2000 – Endings and Beginnings
Many writers looking back to the year 1000 (in our Western calendar) suggested this was the time when fear ruled the world as people were about to witness the prophesied ‘Last Days and the End of Time’. The previous couple of centuries had seen lots on invasions, wars and disasters. To add to the drama, many priests and theologians happily added apocalyptic visions, with the implicit or very explicit suggestion the Christian Second Coming was about to arrive. In fact, describing this as an era of fear was wrong. 20th Century historians digging into the records discovered that there was considerable confusion about dates, outbreaks of religious fervour were fostered by churches seeing dropping attendance (sounds familiar?), and most people just got on with the miserable lives, as usual. To be fair, there was a lot going on, as countries suffered from battles and incursions, the Vikings were having a fine old time, while kings, dukes and others continued to exploit their people. Priests regularly pictured terrible things about to happen, and despite failed prophecies kept doing so for the first half of the 11th Century, until most congregations gave up from apocalyptic exhaustion!
If it had been confusing back then, the same can be said about the end of the second millennium. For a start, there was even a lack of agreement as to when the millennium would be ending. Those of us with a boring science background pointed out that would be on 31 December 2000. Many people consider this ridiculous. Clearly, they pointed out, the 19th Century and the millennium ends on 31 December 1999, muttering about scientists and the like as they did so. Anyway, whose millennium were we discussing? 2000 in the Christian calendar was 5761 in the Hebrew calendar, 4698 for the Chinese, 2542 for Buddhists, 1922 for Hindus and 1422 in the Islamic calendar. On top of that, we had survived a different apocalypse in the form of the Y2K bug, which could have wiped out communications, computers and maybe even electricity on 1 January 2000, or so it was feared. We’d managed to get through that with almost no consequences, so what was the fuss about?
Dates do serve important purposes. The end of a year for some people is marked by ‘new year’s resolutions’. While we are contemplating how we might change (at least for a few days), newspapers, televisions stations, magazines and just about everyone else is busily reminding us of what happened in the previous year, decade, century and more. There is value in stepping back and asking what has been happening, and what we might want to do differently in the future. However, the current tsunami of news and comment means that by the third decade of the 2000s we review what’s happened and what’s coming up every day! Back in 2000, it was not an everyday occurrence. This series of blogs based on years will end by asking, ‘What did end or start back at the end of the millennium?’
The first place to turn must be to books. This was the year Philip Pullman published the third and final book in the series Dark Materials series. If there were any readers who hadn’t grasped the underlying theme of the books, which in many ways are a retelling of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, the release of The Amber Spyglass in 2000 made all that very clear, as well as Pullman’s critique of organised religion. Was that important? For most readers, probably not. I reread the three books every so often, and they remain as compelling as the first time I read them (this is while I’m waiting for the third book in The Book of Dust series, to be precise impatiently waiting). Pullman’s Dark Materials had created an exciting fantasy, an epic adventure that ranged through different realities, explored adolescence, and stretched readers’ imaginations with dæmons, and so much more. In fact, they were good enough to offend lots of people! Wikipedia summarises one telling example:
The North American edition alters passages describing Lyra’s incipient sexuality. The text in the original UK editionincludes this passage in the chapter “Marzipan”:
As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She found a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognised the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn’t known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the building she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on. She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on…
This is amended in the US edition to:
As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn’t known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt the other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on. She sat trembling as Mary went on…
Seems there are things even more dangerous than religion!
This is also the year that Zadie Smith’s White Teeth was released, and Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. The theme of racial relationships, tensions and prejudice was strong that year. Another extraordinary book on the same theme in 2000 was Michael Ondaatje Anil’s Ghost. It was a classic year for book fanatics, and several more deserve mention. However, in a rather different vein, this was also the year of David Sedaris’ fourth book, Me Talk Pretty One Day: what a stunning, clever, funny and moving way to write about childhood, family, living overseas, and dealing with the fun and the challenges of life. Finally, Charles M Schulz died early in the year, with the last new Peanuts cartoon appearing in February 2000.
