Pop stars of each technology like to reference artwork that got here earlier than them, however we’ve reached a essential mass with Gen Z. Addison Rae and Tate McRae are always paying homage to Britney Spears. Gracie Abrams is an open e-book about Taylor Swift’s outsize influence on her songwriting. Benson Boone’s entire schtick appears instantly lifted from Freddie Mercury. However even outdoors the sphere of pop stars, each new development, each trend motion, each new “aesthetic” is copied or reworked from that of a earlier decade. We’ve been consuming “Y2k fashion” for for much longer than we lived by way of it. The 90s are someway all the time in fashion, however so are the 80s, the 70s, the 60s, the 50s, and so forth. Has tradition folded in upon itself to an irrecoverable diploma?
by way of @sabrinacarpenter
The hallmark of Gen Z is that they’ve by no means identified life with out the web. They grew up with fixed entry to it, and even when they decide out of social media on a private degree, it shapes each inch of their world. Most of them have spent a lifetime consuming content material at a breakneck tempo, flooding their synapses with pictures and concepts. The cumulative impact of this may imply a scarcity of originality within the technology’s artwork. It’s onerous to divine one thing new in case your headspace is consumed by the work of others. When the whole lot is instantly mirrored again to us, the place is the room for contributing something new? Tradition folds in on itself till the whole lot is a refraction of a refraction, endlessly looping and that means nothing.
Each technology takes cues from the earlier one. We take what we like and go away what we don’t behind within the annals of historical past. However with Gen Z, no previous decade has been left untouched, even the 2010s. Gen Z yearns for 2014 Tumblr despite the fact that most of them lived by way of it solely a decade prior. The pace at which we replicate tradition is exponentially rising, and shortly, there might be nothing left to eat. We’re nostalgic for eras that aren’t even over but, and this lack of unique viewpoint doesn’t go unnoticed.
by way of @chckpeass
The influencer @chckpeass expressed a model of this viewpoint on TikTok and it resonated with a large viewers. In a solution to her rhetorical query, “Why is nobody in Gen Z cool?” she posits, “You are being informed this is cool, and so as an alternative of that being one thing that you just develop organically, it is one thing that you just see and replicate, and another person sees it and replicates it.” She shows a picture of Gen Z pop star Addison Rae copying Lindsay Lohan’s nail artwork to drive the purpose house. The video garnered over a million views, and commenters all agreed. One commenter wrote, “Everybody’s too scared to be perceived as bizarre or cringe and it’s killing creativity.” One other wrote, “The cool individuals are not on-line.” Whether or not it is a concern of cringe or a scarcity of recent concepts, the opinions are in: Gen Z aren’t nice at originality. The net sphere is an infinite cycle of consumption and re-consumption, and for a technology that lives on-line, they’ve misplaced contact with their interior sense of style.
However, artists have all the time referenced and paid homage of their work. Positive, Olivia Rodrigo’s alternate album artwork for Bitter could have borrowed from Gap’s 1994 album Dwell By This (and Courtney Love referred to as her out for it), however Gap’s unique album artwork borrows visible language from the 1976 movie Carrie, by Courtney Love’s personal admission. Artists have borrowed from artists because the starting of time. There are solely so many new concepts, and inspiration can take many kinds. There’s a distinction, although, between taking one thing, remodeling it, and folding it into your individual id, and referencing one thing for the sake of reference.
The important thing query right here shouldn’t be “What’s Sabrina Carpenter referencing in her new music video?” however “Why did Sabrina Carpenter select these references, and what does it say about our present second?” It’s apparent that the “Tears” video is a riff on The Rocky Horror Image Present, however why did she select that individual movie as her major supply? Does the 1975 movie have particular relevance to a Gen Z viewers? Is Carpenter recontextualizing it to say one thing about, for instance, queerness on display and camp aesthetics because it pertains to 2025, or is it merely a pastiche? That’s for the viewer to resolve.
One of the vital issues about artwork is the way it displays our present time, and these Gen Z artists do exactly that. Nonetheless, what are they reflecting? Is it one thing new and specific to their technology, or are they simply spitting again out the photographs they’ve consumed like some sort of giant language mannequin? That is probably the most poignant assertion that Gen Z can presumably make about itself. They’re outlined by their reflection of others. However it’s onerous to construct a generational id on adverse area. It’s time they fill it with creativity that’s distinctly their very own.
