Back when I was live-blogging the Super Bowl, I opined that teenagers today had no idea who the people she named in “Vogue” were. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Bette Davis: all these and more had no meaning.
Well, I was at the supermarket yesterday, and the cashier seemed quite young. And at a supermarket checking out groceries is pretty much the only circumstance under which some random middle aged guy can idly chat with a teen girl (she turned out to be seventeen) and not have it come across as creepy. As she ran the items across the scanner, I said, “Hey…you know the Madonna song, ‘Vogue?'”
“No.”
That caught me flat-footed. The question was actually rhetorical, a preamble to the more pertinent point. But not only did she not know the song, I also got the impression that she was vague as to who Madonna was at all. “She sang it during the halftime show at the Super Bowl.”
“Yeah, I saw that, and everyone was singing along, and I was just…” She shrugged. I wasn’t clear whether “everyone” meant the fans at the stadium or if she was at a Super Bowl party.
So at least she had been exposed to the song. I decided to mush on. “I was just wondering if the names she rattled off during the song meant anything to you. Fred Astaire?” Head shake. “Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers?” Nothing. “Bette Davis?”
“Her I know!” she said cheerfully.
“Really? You know Bette Davis?”
“Yes. And Joan Rivers.”
I know what you’re thinking. I wasn’t seeing a connection either. As I slid my ATM through the reader to pay for the purchases, I said, “Uh…Bette Davis was an actress; Joan Rivers is a comedienne. I’m just curious why–?”
“They’re both old women.”
“Okay, well, except Bette Davis is dead, but that’s–”
“Wait,” she said. “I meant Betty White. I don’t know who Bette Davis is.” She paused and, seeing I looked slightly crestfallen–I think she wanted me to feel not quite so old–she said chipperly, “I know who Farrah Fawcett was! Does that help?”
I didn’t bother to ask if she knew that at one point the actress’ name was Farrah Fawcett-Majors, because I was fairly certain she’d never heard of Lee Majors. Although she might know who Steve Austin was. Everyone knows that. He’s a wrestler.
I’ll tell you one thing–I’m going to make dámņëd sure Caroline is properly educated in the greatness of old movies. The other day I had her watch “Oklahoma.” She was resistant to it at first, but slowly she got pulled in by the story and characters. She was fascinated by the dream ballet (which had always bored me when I was that age) and she kept asking about various developments of the story (although explaining the shivaree was a bit of a challenge.) At least to start, it’s just a matter of finding entry points for her. I think next I’ll show her “Singing in the Rain.” Not only has she seen the title song parodied in a number of places, but she was fascinated to learn it starred Princess Leia’s mommy.
I know I can do this. I’ve done it before. When Gwen was in college some years back, she was taking an art history class and the Professor announced that they were going to study the Spanish Inquisition. “What,” he asked, “do we know about the Spanish Inquisition?” Immediately Gwen piped up, “It was unexpected.” The teacher laughed. No one else did. No one else got it. No one else knew the bit or had ever heard of Monty Python.
Teach your children well.
PAD
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Thanks for the funny story.
It reminds me of speaking to a few college students a couple of years ago and getting no reaction to references to The Empire Strikes Back.
My big take-away from this is to just never engage in this kind of test with young people, ever. Heartbreak inevitably follows.
Your hypothesis so far has proven correct. You should be thrilled.
When I was eight years old I had three hermit tree crabs I named Jill, Kelly and Sabrina. I’m pleased Farrah has some name recognition among your admittedly small sample of teenagers.
Yeah, except I’m sure that if I’d said, “Who is Kate Jackson? Jacklyn Smith?” I would have gotten more blank stares.
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PAD
To be fair, it’s pop culture. It changes every few years, certainly every generation. I consider myself reasonable familiar with names entertainers who were well known a couple of decades before my birth (I know what “Pickfair” was and who it referred to). .
But I’m sure there are far more names of popular actors/singers/radio personalities that neither you nor I wouldn’t recognize.
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Man, the typing fingers and syntax are just NOT working today…
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“But I’m sure there are far more names of popular actors/singers/radio personalities that neither you nor I would recognize.”
Thinking about the time span of pop culture that I’m familiar with, I realize it goes both ways. Youngsters these days may not recognize the names Errol Flynn, Rhett Butler, Maynard G Krebs or Blofeld. But, then, I probably wouldn’t be able to say who Bon Iver, Flo Rida (who is she?), Adele or Ashley Tisdale are or have done.
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“I realize it goes both ways. Youngsters these days may not recognize the names Errol Flynn, Rhett Butler, Maynard G Krebs or Blofeld. But, then, I probably wouldn’t be able to say who Bon Iver, Flo Rida (who is she?), Adele or Ashley Tisdale are or have done.”
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That’s actually natural to a degree and acceptable in more than one case. And that’s not just old guy snobbery talking since it works both ways.
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I’ll be completely honest that I don’t know the names of literally hundreds of musical stars from the last few years well enough to connect them to a specific song or face since there are so many that just aren’t to my musical tastes (country western or rap.)
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Likewise, there are entire troupes of actors who I couldn’t identify that my mom and dad and my uncles and aunts grew up on and loved because I’m just not a western fan. The only ones that I can identify are the ones who were iconic level famous like John Wayne, famous for roles outside of westerns like Richard Boone or the ones who became pop culture references outside of the genre like George ‘Gabby’ Hayes.
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But I think there’s a difference when you either stop learning and experiencing new things in a genre you like or having absolutely zero interest in seeing what the person you like the work of is talking about when he or she raves about the person that they cite as their creative inspiration. I especially think there’s a difference when you have zero interest in anything that came before simply because it’s old and therefore, by the standard of being old, can’t be any good.
Well, I won’t begrudge myself the occasional curmudgeonly “You call that noise music?”.
