How would you describe 2003?
Aug 17, 2019 22:23:40 GMT 10
Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2019 22:23:40 GMT 10
Oh-kay, here we go, this is my wheelhouse:
In 2003 I was 13 years-old. I had been collecting the Now That's What I Call Music! (U.S. series) CD's since #4 (that would've been summer 2000-ish), and I still was by the time 2003 rolled around. However, as I was starting to seriously dig into metal and particularly nu-metal, starting with Linkin Park, Evanescence, P.O.D., and Disturbed, I was getting less serious about collecting them (incidentally my last one would be #14 in 2004, but that's besides the point).
This was probably more of a local thing, but there was a reviving interest in Rollercoaster Tycoon among people my age. I think a new expansion had recently come out or something? But anyway, all the nerds in my school - including me - had a copy. Online gaming was beginning to emerge into something truly significant (not that it wasn't already with Ultima Online in the '90s and Everquest starting in 2000, but still) - I believe it was in 2003 that I had first heard of pro-StarCraft players in Korea. I was big on StarCraft at the time myself. Other than that, perennial favorite games among guys my age - both multiplayer and single-player - were Halo, WarCraft 3, Dungeon Siege, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (this was huge at the time, and that cannot be emphasized enough), Pikmin, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle! (even though this was an earlier release from 2001 or 2002), and Super Smash Bros. Melee, among others.
Come to think of it, Star Wars was a bit of a phenomenon then, even though Attack of the Clones had come out the previous summer. After all, we were now excitedly looking forward to the then-untitled Episode III slated for 2005, and Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars was featured on Cartoon Network starting in 2003. Funny; since it coincided with the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, to an unworldly kid like me, watching Cartoon Network's Clone Wars was almost like a "report from the frontlines" for kids. There was a feeling of state-building and American empire at the time, and I think kids - and probably their parents, too, who were disengaged from politics - that the government was doing what seemed to be the reasonable thing at the time in light of the War on Terror.
Speaking of Cartoon Network, other observers seem to put 2000-2001 as the peak of Toonami, but I would extend the peak out to 2003. This was the latter half of a run of Rurouni Kenshin, Samurai Jack, Dragonball Z and GT, and one of the Zoids series (I forget which). Although I do recall that Zoids: Chaotic Century, my favorite of the two, ran earlier in the morning in 2002 and 2003. I def had a crush on adult Fiona.
Oh, another thing: the movies were changing. A lot of the early '00s, right up to '03, fell into a couple slots:
The New Age-y films;
"Neo-classical" prestige films; and
Gritty but fanciful escapist films (sci-fi, fantasy, action, etc.).
The New Age-y and gritty films above are very much a product of the Generation X aesthetic, whereas the Neo-classical film, like Something's Gotta Give or Sleepless in Seattle over a decade earlier are firmly a Boomer thing. This is beginning to change. Action films are getting darker (see The Pirates of the Caribbean, even for all its New Age-y goodness), and realistic fiction films, both adult and child-oriented, are getting brighter and more...suburban:
This of course culminated in some of the suburban aesethetic films we saw - especially in children's films - through the remainder of the decade: Robots, Sky High, Meet the Robinsons, Speed Racer, and others.
I'm sure there are more observations I can make, especially from a child's perspective - about the rampant homophobia among my peers, the complacency of adults, the crass commercialism, etc. I need to gather my thoughts further for that, maybe I'll come back later.
In 2003 I was 13 years-old. I had been collecting the Now That's What I Call Music! (U.S. series) CD's since #4 (that would've been summer 2000-ish), and I still was by the time 2003 rolled around. However, as I was starting to seriously dig into metal and particularly nu-metal, starting with Linkin Park, Evanescence, P.O.D., and Disturbed, I was getting less serious about collecting them (incidentally my last one would be #14 in 2004, but that's besides the point).
This was probably more of a local thing, but there was a reviving interest in Rollercoaster Tycoon among people my age. I think a new expansion had recently come out or something? But anyway, all the nerds in my school - including me - had a copy. Online gaming was beginning to emerge into something truly significant (not that it wasn't already with Ultima Online in the '90s and Everquest starting in 2000, but still) - I believe it was in 2003 that I had first heard of pro-StarCraft players in Korea. I was big on StarCraft at the time myself. Other than that, perennial favorite games among guys my age - both multiplayer and single-player - were Halo, WarCraft 3, Dungeon Siege, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (this was huge at the time, and that cannot be emphasized enough), Pikmin, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle! (even though this was an earlier release from 2001 or 2002), and Super Smash Bros. Melee, among others.
Come to think of it, Star Wars was a bit of a phenomenon then, even though Attack of the Clones had come out the previous summer. After all, we were now excitedly looking forward to the then-untitled Episode III slated for 2005, and Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars was featured on Cartoon Network starting in 2003. Funny; since it coincided with the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, to an unworldly kid like me, watching Cartoon Network's Clone Wars was almost like a "report from the frontlines" for kids. There was a feeling of state-building and American empire at the time, and I think kids - and probably their parents, too, who were disengaged from politics - that the government was doing what seemed to be the reasonable thing at the time in light of the War on Terror.
Speaking of Cartoon Network, other observers seem to put 2000-2001 as the peak of Toonami, but I would extend the peak out to 2003. This was the latter half of a run of Rurouni Kenshin, Samurai Jack, Dragonball Z and GT, and one of the Zoids series (I forget which). Although I do recall that Zoids: Chaotic Century, my favorite of the two, ran earlier in the morning in 2002 and 2003. I def had a crush on adult Fiona.
Oh, another thing: the movies were changing. A lot of the early '00s, right up to '03, fell into a couple slots:
The New Age-y films;
"Neo-classical" prestige films; and
Gritty but fanciful escapist films (sci-fi, fantasy, action, etc.).
The New Age-y and gritty films above are very much a product of the Generation X aesthetic, whereas the Neo-classical film, like Something's Gotta Give or Sleepless in Seattle over a decade earlier are firmly a Boomer thing. This is beginning to change. Action films are getting darker (see The Pirates of the Caribbean, even for all its New Age-y goodness), and realistic fiction films, both adult and child-oriented, are getting brighter and more...suburban:
This of course culminated in some of the suburban aesethetic films we saw - especially in children's films - through the remainder of the decade: Robots, Sky High, Meet the Robinsons, Speed Racer, and others.
I'm sure there are more observations I can make, especially from a child's perspective - about the rampant homophobia among my peers, the complacency of adults, the crass commercialism, etc. I need to gather my thoughts further for that, maybe I'll come back later.
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