The 1988 Show
because if there is nothing that is stable, nothing constituting a
background that remains the same, then there is nothing against which
we can measure the change. Our rulers and yardsticks, growing at the
same rate as everything else, would read what they have always read.
This is just one reason it gets philosophically tricky to talk about the
entire universe changing. If the universe is everything—with, by
definition, nothing outside of it—^then how can we really conceptualize
change at that scale? At every level, then, change in general always
assumes something non-changing. When we look back at the past—^at,
say, the clothing, music, and culture of 1988—^the reason that it all seems
dated and strange, thus must be because something has remained
constant over the last quarter-century against which we measure 1988 as
looking funny. But what could that be?
If, for instance, we were to look back at a cultural artifact from
1988 such as “The 1988 Televised National Aerobics Championship”
sponsored by Crystal Light, we would find that this television special
seems laughably outdated.^ It would be instantly obvious that something
is out of synch with the current times. But what, exactly, is it? And why
is this so obvious to us? Is it that leotards are no longer made in such
bright neon colors with the legs cut up past the thighs? When, exactly,
did they stop making such leotards? Or is it that the way 1988 bodies
moved is not the way that we move our bodies today? When, exactly, did
we change our bodily comportment and settle our flesh into a new
millennium? Is it that our conception of what constitutes a “fit” body—
and what constitutes appropriate exercise to achieve that level of
fitness—^have changed? Again, when and how? Did you notice it
happen? Can you pinpoint a moment when the present became the past?
If we go looking for such precise moments of change—a passing from
the normal to the laughable in what constitutes a cultural norm—we will
never find them, of course. Like most things, culture tends to change
gradually. And gradual change has a history of conceptual problems in
the west.
We can trace this back to the ancient Greeks. It would not be too
much of an overstatement to say that the Greeks were obsessed with the
problem of change. I Ё͕