May 21, 2025
Remember the movie Footloose? The 1984 version, not the remake. I've rewatched it a few times at different ages, and recently was struck by something small but telling. There’s a scene early on where Kevin Bacon’s character, Ren, is alone in an empty warehouse, blowing off steam. He drinks a beer, lights a cigarette, and dances like his soul’s on fire. I remember watching that as a teenager and thinking, “Yeah, that makes sense.” He wasn’t a villain. He wasn’t broken. He was just a guy — frustrated, passionate, trying to find his footing. That moment felt normal. Sympathetic, even.
But now, a few decades on, I realized how differently that scene would likely play today. A high schooler drinking and smoking in a modern film? That’s Hollywood shorthand for “this kid’s got problems.” Same actions, different story. Somewhere along the line, we slid from permissive to puritanical in some corners of culture. Not across the board, but enough to notice.
And it got me thinking — where else have we shifted like this? Where have we clamped down, and where have we opened up? And how do we make sense of it without just grumbling about “kids these days” or drowning in nostalgia?
The Pendulum Doesn’t Swing, It Spirals
I don’t think we’re simply becoming more conservative or more liberal. It’s more nuanced than that. We’re evolving along different axes — sometimes tighter, sometimes looser, sometimes just… redirected. Teenagers today are less likely to drink, smoke, or have sex early than we were. But they’re more likely to openly talk about anxiety, gender identity, or trauma. Profanity’s practically mainstream now, and queer representation is miles ahead of where it was in the ’80s. But god help you if you show a sixteen-year-old with a Marlboro.
It’s not a straight line. It’s a swirl. And that’s where the Lenses of Contours of Tomorrow come in handy — they help me frame these shifts in a way that doesn’t reduce them to “better” or “worse,” but lets me see what’s actually happening beneath the surface.
Flow: Culture Never Sits Still
Back in the ’80s, rebellion had a soundtrack — loud guitars, ripped jeans, a cigarette in one hand and a middle finger in the other. That flowed naturally from the cultural moment. Now, rebellion might look like a teen logging off TikTok and going for a walk without their phone. The river still moves — it’s just found new channels. Flow reminds me that change is the constant, and the currents are always shifting. What seems like regression might be redirection. What seems like progress might be drift.
Order: New Rules, Same Game
Every era has its invisible rulebook. Ours now says: care about mental health, respect people’s pronouns, recycle. It also says: don’t glamorize smoking, don’t show teen sex without consequences, don’t ignore power dynamics. That’s not inherently bad. Order gives culture structure. But the rules have changed — not vanished. Sometimes we forget that we’re still drawing lines, just in different places.
Space: Who Gets to Be Complex?
One thing I miss from older films is how much space characters had to just… be. They could be messy without a moral. Today, there’s more representation, which is good — but often less room for moral ambiguity. A character drinks underage? We expect an explanation. But on the flip side, we’ve made more space for people to be visible — queer teens, neurodivergent characters, folks outside the old Hollywood mold. It's not that the space shrank; it's just been reallocated. And maybe that’s not a loss, but a trade.
Emergence: We Didn’t Plan This
None of this was designed. These new norms didn’t come from a single source. They emerged — from conversations, conflicts, media, tweets, reckonings. The shift away from smoking in films, the rise of identity politics, the growing reverence for therapy-speak — all of it bubbled up from the stew we live in together. Emergence reminds me that the shape of culture isn’t drawn by a hand, but traced by a million fingertips.
Persistence: What We Remember, What We Forget
What made that scene in Footloose hit me wasn’t just what was on screen. It was the ghost of how it felt when I was young. That memory — of a time when rebellion was less coded and more common — sticks with me. Persistence isn’t about clinging to the past, but using it to check our bearings. What did we lose when we got more careful? What did we gain when we got more kind? Both matter.
The Contour of Then, The Shape of Now
If I’ve learned anything from trying to look at culture through these Lenses, it’s that moral panics and social progress often wear the same coat. One era’s freedom is another’s fear. One decade's “just being a kid” is another’s red flag. But the goal isn’t to pick a side. The goal is to stay awake — to notice the changes, trace their shape, and ask what they’re carving into the contours of tomorrow.
And maybe, just maybe, keep dancing like Ren in the warehouse — fire in your feet, questions in your lungs, the past in your pocket, and the future in your hands.
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