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But I quite agree with you, Jerry. Lack of knowledge of or interest in a thing because it isn’t of interest to you is one thing. (I know what rap and jazz are but they hold no interest to me so I don’t tend to know who’s who in those arenas.) But rejecting an entire genre because old, or not in color is something else.
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It gets worse. Curtis Prather shared a link on Facebook the other day that showed screen captures taken off of Twitter, some private pages and some from the Grammy page, that were posted as the Grammy broadcast was ending. I’m sure some had to be trolls jumping in for the fun of it, but there were a ton of tweets asking one simple question.
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Who in the hëll is this Paul McCartney dude?
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Here it is.
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/who-is-paul-mccartney
Well, to be fair, he hasn’t had a new hit in forever. The last new song he wrote/performed was “Freedom”, arguably the lamest song of his career and THAT was over a decade ago now.
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He also doesn’t really tour as a result.
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It still amazes me. there are many people I know who refuse to watch anything “old”..that’s why people go to remakes of classics…Even more sad, in our increasingly insular culture, one young kid who heard the song during the Super Bowl..asked who Fred Astaire was..When I responded “He was a dancer” I got “Sounds gay” and then when I said “No, he was a terrific dancer” he said “He sounds really gay”
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Sigh.
Check out Memory Almost Full.
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Yeah, but, Jerome, he was all over the news a few years ago for his divorce. Weeks of coverage of who he was and what he did to be worth so much money. And then just last year he was all over the music news when the Beetles finally released their albums to iTunes and tons of entertainment coverage and buzz about why it was a big deal.
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And, well, there’s always the fact that these people could have Googled him in the same amount of time that they took to tweet.
Yeah, it was trending on Twitter in US for a number of hours over the weekend.
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If there’s one thing social media has done oh so very well it’s show us that we’re all a lot worse off than we thought.
I mentioned this whole thing to my wife, as she watches a lot of old movies on TCM and such. Unfortunately, PAD, she cringed when I told her that “Oklahoma” was the first film you decided to show. 😀
It’s the first MUSICAL I showed her. And why shouldn’t I have. “Oklahoma” has huge historical significance. It (and “Showboat”) more or less created the form of musical theater as we now know it.
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The week before that I showed her “The Adventures of Robin Hood” with Errol Flynn.
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PAD
So does that mean, by extension, that they have no clue who the Beatles were?
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PAD
Not necessarily… For example, I can’t name everyone from Pink Floyd, or even The Doobie Brothers, but I sure know the bands…
Yes, I know the Beatles (and the Stones) are special cases, but its an understandable lapse.
Many years ago, I had a kid come up to me at a camp I was working at. “Have you heard this awesome new song from Guns and Roses?” “Which one?” “Live and Let die!” “Son, let me tell you about a band called…Wings…”
My seven-year-old son knows who the Beatles are because I got him Beatles Rock Band for the Wii. Now he loves them. I’ll teach him about old music and movies any way I can!
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No one is immune. Zakk Wylde gave an interview about a decade ago that still has a bit that sticks out in my head. Zakk is a major heavy metal guitarist who plays for his own band and on a lot of Ozzy’s albums these days.
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He’s a huge fan of the classic rock and metal guitar gods. His son not so much it seems. So he was telling the interviewer that he was walking past his son’s room and heard Led Zepplin’s Kashmir playing from the stereo. He said he looked at his son, gave him the thumbs up and said something about him listening to the good stuff that day.
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His son said that, yeah, he was listening to P. Diddy.
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The chords of Kashmir to a new generation means… P. Diddy… Yeah…
The chords of Kashmir to a new generation means… P. Diddy… Yeah…
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On the flip side, if that generation is fortunate, they will not remember that the song “Come With Me” came from the Godzilla film soundtrack.
My son, who turned 3 last week, sings Beatle songs since he was 2 and 4 months. His favorites are Yellow Submarine, Octopus’s Garden, Here Comes the Sun, Hello Goodbye and I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Beatles Rock Band helped me accomplished this.
I don’t know but I heard he was in another band before Wings.
My favourite line about him was from Spider Robinson’s “Rubber Soul”, in which Paul explains to a friend that the music turned to šhìŧ and the audiences stopped coming, and admitted he didn’t know which happened first.
Beatles’ fans might enjoy that story, especially if they enjoy in-jokes.
Right before New Years I was at a meeting at work. Someone walked in and said “Merry New Year!” in his best Eddie Murphy imitation. I instantly recognized it as a scene from Trading Places. We began quoting back and forth. Most of the younger staff members in the room were perplexed while a couple of us “old farts” laughed. We listed off the cast and said that Jamie Lee Curtis played the part of a prostitute. One of the youngins’ said “No way… The Activia Chick?”
How many people remember the scene in “Buckaroo Banzai” where reference is made to Orson Welles and one of Buckaroo’s men says, “You mean the guy from the old wine commercials?”
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Hëll, how many people remember Buckaroo Banzai?
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PAD
I do! But whenever I asked people about it, even people working at Blockbuster, they NEVER had any idea what I was talking about
Much to my wife’s confusion and my son’s chagrin, Banzai gets quoted regularly in our house.
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Oh, and my kid knows her from Halloween, The Fog, and Wanda. Activia, my butt.
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I have the DVD.
Jamie Lee Curtis – launcher of a thousand dreams of spandex in “Perfect”.
That was the first movie I took a girl to on a date while in high school.
Plus Jamie Lee Curtis was Buckaroo’s mother in the original edited-out beginning.
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PAD
Me, on both counts. But many people would tell you I’m odd.
“Yoyodyne Propulsions – A Growing Excited Company!”
I remember Buckaroo Banzai, but it’s been many years since I’ve seen it.
I’m 34 years old. Married to a 34 year old “girl”. I for the love of God cannot make her watch a single movie in black and white (this frustrates me even more this year, when “the Artist”, a B6W silent movie is a must-see).
