g-banger, Lady Gaga draped in meat, Lil Kim’s nipples embellished with a starfish sticker — moments that wove the rich tapestry of pop culture history.
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Don’t get me wrong, the ceremony had its divine moments, (performances from Lil Nas X and Normani brought the oomph factor), though, for the most part, it felt boring, flat, and creepily familiar. The culture feels strangled by nostalgia and ironic pastiche. Madison Beer wearing the same Dolce & Gabbana dress Beyoncé donned back in 2003, cute? yes! depressing? absolutely!
Madison Beer wearing the same dress as Beyoncé in 2003 at the 2021 vmas #VMAs #MadisonBeer pic.twitter.com/wvpMgHipz7
— beyfobic || Shay Era (@bbeyfobic) September 12, 2021
In his book Ghosts of My Life, the late Mark Fisher (may he rest in peace) writes on “the slow cancellation of the future”. He diagnoses that culture seems to be stuck in a loop, incapable of innovation, “the 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion.”
Fisher muses that the cultural moment is “in the grip of a formal nostalgia”, where things that are, to all intents and purposes “new”, feel reliant on imitation of old forms:
“The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations… The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed.
“There’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore.”
