There was something unusual about American culture in the 1990s. For one, this was the final generation privy to the ‘safety bubble’—a time before 9/11, before the Internet became a necessity rather than a luxury, and before the world lived on their phones. As someone who underwent her teens and early 20s throughout this time, I can say there was a sense of ‘living in the present’ that is unlike today. (After all, in summer one is only alive at night.)

This was a time that gently evoked the 1960s and ‘70s, where poetry was ‘popular’ (slam, Allen Ginsberg, and the Confessionals), young women were having memoirs published about their depressions, women song writers were being taken seriously, and with that there was this sense of ‘possibility’, at least among those who were white, middle-class, and living in the suburbs. So much is possible at 3 a.m. in a Denny’s. But there was also this idea of invincibility—that this Blockbuster Rental on every corner era would always be, so one need not aim for change. Films like Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites (1994) and Kevin Smith’s Mallrats (1995) touch upon this, but nowhere else is this eternal ennui seen better than in Richard Linklater’s SubUrbia. […]