The closest I have ever been to make her see an older movie than “The Godfather” was the “Wizard of Oz” (after we saw the “Wicked” Broadway show) and “gone with the wind” (she loved both).
But she was quick to inform me that she seeing both didn´t mean I was to expose her to “boring B&W” such as Casablanca.
I hope my children will be more open minded.
:Sigh:
Not that I’m wishing for it, you understand, but if your marriage crashes and burns because your wife refuses to watch one of the greatest movies ever made simply because it’s in black and white, once you start dating again, I think you should get stuff like this clarified on the first date. “So what do you think of Casablanca?” “Is that a place?” “Check, please.”
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PAD
Unless, of course, you’ve taken her to long time Harvard Square mainstay restaurant Casablanca, in which case “Is that a place” is still worth a “Check please” but “Well, it seems like a nice enough place and I’m enjoying the food” would be appropriate…(yes, it’s named after the movie, due to the nearby Brattle Theater being one of the prime movers in the Bogart revival back in the 60s/70s).
Hmmm…don’t know whether I’d call for the check quite that fast. Invite her back to your place to watch “Casablanca” and break out the DVD/Blu-Ray. If she doesn’t like it…heck, if it doesn’t put her in a romantic mood…wish her well and discard her phone number.
But…it most definitely is a place. What if she says “It’s not nearly as pretty as Tangier, but it’s okay.” She’d be right.
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Yeah, I get that all the time (but not with the wife.) I have never gotten the mindset that says that a movie shot in B&W must automatically = bad and/or boring. And I know people my age who hold that POV.
Well, just remember that we all have our own generational biases. Imagine the following exchange with your spouse/significant other:
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“Hey honey, let’s watch “Zorro” tonight.
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“Sure babe, I always enjoy Antonio Banderas’ stuff.”
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“Wha-? Antonio Band- . . .no, I’m talking about “The Mark of Zorro”, the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks film.”
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“Douglas Fair-? . . .Oh . . . you mean an old silent movie? No orchestra music, flickering motion, cheesy stunts . . . uh, okay. So, it’s not closed captioned, is it?”
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Now, I’m not saying most of you wouldn’t go ahead and watch it as an interesting change pace (especially with the popularity of “The Artist” right now), but I’m betting most would be taken aback at least somewhat initially at the prospect, and certainly far fewer would wind up making silent movie watching a regular habit even at the insistence of a loved one.
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My wife is six years younger than I am. Ask her if she wants to watch Zorro tonight and you’ll end up with her being disappointed that you popped the Antonio Banderas version in the player because she would have thought that you meant the Douglas Fairbanks version.
Compromise. Go with the Tyrone Power version.
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PAD
Everybody has biases and comfort zones.
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But regarding movies, I think it’s not that hard to shed your biases, if you make a little initial effort. It’s just that most people aren’t willing to do it.
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For music, I find it a little harder to broaden one’s horizons, since it appeals in a more visceral level. Nowadays I enjoy rock music of all decades, but I still can’t see what was so great about jazz.
“The Day The Earth Stood Still”
The original – not the abomination of a remake – there was no need to remake in the least.
Admitted, I’m not a huge B&W fan – it’s not automatically a classic for me just because it’s in black & white. But there was a heck of a lot of awesome stuff made in b&w!
I wonder even when the song came out how many 17 years olds knew who most of those people were. They might know Davis more from the Kim Carnes song than from her work.
Well, by this point in time, they won’t remember the song OR Kim Carnes, so…
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PAD
Waaaaaay back in the early’80s I was in line at a Tower Records. A Beatles album was playing over the store’s sound system. Two preppy, bouncy teenage girls were ahead of me making their purchase, and one of them turned to the clerk and said (something along the line of), “Wow, this is really nice – who is it?” The clerk looked a little dumbfounded and replied, “The Beatles….?”
“Who?”
The clerk gave me a look like maybe he was being teased and I gave a small kids-today shrug. I was only in my early 20s, and the clerk couldn’t have been much older. The girls were in their mid teens I suppose.
The clerk asked if they really didn’t know who The Beatles were, and they seemed sincere in their ignorance as he rattled off song titles. To his credit he gave a quick rundown of Beatles history without being a smug jerk, and they seemed interested – and a tad embarrassed.
I guess if they had been younger I probably wouldn’t have been as astounded.
The thing is, nowadays it’s inexcusable. Because everything is readily available everywhere. Back in the day, music was only available over the radio and in record stores. Old movies could only be seen chopped up and with commercials, even with such things as “Million Dollar Movie” (remember that?) Now there’s Netflix, there’s DVDs, there’s entire channels devoted just to motion pictures from the golden age. In my day, ignorance came from lack of accessibility. Now it stems from lack of interest. I mean, I get that any country that could elect and reelect George Bush isn’t bothered by the concept of lack of curiosity, but good lord. This is becoming epidemic.
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PAD
Is it lack of curiosity, or is it that there’s SUCH a glut of movies available so that only those interested in film itself rather than as a way to increase the value of microwave popcorn companies, seek them out? Of course, the fact that I’m watching Conquest on TCM as I type this may belie that.
PAD: The thing is, nowadays it’s inexcusable. Because everything is readily available everywhere.
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Ay, there’s the rub. Everything is indeed readily available everywhere — which is just as much a hindrance to acquiring common knowledge as a help.
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Firstly, the sheer volume of available media makes it impossible to experience it all. This especially a problem for young people, who just haven’t had as much time to read/see/hear what their elders have.
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Secondly, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to identify the main thread of culture that everyone is expected to be familiar with.
