Doug Pray produces documentaries. Hype, Pray’s behind the scenes account of the Kurt Cobain/Nirvana story, was a favorite at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Depicting the angst of Seattle-grunge renown, Hype also captured something of the larger cultural transition from early-eighties upbeat to nineties cynicism.

In 2001, however, Hype is already an anachronism. Twenty-something rage and cultural dismantling - so hip just an eye-blink ago - seem now as musty as Woodstock on Memorex or Sarah Brightman on PBS.

Enter a new Pray documentary: Scratch. Straight from both Sundance and Cannes film festivals, Scratch hit the nation’s theaters this summer. A driving, fantasmic journey into the incessantly resilient, re-creative world of urban DJs, it was well worth the price of admission. Here are musical archeologists (aptly called “diggers”) who literally excavate stashed LPs for raw material, whether Leadbelly, Rudy Vallee, Doris Day, Marvin Gay, or The Moody Blues. The treasures unearthed are diced into musical fractals, then re-presented. Yet, this is much more than hip art form, more than a thumping, celebratory, screeching mosaic of vinyl modernity. It is reclamation in motion. restitution at its most ingenious, and about as far from Hype’s wrecking ball as one can get. From scratches of a past deconstructed come murmurings of hope: history choreographed, cultural refuse reborn. And, as such, the art of the hip-hop DJ is but one brick in a cultural reconstruction that no one expected.

In an article entitled, “The Past is Soo…Like...Yesterday: Marketing to the Post-Ironic Generation,” twenty-something writer Graham Hall heralds western culture’s passage out of Nirvana-esque angst and demolition - out of what we typically generalize as “postmodern” - into a wizened, fledgling hope.

“We are bored with sitting on the sidelines and observing. Instead, we have decided to do something real and useful…we have grown out of being critical, because we now realize that it does not lead to real satisfaction. Rather, satisfaction can only be gained from creating and embracing ‘real’ experiences…

Young consumers lead the way in seeing through the irony and self-reference of 90’s marketing. They have tired of the old marketing conventions. Now they seek brands, which reflect their optimism, endeavor and creativity…

The Gap is the pre-eminent exponent of this school right now. Their whole offer, from the quality-at-a-reasonable price to the store environment, to, (especially), their advertising, speaks of freedom, openness, non-prescription, and creativity. Their dancers are an icon of individual skill and optimism. There is nothing cynical or negative here…and we align with it, because this reflects how we ourselves feel…Macintosh and VW also offer entry into this world of a creative future free from the cynicism of the past…

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