The colourful and carefree world of Human Traffic
I watched Human Traffic, the other night, for the first time. It was filmed back in 1999, in Cardiff, which used to be my home city.
Human Traffic was definitely over-rated, and the storyline, insofar as it had one, would make for an extremely boring novel. Essentially several young people, who hate their day jobs, go clubbing, take ecstasy, go to a house party then meet up in a pub the next morning. Maybe the film was popular just because people could relate to the characters.
Most drug use at the time, in my experience, genuinely was recreational, and something that simply lost its appeal as we got older. It's something I'm neither proud or ashamed of. In my observation, there comes a definite point in everyones' life when drugs cease being recreational and become an unhealthy way of (not) dealing with underlying problems. Typically drug use makes existing problems harder to solve.
I found Human Traffic engrossing, though, just because it reminded me of how colourful, carefree, liberal and creative the world seemed in the 1990s. I think I'm trying to describe something more objective than nostalgia. Obviously people had their problems then, but these days it feels like the world is in a state of managed decline.
The comparison between the 1990s and now is reflected in the aesthetics of the time. One of the things that characterised the 90s was an ubiquitous drive to make things colourful, stylish and distinctive. When mobile phones started to become commonplace, manufacturers did all sorts to differentiate their products. That was the case with all manner of things, from PCs (remember the iMac G3?) to portable cassette/CD players, and even electrical applicances. Culture was also experimental - there was so muh originality in console games and TV programmes, whereas today all are variations on the same things. It does feel like humanity stopped innovating at the turn of the century.
These days, pretty much all phones, laptops, cars, etc. have the same bland appearance, and what one buys is typically decided by which brand name one prefers. Everything these days is bland in comparison.