I’d have to agree that a glut of available entertainment from a glut of sources probably makes people much more choosy in what they want to watch and learn about. We were exposed to a lot of stuff we may not have otherwise wanted to see because of the Million Dollar movie (or countless other shows like that throughout the country)and we didn’t have anything else to watch – sometimes you just wanted to veg in front of the TV coming home from school, and you didn’t care what it was. Now…kids can pick and choose what they want. And honestly, can anyone say they wouldn’t have done the same thing back in the day if you could have? Which is sad because you tend not to get exposed to things you may actually like since you’re not giving yourself that chance.
However… I have a 16 year old niece that absolutely loves old songs – and I’m talking “Mademoiselle from Armentières” old-timey stuff. Not sure if she just gets a kick out of the lyrics or what – or how she got exposed to it – but she adores it. So go figure.
I get you on the one hand – but on the other – with so many options, why would a kid today pass over that which is relevant to them, to do what is essentially homework?
I am a huge lover of film, pushing 40, and I have a hëll of a time sitting through most (though not all) films made before the 70’s.
There was a big discussion on a screenwriting message board I frequent a couple weeks ago, about how many of the writers there – people either working in the industry, or trying to – won’t watch old films. The acting style, the pacing, and often the structure, often comes off as stilted and fake.
Storymark –
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A too strong reliance on the format one’s more used to is an unfortunate trait of the young. I remember when I was a kid and loved the smooth quality of John Byrne’s pencils, while Jack Kirby’s (Byrne’s inspiration) looked so stiff and fake and awkward. My notion of “realism” was Byrne.
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Nowadays I see kids that are fans of J. H. Williams III’s, and despise Byrne’s work as cartoonish. The goalposts of “realism” have moved, and they will undoubtly do it again in the future, and I get to wonder how valid such notions really are, and I feel that I’m a little wiser than when I was a kid.
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The same with movies.
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Many old movies start to feel really good if you abandon notions of “modern realism” and imagine that you’re seeing a lavish theather play with the best seats in the house. Learning to really appreciate theater is a great way to “get” old movies. .
I also agree with Roger Ebert. B&W photography has a beauty all of its own, and a greater sense of mystery, I suppose.
I figure the progression was inevitable.
1) Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?
2) Paul McCartney was in a band?
3) Paul McCartney?
dámņ those kids and their rock n’ roll music, and their penchant to be on my lawn!
that being said, i was fortunate, i had a high school teacher that used to show us Python when he didn’t feel like teaching that day.
lots of embarrassing nudity 😀
I started Tuesday Night Movie Club with my 11 year old daughter about a year ago. We have not gotten back to the real classics as black and white is still hard for her, but it has been a delight to share things like Buckaroo Banzai, Flash Gordon (80s version), Tootsie, and many others she never would have seen. We will get to the real classics as she gets a bit older.
No daughter of mine is going into the world without having seen Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and Monty Python. It’s my responsibility as a parent.
Haha! Funny story, sad, but funny. While I was watching the Superbowl halftime show, I witnessed a 15-year-old asking who was this old lady copying Lady Gaga. Really. I almost had a heart attack.
Lady who?
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I’ll cut some of the young people (and do I feel strange saying that at the relatively young age of 41) out there. Some pop culture stuff I get them not knowing and it sometimes has nothing to do with now knowing the past. I’ve never been big on rap and country music. And with the death of M(usic)TV and its rebirth as M(orons on)TV, I became even less able to tell you who the hot stars of rap were in the same year they were big stars.
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But some of the other things that they don’t know?
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There’s a documentary out there called Machete Maidens Unleashed that covers the b-movie exploitation films financed by American studios that came out of the Philippines. No, I’m not going the usual direction that Bill and I go when we decry the poor educational system that has children not being taught the essentials like Eegah! (also known as Eegah! The Name Written in Blood.)
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A couple or other officers at work and I were in the beak room talking about it and and one of the things the documentary covers is the impact on things that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos had when they came into power. One other person in the room following the conversation and occasionally jumping in since we’re turning her into a bad movie junkie, piped in with a question and ask, and a swear I’m not kidding here, who they were and what studio did they take over that had such a big impact on things.
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But ask this girl who stared in a major 1940’s Hollywood film and she can give you the complete list of stars and costars from memory and what other films they were in that she likes. So…
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Okay… I think I need some serious sleep now. My typo to not looking like a complete idiot ratio is way the hëll out of whack today.
Not touching that one with a ten-meter cattle prod.
You mean you don’t hang out in the beak room at work? That’s disappointing. I imagined it would be like the Enchanted Tiki Room.
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Nope. I’m quite fond of the wing room though. And, to be completely honest with you, neither she nor I care who stared in a movie unless the person doing the staring was Bela Lugosi.
I was teaching a college age class at church when John Lennon was killed. I was 25, close enough to their age that I thought we could connect on things. When I said how hard this had hit me, they said, “Yeah well, We know who he is, we’ve heard of him ….”
My kids, now 29 and 27 were raised on Ðìçk Van Ðÿkë and Bob Newhart. The 27’er was teaching a college journalism class on newspaper writing and used It’s a Wonderful Life as a story example giving the facts, bank money lost, owner missing etc. Only two students knew the movie.
This subject is right up my alley.
I think it’s imperative you teach kids about “old” stuff. I teach 7th grade history, and when the kids ask why we have to learn it, my answer (among others) is, “So people don’t think you’re a moron when you’re older.”
As for the Beatles, playing in my wife’s car right now is a custom Beatles CD put together by my three-year old daughter. She hand picked 15 songs by title so she could listen to the Beatles in mommy’s car too.
Who is Paul McCartney!?
I was thinking along similar lines, when I was rewatching Season 1 of the Muppet Show. A kid seeing this today wouldn’t be able to identify half of the guest stars (hëll, even I had trouble with a few of them!). Same thing with naming the songs played in the classic Looney Tunes shorts; I can do it, but I doubt any kid could. It’s sad, really.
Hëll, I’m 30 and when I watched that DVD, I couldn’t name half of them. I couldn’t name a quarter of them.