There are great books every year, and if there was a bumper crop in 2000, that was nice. The story in relation to movies was rather different. This was the year a new category of Asian films appeared in western cinemas and introduced us to another side of the work of Ang Lee. Back in 1995, he had directed an outstanding version of Sense and Sensibility, with Emma Thomson (who was also the screenwriter), Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant (he of the floppy hair) and Kate Winslet. Next, almost out of the blue it seemed, he directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an example of ‘wuxia’ or traditional Chinese martial artist drama. Release in 2000, with Chinese dialogue and English subtitles, it brought a worldwide audience to a genre which previously had never seen much enthusiasm from Europe or North America. It also introduced Chun Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh to a wider audience, and propelled Zhang Ziyi to super-stardom.
Ang Lee was to return to his American focus, with Brokeback Mountain in 2005. As for Zhang Ziyi, she would go on to make many films, but returned to the martial arts genre with House of Flying Daggers, directed by Zhang Yimou, which includes the stunning Echo Game Dance scene where she plays the blind dancing girl Mei, who is also a skilled fighter. If you haven’t seen the film, please watch it (the Echo Game is on YouTube). For me it represents a peak in a new film genre for western audiences sparked by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
One more film from 2000, this time from Hong Kong, was In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-Wai. At the other extreme from martial arts, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai are two emigrants from Shanghai who move into an apartment building in Hong Kong, on the same day. A romantic melodrama, but it is quite unlike most Hollywood films. The style is dreamlike, almost ‘liquid’, and follows the two over four years. I can’t do better than to quote from Wikipedia: “[they] discover that their spouses are having an affair; over the next four years they develop a strong attraction. … [T]he film is a study of ‘typical Chinese reserve and repressed desire’, while the ‘strange relationship’ is choreographed with ‘the grace and rhythm of a waltz’ and depicted in ‘a dreamlike haze by an eavesdropping camera’”. This was also the year of Sam Mendes’ American Beauty: so different, American ‘in your face’ contrasted with Wong Kar-wai’s delicacy (as for Kevin Spacey …).
There were two events in technology that seemed like omens for the next few decades. They were prescient, but not in the ways we might have imagined. The first was when President Clinton announced a preliminary draft of the human genome, an outcome from the Human Genome Project. The genome of any given individual is unique; mapping the human genome involved sequencing DNA from a small number of individuals and then assembling to get a complete sequence for each chromosome. As a result, the finished ‘human genome’ is a mosaic, not representing any one individual. The utility of the project comes from the fact that much of the human genome is the same in all individuals.
Clinton’s announcement in 2000 was of an initial rough draft: well, it was a beginning! The project took another 21 years. While it was declared complete in April 2003, many gaps remained. In March 2009, the next update still left more than 300 areas of missing data. In 2021 the last five rDNA gaps were found and published as version 1.1. Even after all this work, this ‘complete’ sequence does not contain the Y-chromosome. No matter. What is now available has the potential to assist in many fields, helping us understand diseases, treatments, the design of medications and a more accurate prediction of their effects, and a whole host of other scientific issues. The complete sequence is in the public domain, stored in databases on the internet. At the broadest level, some early findings included discovering there are approximately 22,300 protein-coding genes in humans, similar to the range found in other mammals while, remarkably, fewer than 7% of the protein types are vertebrate specific. I guess that puts us in our place. As for the benefits, we are still at the beginning.
Possibly at the other extreme, 2000 saw the release of a computer virus, ILOVEYOU, which infected over 10m Windows based personal computers. Its dissemination began with an email message with the subject line “ILOVEYOU” and an attachment “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs. Opening the attachment (the .vbs was hidden on most computers), virus damaged random types of files on the computer, and sent a copy of itself to all addresses in the user’s Windows Address Book, spreading much faster than previous email ‘worms’. In 2012, the Smithsonian Institution named ILOVEYOU the tenth-most virulent computer virus in history. From that dramatic beginning, computer viruses have become a fact of everyday life in the online world. As fast as companies get rid of them, clever hackers come up with new way to get software into computer systems. Like the influenza virus, they never go away (much as it will be the case with SARS-Cov2 viruses in the future).
