Mass Youth Culture in Post-9/11 America

Cringy, tacky, garish, and gaudy are all words used to describe much of 2000s American youth culture. But who defines what is tasteful about an era? To Rax King, “[t]ackiness is about becoming: it’s hard to access all those too-much feelings if you already believe you’re done growing, but it’s the easiest thing in the world when you’re constantly poking your head around corners and asking what’s next.”

In this class, we will chart a path through post-9/11 American youth culture, diving head-first into the everyday realities of the early 2000s through essays, media, and music. Our aim will be to further explore the hidden history of early 2000s American self-perception, and what it means to be of a particular moment and location. A major text of this course will be Tacky, Rax King’s book of essays, where analysis of the most ostentatious of 2000s American culture meets personal, as well as national, narrative. How did chain restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory shape one’s worldview? How is television art, and why did Jersey Shore help define how a generation saw itself? Alongside Tacky, we will look at art and media of and about the era that illustrate the significance of 2000s youth culture and help us to better understand why these “tacky” trends have such an important and lasting impact today.

Georgie Fehringer is a visiting instructor from the University of Iowa.