In fairness, I didn’t know who half the guest stars were then. John Cleese, Spike Milligan, and Steve Martin were much less significant in my life than June Angela was in those years.
Funny thing is, as a kid in his young twenties, I actually know who the people Madonna are referring to (man, was Astaire one hëll of a dancer) but I don’t actually know the Madonna song. I’m glad my mother made me watch black-and-white movies in high school; some of my favorite films are Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon.
Yeah, my first reaction was “what a difference ten years makes.” I’m 28, and although I know all the people P.A.D. listed who are referred to in the song, I have no clue about the song. (No, I didn’t even watch the Super Bowl this year.)
I’ve also heard it said that these days it’s gone from “Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” to “Paul McCartney was in a band after The Beatles”? Wings didn’t exactly have the same staying power; I know I knew The Beatles before I knew Wings. (Of course, before I knew either, I knew Ringo Starr from when he was Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station.)
I was also raised on way too much Nick at Nite and (when it came along) TV Land.
I knew Ringo from Caveman, and Paul from the songs he did with Michael Jackson, before I knew the Beatles. I remember being surprised to learn that they were in the Beatles, and that they were, you know, beloved and stuff.
I didn’t think it was physically possible to have only one person in a college classroom who can quote Monty Python.
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Also, out of curiosity, how many people here got the reference in the last line of the OP?
Their father’s hëll will slowly go by.
(I am 43)
I’ve had to explain who Jonathon Winters, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Gracie Allen and even Jack Benny.
And I’m not that old.
Some folks miss out on great comedy because of negligence.
TAC
(People not knowing Hoyt Axton is a sad thing. He who had a wonderful strange sense of humor. Joy To The World baby.)
Not only has she seen the title song parodied in a number of places, but she was fascinated to learn it starred Princess Leia’s mommy.
Natalie Portman was in Singing In The Rain? Ðámņ…
Lucas had her digitally altered prior to the rerelease.
My boss calls this “cultural literacy” and tries to teach it to a lot of the younger folks at our firm. Of course, he needs me to tell him who everyone in the current celebrity generation is (and at 54 and adamantly anti-reality show, I’m afraid I’m going to start to lose track of that soon).
I’d be curious if the same thing would’ve happened twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Is there a group of references from, say, a 1850’s movie or Warner Bros. cartoon or something of that ilk that became as obscure to the audience as some of the Vogue references evidently have become?
Off the top of my head, I’d say that comparatively few people have had direct exposure to Wagner’s Ring Cycle anymore, and are more likely to associate the music in “What’s Opera, Doc?” with any number of subsequent projects that have also referenced Die Walkure.
Some observations:
1) I agree with Peter about the ease of access to quality film and TV. I don’t watch a lot of primetime TV. Generally, when I’m unfamiliar with, say, some reality TV show, the immediate reaction is, “Oh, you’re one of those ‘I don’t watch TV people.'” I respond, “No, I watch TV. I just don’t watch bad TV.” There are some many great movies and TV shows that I can watch instead of watching something that doesn’t have a legitimate emotion in it. I suppose if someone *truly* is more entertained by three hours of “The Bachelor” than three hours of “The Godfather,” then by all means, they should watch “The Bachelor.” Life is short. Yet, I often find that people dismiss great films because it’s considered “work.” “Oh, I just want to relax. I want a guilty pleasure.” That’s unfortunate. I hardly consider myself a genius or an aesthete. But after a long day, watching “Streetcar Named Desire” is far more relaxing than “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
2) Pop culture is by definition ephemeral. “Vogue” is 22 years old. Yet, when I was 16 in 1990, most of what I enjoyed was 20 – 25 years old. I think Generation X had the broadest range of pop culture interest — we were into the music of our time but also the music of the 60s and 70s. Perhaps this was because our parents — generally Boomers — loved it so much. If you’d asked me in 1990 about a James Brown performance, I have recognized every song from “Please, Please, Please” to “Sex Machine.” We were also a generation that practically grew up on old reruns of shows from the previous generation — Could the teenager Peter met recite the “Fresh Prince” theme song from memory the way that I could recite the “Beverly Hillbillies” or “Green Acres” or “Gilligan’s Island” theme songs when I was that age?
Arguably, “Vogue” was intended for my generation — teens or twentysomethings at most. Most of the people she mentioned in the song had been dead for years. I think she knew that it wouldn’t fall flat because most of us would have some memory of them.
I think pop culture has shifted back to what it was for the Boomers — what’s being done *now* is what’s important. Kids in the 60s listened to Hendrix, the Doors, Dylan, the Beatles. Were they really listening to anything from the 20s or 30s? Unlikely.
I think pop culture has shifted back to what it was for the Boomers — what’s being done *now* is what’s important. Kids in the 60s listened to Hendrix, the Doors, Dylan, the Beatles. Were they really listening to anything from the 20s or 30s? Unlikely.
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Depends on the age of the kid. In the mid-60s, I was 10. The only music my father allowed in the house were Broadway musicals from the 40s through the 60s, movie soundtracks, classical music, and big band era.
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PAD
It’s not a new phenomenon, and we can’t blame the Internet or MTV. Kids have always been like that. I was like that when I was a kid. My generation had all the cool stuff. Old things were boring or silly or both. Most times they were both.
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Entire movie genres were taboo too me, just because they were dead in the 1980s. The Musical. The Western. The Historical Epic. I knew who the Beatles were, though, those four old farts that sung silly stuff about love. Jack Kirby drew stiff, weird, awkward figures. Orson Welles was just some fat guy, and there was this sled involved?
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So, who am I to judge today’s kids harshly?
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And then you grow old, and you either develop a curiosity about the history of entertainment, or you stay in your comfort zone forever, and that is it.
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I’ve chosen to delve into it and discover old stuff, but it’s a daunting task. 1001 Movies to See Before You Die is a book I’d recommend to everybody. I’ve watched about 200 of them. And I’ve finally seen CITIZEN KANE last weekend, by the way.
