Why this novel about Y2K nostalgia is being called 'dangerous'
Canadian author Alex Kazemi shares why he wanted to explore "the underbelly" of Y2K boyhood
From the ongoing resurgence of pop-punk and mid-budget rom coms, to the return of bubble braids and baguette bags, Y2K nostalgia is all the rage right now. But one Canadian author has written a book that recalls the darker side of the new millennium.
Vancouver author Alex Kazemi's debut novel, New Millennium Boyz, follows 17-year-old Brad who, feeling fatigued by his cookie-cutter image, starts hanging out with the new students at school — a goth kid and classic-rock stoner.
The dark coming-of-age story reminds readers that Y2K was also the time of the Columbine High School massacre, Marilyn Manson, and the Woodstock '99 riots — and it suggests that this period of time actually planted the seeds for the toxic masculinity and online hostility present in our world today.
Kazemi joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about his audacious debut novel, including why it earned a content warning from its publisher.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.
Elamin: I remember this period of time because this is [when] I moved to Canada from Sudan. I was born in Sudan. I moved to Canada when I was 12, in the year 2000. It's, as you can imagine, a bit of a culture shock…. The first music that I listened to was Disturbed, someone like Marilyn Manson, so there's an ethos in this particular period of time that we don't really like to think about very much. Why do you think we don't like to return to that period very much?
Alex: I think because it makes people uncomfortable with the reality and the freedoms that people had back then. With our current political climate, people romanticize this freedom. But what I argue in the book [is] this kind of edgelord dialogue is actually really myopic, and it just sounds like white noise; it doesn't really add anything into the culture. I'm sort of exposing [that] this false freedom we thought we had back then was actually a prison in itself.
Elamin: Other people are calling the book "dangerous." That puts you in a certain kind of conversation; [it] puts you in a sort of tension. Do you think it's dangerous to return to these ideas that did, in fact, exist in the early 2000s?
Alex: I would hope that most people would read this book as a critique, and not a celebration, of the things that I'm discussing. I don't know if I really believe in this idea of "dangerous" literature because there've been so many forefathers before me — Bret Easton Ellis, Dennis Cooper, a lot of queer artists who have always explored these subversive themes. So the idea that something in our censorship culture could be considered dangerous has more to do with how people are choosing to consume the work versus what it is. I mean, is a book dangerous? I don't know.
Elamin: Something about the idea of a book being dangerous, I think, goes hand in hand with maybe demanding morality from art.
Alex: Yes, absolutely.
Elamin: In a way that maybe we didn't demand the same kind of morality from art 20 years ago. You can make art about relatively messy people. You can make art about people who are actually not necessarily even worthy of moral redemption, but they have an interesting story. It feels like we've kind of moved away from that in a way.
Alex: You make a really good point. I think that's what's actually dangerous, is moral art — works that ignore human contradiction, the dark side of human nature. It creates this facade, and it ignores reality; it creates this kind of historical revision.
I think the Y2K nostalgia culture is really about historical revision. People just want to hold on to this feeling of, "Oh, I felt so warm watching MuchMusic and seeing Ed the Sock. Life had so much order back then." But there was also so much violence and darkness in the underbelly. The racist attacks in my book — that came up in a lot of my research.
Elamin: This novel tells the story of teens in the year 1999. Dude, it is not your adolescence; you were five in 1999. What is it about Y2K that you want to keep returning to?
Alex: Well, I think because when I started the book [at age] 18, we were indoctrinated with Tumblr. We were constantly inundated with Y2K references, and there is this dreamlike feeling that was ephemeral about, "Oh, if it was Y2K, I would have been happier, or I would have had more friends," or things like that. And then I decided to delve into the Columbine tragedy and try to empathize with it, and try to understand what was going on in the psyches of the boys. And so the book was formed out of a bunch of strange teenage interests. I chose Y2K because I wanted to unmask this mania of Y2K nostalgia, and reveal the true reality of that period.
You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Alex Kazemi produced by Stuart Berman.