As for other technologies, life was as dramatic as usual. The Concord crashed. That was to mark the end of supersonic transport for many years, and a replacement for high-speed commercial air travel is still somewhere in the future. Travelling fast terrestrially isn’t that attractive, given the risks involved. However, space travel is a different matter and 2000 saw the first crew arrived at the International Space Station. There was a beginning, indeed. Since then, it has been more like a railway station, with constant arrivals and departures. Talking of departures, this was the year Bill Gates resigned as CEO of Microsoft, and it was when Microsoft was ruled to have violated United States antitrust States lawsby keeping ‘an oppressive thumb’ on its competitors. Good lord! Oh, and Richard Branson was knighted.
It was a big year for Australia. Sydney had been selected as the host city for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, aka the Games of the XXVII Olympiad. For Australians, these were the Millennium Olympic Games! 199 countries participated with more than 300 events. It was expensive, the cost somewhere in the region of $Aus6.6bn. Most Australians felt it was money well spent, their view nicely summarised by a comment in The Times, reporting this was “one of the most successful events on the world stage”, adding “they couldn’t be better”. It was undoubtedly memorable, with the opening ceremony beginning with a tribute to the Australian pastoral heritage when 120 riders entered the stadium. The scenes were dazzling. I particularly liked the flying W-class Melbourne tram. Wisely, the indigenous occupation of Australia was recognised, as well as the arrival of the First Fleet, leading on to continued immigration from countries around the world. At one point 200 Aboriginal women from Central Australia danced up “the mighty spirit of God to protect the Games”. At another point the stadium was engulfed in the sound of hundreds of tap-dancing teenagers. I recall there were some sporting achievements, too!
Was there anything else happening in sports? At the British Open Men’s Golf tournament at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, a young Tiger Woods beat Thomas Bjørn and Ernine Els by 8 shots to win his first Open title to become youngest player, at 24, to win all 4 major titles. Tiger Woods was to be recognised as ‘World Sportsman of the Year in 2000. The World Sportswoman was Marion Jones – oops! A drug user, her award was later rescinded.
A quick paragraph on politics. This was the year South Korean President Kim Dae Jung met leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, for the beginning of the first ever inter-Korea summit in the northern capital of Pyongyang. That was the beginning of … several beginnings on the same topic for the next 20 years. Meanwhile, there was more excitement was in the USA. A controversial US presidential election between George W Bush and former Vice-President Al Gore ended with an inconclusive result on 7 November. However, arguments over returns and ‘hanging chads’ were eventually resolved by the Supreme Court on 12 December, when it released its decision in Bush v. Gore, settling the recount dispute over Florida’s voting in the 2000 presidential election. The Court determined the outcome in Bush’s favour and thus handed him the presidency. That was back when Republicans believed in democracy, due process and the rule of law. That election was the end of a lot of things.
A fun fact for 2000. Usually, century years are leap years, but, as the result of applying the rule they must not be exactly divisible by 400, 2000 is the first such year to have a February 29 since the year 1600, making it only the second such occasion since the Gregorian Calendar was introduced in the late 16th century. The next such leap year will occur in 2400. Now wasn’t that something exciting to know!
So much for 2000, and the end of the millennium. Just around the corner in 2001 we will have the Twin Towers, the Tampa crisis and the war in Afghanistan. They can wait for another writer, as this series is moving in a different direction. Future blogs will look at key authors and their contributions, and at various countries around the globe. This week you’ll have detected the energy to write about events by year has almost disappeared, which is why this series ends ‘not with a bang but a whimper’.