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(My girlfriend is 10 years younger than I, and the cultural differences are pretty big. I don’t think she even knew Jack Nicholson had been the Joker before Heath Ledger. Fortunately, she isn’t averse to watching old movies with me.)
“1001 Movies to See Before You Die is a book I’d recommend to everybody.”
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I love that book! I’ve been gradually making my way through it for the past few years, and now I’m nearly finished. Although there are a lot of movies in there that aren’t even available on DVD yet.
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I’ve been also making my way through 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, but I expect to take a lot longer with that. Like, 20 or 30 years.
Yeah, both books are awesome. I’m also going through the 1001 Books, I’ve read almost 80 of them by now.
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I have one special rule, though. I’m only counting the books and movies I’ve seen AFTER buying the 1001 collection. So it’s not only a matter of discovering new stuff, but also of re-watching and re-reading stuff I’ve not touched in years.
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How many movies did you watched already?
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It’s interesting also that every country gets a slightly different edition. In my Brazilian edition of “1001 Movies…” there is a about 12 or 15 Brazilian movies that don’t appear in the American one.
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The “1001 Books…” is more divergent. I think there are almost 50 Brazilian novels included.
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Whereas I’ve found this book to be a much better (and at 101, shorter required viewing list) guide to fine movie viewing.
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Fangoria’s 101 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen: A Celebration of the World’s Most Unheralded Fright Flicks
http://www.amazon.com/Fangorias-Horror-Movies-Youve-Never/dp/1400047498/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329269146&sr=1-1
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It was through this wonderful little guide that I first discovered The Ugly (now streaming on Netflix even if there is no American DVD of it.).
🙂
I’ve seen 887 of the movies in the first edition, which is the one I have (although it’s already almost ten years old). But that includes movies I’d already seen before I got the book, since I never made a distinction in my mind. So I guess I’m not nearly finished, but since most of the 114 movies I’ve left to see are not available on Netflix, I’ve come to think of myself as being almost finished.
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As for the books, I’ve only read about 60 or so. So it’ll take a while. It’s interesting that the Brazilian version differs. I think the American version is the same as the British one, because British novels seem to take up an inordinate number of the slots (I discovered after buying it that everyone involved with it is British, so it’s weighted heavily in favor of British novels, which is something they tried to correct in later editions).
However, I’m afraid I will only ever get up to 1000 of the movies I must see before I die, because I refuse to watch Pink Flamingos. I’m quite sure I will throw up (I literally had to struggle not to throw up during Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, and that was fake), and that’s just not worth it for the sake of completion.
I haven’t watched those two yet. I don’t know how my reaction would be to gross-out films.
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From the 200 or so I’ve seen, the most disturbing were THE EXORCIST and THE SHINING. Truly scary movies, IMO. Watching THE EXORCIST alone, at night, in a dark apartment, is quite an experience.
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In THE SHINING I didn’t find Jack Nicholson all that scary , but the scenes with the kid exploring the hotel, and meeting the twin ghost girls is mindnumbing in its suspense. And there is something about twins that is just creepy.
The Shining, and those twin girls, are indeed terrifying. But for me the creepiest part of the movie is the guy in the bear suit or whatever the hëll that is. Every time I see it, it’s like, “Oh crap, did that really just happen?” It’s enough to drive anyone insane.
Heartening development: A friend of mine who’s a high-school teacher related how he once said “Ni!” to a student [ I don’t remember the context of why, but then again, knowing him, he wouldn’t need a reason. ] She gave him a quizzical look and he replied, “One day, you will understand.”
Said former student recently sent him a Facebook message saying, “I just saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I get it now. :)”
Too bad there was no one around to say, “Are you saying “Ni!” to that young woman?”
Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can blog “Ni!” to foreign young women on other people’s blogs! There is a pestilence upon this inernet, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design videos are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.
My name is Roger the Videographer. I arrange, design, and sell videos.
Hey, Peter. If you and the kidlet are ever out Washington way, I can take you down to Alderbrook where the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movies were filmed. 🙂 One of the things I’ve loved my whole life has been to see places where movies and television shows were filmed and actually get the REALITY of them. It’s sort of an ongoing scavenger hunt for me.
The Kiana Lodge just up the road from where I live was where the exteriors and interiors of the Great Northern and the Packard Mill were shot for the Twin Peaks pilot. I love standing on the beach where Laura Palmer’s body was found. 🙂
(Also, Imzadi is STILL one of the best books I’ve ever read, and my library has only grown since I first told you that back in ’94. You may deprecate yourself as a hack, but you’re a really god one…)
Not just ignorance of the past, but a different scale of values, methinks. A few years back a pop radio station had a poll and according to the results, people surveyed called Julia Roberts the “new Audrey Hepburn”.
I still can’t see that without having neurons misfire.
Well, ignorance of classics/popular references isn’t just generational. When I was dating my girlfriend in 2002 — we were both about 30 at the time — she hadn’t seen nor knew the endings of PSYCHO or CITIZEN KANE. I’d have thought they were both such common knowledge they wouldn’t even be considered spoilers now. (I did show her both while we were dating.)
And if you want to feel old, consider these two facts:
–any song you first heard in the 1990s is at least 12 years old
–any song you first heard in the 1980s is at least 22 years old
Well, there’s a slight caveat with those facts: It’s not the SONG per se, but rather the performance.
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Consider, for instance, two songs that are now closely associated with Whitney Houston. Her *performance* of “The Greatest Love of All” may be 26/27 years old (the song was released as a single in 1986 but appeared on her album in 1985); the song itself, however, is a good 36 years old, having been a Top 40 Pop (and Top 5 R&B hit) for George Benson in 1977 from the film “The Greatest” (about Muhammad Ali). And, of course, her performance of “I Will Always Love You” is pushing 20 years old while the song was written by Dolly Parton back in 1973 and released by Parton in 1974 (when it hit #1 on the country chart) and re-recorded for the 1982 film, “The Best Little Whørëhøûšë in Texas” (when it hit #1 country again; Parton also re-recorded the song in the mid 90s as a duet with Vince Gill).
