In his book, author Ross Benes travels back to 1999 and examines how low culture dominated the American zeitgeist and paved the way for our crazy times today.
It was daytime talk show television that kick-started our obsession with scandalous must-see TV that glorified pushing the envelope. The main spotlight is, of course, placed on Jerry Springer but his contemporaries such as Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones, etc., are not without blame. As Springer gained steam, it almost felt like if you were a talk-show host, you needed to conform to what was becoming the contemporary style of shock television.
Deregulation is discussed – it allows media companies to buy multiple stations and conglomerate them into empires. These media empires began manufacturing and producing their own content with reality TV being the easiest and cost-effective to produce. This further allowed the purveyors of culture to shape and solidify national gossip and desire. As soon as reality TV became more and more accepted and widely available, there was a race to the bottom as to who could produce the cheapest and easiest program to rake in record profits. When looking at Trump’s race to the White House in 2016, he essentially became his source of constant 24/7 programming driving up ratings for news networks as well as endless views and clicks. I guess the cheaper it is to produce TV, the better.
The main reason we’re talking about this book today is its ties to pro wrestling. Much of the lead-up to the chapter on the 1999 boom year essentially lays the groundwork for Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation taking advantage of the contemporary attitude of the era and weaving itself into the style of the time. Not only were celebrities intertwined within the weekly shows, but performers themselves were all over the television landscape. While WWE is certainly richer and more gigantic now than they’ve ever been, it’s hard to argue that they’ve never been more visible on a wider scale than they were in the late ’90s.
Benes later calls out the hypocrisy of how Chyna had been treated by WWE following her passing when the company leaned on highly sexualized material to keep from going under as well as spotlighting other performers with criminal histories and drug problems. And of course, that sort of paints a picture of some of the WWE’s questionable rewriting of their own history, whether it’s Vince projecting his own business practices onto Ted Turner when WCW was poaching his talent, the erasure of Chris Benoit, the narrative that the television battle taking place on January 4, 1999 was the beginning of the end for WCW, or its attempted sabotaging of Ultimate Warrior in 2005.
Ross goes further in essentially tying pro wrestling kayfabe into the modern political climate. It seems like the brashness and unbelievability of Donald Trump’s exaggerated claims jibe well with an audience of voters who enjoyed the heightened ridiculousness of Monday Night RAW. He points out a line from Eric Bischoff that the modern-day cable news presentation almost does a better job of selling feuds than wrestling does today, especially when you have someone like Trump who sells tickets to arena shows where he essentially “cuts promos” on his adversaries much like you would have seen Dwayne Johnson do at the height of the Attitude Era (not as well, mind you).
It’s not all wrestling, obviously. Ross discusses the collector market, most notably Beanie Babies, and the resulting craze and market crash that followed. The author ties that to the NFT craze from the early 2020s, which much like the Beanie Babies that preceded it, are all now virtually worthless. That’s not to say that all consumer-driven collectibles fell victim to fads. Time is given to Pokémon and the “gotta catch ‘em all” craze, a product that continues to hold value and attention.
There is a fantastic chapter detailing the rise of The Insane Clown Posse and how being portrayed as outsiders allowed their fans to find common ground as counter-culture ambassadors and a sort of pseudo-family, something that plays hard into today’s “us vs them” mindset amongst conservatives and progressives. It’s hard not to look at Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” remarks and Trump’s “I love the poorly educated” response.
Being a teen in the 90s, it’s interesting to go back and look at all the low-culture hallmarks of the era, whether it’s with the Satanic Panic-like obsession over video games following the Columbine massacre, the dotcom bubble crash or the rise and subsequent fall (and rise again?) of Limp Bizkit. I can honestly say I did not expect there to be such strong ties between the pop culture of the ’90s and what we’re experiencing today, especially since it feels like we have better sensitivities in 2025 with respect to others. However, the results of the 2024 election beg to differ, I suppose.
1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times is available April 2025 through University Press of Kansas
