It is fun to watch/rewatch this 1990 movie circa 2026.  It is about New York City debutantes (CT and the Hamptons too), and how they interact with each other.  The movie is set a bit earlier in time, perhaps in the mid-1980s, though some scenes hearken back to the 1970s.  Of course there is no social media and no cell phones.  So the characters do look at each other, and talk to each other, the whole time.  People dress up, and social smoking is “a thing.”  There is no hook-up culture, as even casual sex has some sort of social implication.  Women are seen as vulnerable, and the men occasionally punch each other.  People drink.  Throughout various scenes, characters debate Jane Austen, Lionel Trilling, and Buñuel (it was not yet recognized that Mansfield Park is an excellent novel).  But do they read actual novels, or just the literary criticism?  Women can be branded as “sluts.”  Nerds had not yet taken over the world, and there is no Jane Street, though toward the end there is one odd scene where the neon lights rather obviously spell out “ELON” in the upper right side of the screen.  Coincidence rather than time travel, I am sure.  There are no Asians in the group, it seems no Jews, and if anyone is gay he or she remains in the closet.  People of modest income had big apartments, and the so-called wealthy were not very rich at all, though they could afford black tie and white tie attire.

Was everyone happier and better off back then?  Did they have deeper understandings of the world?  Did they treat each other like heartless beasts?  Would you eschew one of their parties and stay at home and scroll Twitter?  You can watch this film and ponder those questions to your heart’s content.  Alternatively, you could go to a debutante ball, which it turns out still exists.  Which of those has been your choice?

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