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I’d be willing to bet that there are people who believe that “Live and Let Die” was first recorded by Guns n’ Roses (a now 20-year old performance of a now 39-year old song).
Yeah, I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that Nirvana, Metallica, and Guns’n’Roses are all ancient history now.
And yet they’re still played incessantly on the radio. The weird thing is that Guns ‘n Roses now has so much crossover appeal that they play them on every radio station I listen to. Somehow they’ve been classified as classic rock, modern alternative rock, AND adult contemporary.
I work at educating my son on the “good old stuff,” but I have to say, is it really fair that I make him know who old movie stars are when I refuse to know the names of any Pokemon? We watch Jeopardy together, and I often find that I’m illiterate of youth culture I disdain. “I won’t see anything in black and white” isn’t so far different from “I won’t see anything that originates on YouTube or the Disney Channel.” (And yes, I know there’s a historical basis to the older stuff, but I also glaze over when my dad tries to talk about Hopalong Cassidy. Everyone’s idea of the center of culture is personal, and we ought to put up or shut up some of the time.)
but I have to say, is it really fair that I make him know who old movie stars are when I refuse to know the names of any Pokemon?
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No, it’s not. The only way you can get your child to become engaged in what’s interesting to you is by investing yourself in what’s important to him. My daughter loves Pokemon. She like Pikachu well enough, but her favorite is Chim Char. I prefer PsiDuck myself. The show is incoherent, God knows, but she cares about it, so I make the effort to care about it as well.
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We watch Jeopardy together, and I often find that I’m illiterate of youth culture I disdain.
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You should fix that, or at least make an effort to.
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“I won’t see anything in black and white” isn’t so far different from “I won’t see anything that originates on YouTube or the Disney Channel.”
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I agree. Youtube I can take or leave, but if you’re disdaining the Disney Channel, then just for starters, you’re missing one of the smartest cartoons on television, the brilliant “Phineas and Ferb.” There was one episode that did a rapid-fire parody of about a dozen movie musicals in a row, which I can now use as a means of getting Caroline to watch the originals (“Remember when Phineas was dancing on a lamppost in the rain? This is where that’s from.”) If you’re interested in a quality live action series, I’d recommend “Switched at Birth.”
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PAD
As for not liking YouTube, check out the vlogbrothers, scishow, and crashcourse (all created/co-created by Hank and John Green). All the channels have material that can be fun for kids and adults, there’s lots of educational stuff in it, and for teens/20somethings it’s become a great group of proactive people to interact and connect with.
YouTube’s got a lot of good stuff. My favorites are the Film Cow cartoons by Jason Steele, Charlie the Unicorn and so forth. Some of them are pretty dumb, but there are several that are funnier and more brilliant than anything you’ll see on real TV. You have to have a twisted sense of humor, though.
Very interesting point. My 5 year old daughter loves Phineas and Ferb. It comes after the next cartoon after the Avengers ( which we see together). i have never seen Phineas and Ferb. I don’t feel interested in non-superheroe cartoons. Maybe it’s time for a little Quid Pro quo.
If you need me to walk you through the dementedly involved premise of P&F, just ask.
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PAD
Oh, and there actually is kind of a superhero in “Phineas and Ferb.” More like a superspy. And he’s a platypus. Yes, I know…ordinarily, they don’t do much. This one does. Every episode he saves the world, or at least the Tri-State area, from the evil machinations of the diabolical Doctor Doofenshmirtz. And that’s just the B plot.
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PAD
I’ve noticed one common trait regarding people who either aren’t aware or don’t enjoy older movies, TV shows, or music: They tend to like the things they like in a vacuum.
For instance, I loved The Police when I was younger (still do). Reading about Sting, I saw that he was a big fan of Charles Mingus. I had no idea who that was but I was interested because he was an influence on someone I liked. I sought out Mingus’s work and now he’s one of my favorite musicians.
If I like a performance by an actor, I will seek out other things he’s done — past and present. I liked The Grifters — someone mentioned that it recalled a lot of old films from the 40s/50s. Thus begins my love affair with film noir.
So, that’s why it’s shocking to me when someone doesn’t know Madonna or Paul McCartney. If you liked Britney or Lady Gaga, then you had to have read or seen an interview when one of the two mentions Madonna. Same with Paul McCartney and, well, practically any major pop act today.
Madonna’s “Material Girl” video is what sparked my lifelong interest in Marilyn Monroe. And so on.
I’m not sure vacuum is a fair comparison. If you’re satisfied with a steady diet of your usual fare, does anything need to change?
You don’t need to change your diet. But isn’t it strange when people don’t even KNOW there are other kinds of food, and what the names of the foods are?
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For a long while, I only read science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature. And I was happy with that. But dámņ it, I KNEW who Hemingway was, I knew what Moby Ðìçk was about. If someone said the word “Dostoyevski”, I woundn’t say gesundheit.
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Also, when I read some sci-fi novel inspired by a work from John dos Passos, Joseph Conrad, or Dante Alighieri, I’d do the minimum research to know what they were about.
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I do think such things helped me get a clearer view of the world. And I can’t imagine how someone may be opposed to that.
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(By the way, I read other stuff these days. Now I finally REALLY know what Conrad and Dostoyevski and Herman Melville are about)
You Boomers are quite the narcissists.
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“You Boomers are quite the narcissists.”
