The new black

From Freepedia

"_____ is the new black" is a meme used to indicate the sudden popularity or versatility of an idea at the expense of the popularity of a second idea.

History

The phrase is commonly attributed to Gloria Vanderbilt, who upon visiting India in the 1960s noted the prevalence of pink in the native garb. She declared that "Pink is the new Black", meaning that the color pink seemed to be the foundation of the attire there, much like black was the base color of most ensembles in New York.

In the 1980s, the phrase was reappropriated to indicate that other colors (frequently brown, navy blue or grey) were temporarly displacing the position of black in fashion or industrial design; that is a versatile staple that complemented all other aspects, and was generally unobjectionable. The phrase quickly became lampooned for its simplistic nature; The Wall Street Journal soon declared that "White is the new Black". It soon degenerated into a complete cliché and is now used in a great variety of contexts, mostly ironic in nature.

Because the phrase is so familar, it is now frequently used in absurd contexts as a signifier. For example, in the New York Times of May 23, 2005, the reporter Stuartt Eliott stated that "So in a trend-conscious industry, economizing is the new black." The phrase was not used in quotation marks or in an ironic context, and the metaphor is incomprehensible without a familarity of the history of the phrase. The phrase is also often generalised to "_____ is the new _____", where the standard may be almost anything ("the new rock 'n' roll" is a common variant).

Modern examples

• The phrasing was used to humorous effect in the movie Josie and the Pussycats, with increasingly referential claims that, "Pink is the new red", "Orange is the new pink" and "Heath Ledger is the new Matt Damon."
• "Big is the new small," referring to the supposed cool factor of a gigantic cell phone, as used in a 2001 episode of Saturday Night Live. It played off the phrase, "small is the new big," indicating that small electronics were more expensive and modern than larger electronics, and therefore the smaller your cell phone the better. However, that phrase was cast in opposition to the still-earlier concept that "bigger is better."
• The tagline for the 2004 film Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven, was "Twelve is the new eleven."
• One of the catch phrases for the Apple iPod Shuffle is "Random is the new order," which may be a double play on words.
• Carson Kressley from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, declared once that, "Gay is the new Black". It is unclear whether he intended to mean that gay fashion was now extremely hip and versatile, or if being gay was trendy (implying the exploitation of gay culture along the same lines as blaxploitation in the 1970s, or even both).
• The British political satire magazine Private Eye has a regular column called "The Neophiliacs", consisting entirely of such quotes culled from the media (e.g. "Domestic cleaning devices are the new rock 'n' roll" - The Observer).

External links

• List of things that are the new black
• SNL sketch with 'big is the new small'
• New York Times article
• Boing boing claiming that 'beta is the new black'