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And speaking of mot knowing the past and/or the origins of things…
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“”Boomers” is a term that means the Baby Boom generation. They were so named because there was an almost explosive increase, a boom if you will, in the rate of childbirths after the end of World War II and the return home of the soldiers who were away from home for all those years fighting the war. There is therefore a specific range for what is and is not a “boomer.” That popular wide range for the grouping would be anyone born in between 1946 and 1959 with some going as high up as 1964.
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Taking it to 1964 seems a bit of a stretch though. But regardless of that… Most the people commenting are not “boomers” by either range.
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It would also be hard to call anyone here narcissists based on what’s being said. No one here is decrying the lack of knowledge, pop culture or more important knowledge, of what was hot in just our lifetimes. What’s being discussed is the apparent lack of interest by some today to know anything beyond what’s right in front of them and in the here and now. And, in the case of Madonna, someone who is here and now and has been on the record charts and in the music news in the last decade and referenced as a big influence by some of the here and now hot artists. Now, whether this disinterest is more common today than in years past is open for debate.
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You may have also noticed that pretty much everyone discussing this is also pretty familiar with the history of various things that were from well before their lifetimes that were the inspiration for the stuff that we all loved. So, again, what’s wrong with kids today because they don’t know what we liked when we were their age, we’re discussing a mindset that says that if it was further back in history than your tenth birthday it doesn’t exist or can’t be any good.
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Not narcissism.
So, again, what’s wrong with kids today because they don’t know what we liked when we were their age, we’re discussing a mindset that says that if it was further back in history than your tenth birthday it doesn’t exist or can’t be any good.
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No, it’s more that the mindset considers it irrelevent, classic floccinaucinihilipilification. Until it has the connections necessary to find application, that isn’t even an incorrect view.
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Been playing Trivial Pursuit again have we?
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“Until it has the connections necessary to find application, that isn’t even an incorrect view.”
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I would tend to disagree. As I said way above, I don’t even have too serious an issue with kids not knowing decades old pop culture. As I said in the post you quoted form, no one here is decrying the lack of knowledge, pop culture or more important knowledge, of just what was hot in our lifetimes. We’re basically discussing a mindset seems to care nothing about anything but what is right in front of them in the moment.
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There’s something wrong with a mindset that looks at something and does not have any curiosity about how it works or what came before it that lead to what is before them in that moment. If you want to look at it beyond pop culture and with a more important example; look at politics.
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Newt says stuff about his past that’s full of šhìŧ. If you were there and paying attention, then you know that. I know early twenty-something Republicans who have no knowledge of Newt beyond what he says and have no interest in looking back to see where he was and what he was before now. Newt like to throw around the name Saul Alinsky a lot. Most people have no flipping clue who Saul Alinsky even is and, even better, don’t care. He’s just someone who must be bad because of how Newt uses his name.
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I’ve asked people I know who throw repeat Newt’s lines about Obama and Saul Alinsky. First, they think that it’s one name. Second, they think that the guy is still alive. Third, they think he’s an adviser to Obama. Fourth, they have no idea that conservative groups like Freedomworks have used Saul Alinsky’s principles as well.
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http://www.freedomworks.org/news/albanys-freedomworks-manager-trains-group
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But most of the people hear the name, hear how Newt uses it and just assume what they most want to assume. they don’t care about what was, just what’s in front of them.
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I see young Republicans who weren’t even alive when Reagan was in office pining for the days of Reagan and the Reagan conservatives. Why? Because Reagan was a powerful, uncompromising Conservative. Reagan never raised taxes, never compromised and never believed that government was the answer for anything, let alone job creation. Of course, five minutes of actual research puts a lie to all of that. But they don’t care because what they’re being told by the person in front of them is all that matters. Three years ago is unimportant to them, let alone three decades ago.
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Different subject matter. Different levels of importance. Same mindset; the mindset of the incurious.
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Seriously, if you can’t be intellectually motivated enough to look up the name of a singer, band or actor that one or more of the big stars of the here and now that you’re hot and bothered for keep calling their idle, inspiration or mentor when it’s so much easier to do so than it is to look up the political history of a person or a movement; just how intellectually dead dead are you?
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To a large degree I could care less if someone looks at me with a blank stare when I mention Cary Grant or doesn’t have any clue that there was someone on at 11:35 weeknights before Jay Leno sat there every weeknight. But the mindset behind that ignorance, especially when it extends to every facet of life, bothers me.
Chandler:
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My post wasn’t really about everyone here, since I didn’t read all the replies. It was mainly a take on how people decades removed should know about things in the past, but I’ll get back to this.
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I found your disdain for purposeful ignorance an interesting thought experiment because you seem to be arguing for everyone to suffer a case of Wikipedia Syndrome.
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And education in the US frowns upon Wikipedia, just as it kills creativity and, along with bad parenting, squashes curiosity.
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To be relevant to the site, I do agree with you for the following reason: I stopped reading comics (I was a Marvel fan) because retcons killed my interest. There was something I enjoyed about buying old back issues, following the asterisks back to enjoy the mythos… then the mid- to late-90s came around, and it seemed that I cared more about the Marvel continuity than Marvel itself did. Is this an unfair characterization or was there truly a profound change in Marvel editorial respect for continuity? Can’t say. I moved on, and only enjoy the characters through the movies and a few of the tv shows.
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Interestingly, I find myself annoyed with how hard it is to review things from my childhood. One of which goes back to multiple generations’ childhoods except for those younger than me— old school Looney Tunes. I had no trouble finding them when I was a kid, but I couldn’t tell you if they are ever on tv now. I may accuse censorship, some where quite ‘politically incorrect’, but they did me no harm. There is also a lot of channels on cable. However, I no longer have cable thanks to an overinflated price (thanks for nothing, ESPN!) and to Netflix and Hulu Plus being worthy replacements.
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So what about the great shows from before I was born? Ðìçk Van Ðÿkë Show is great, thanks to Hulu Plus I’m able to watch it. Columbo? Partially on Netflix. I Love Lucy? No where to be seen, though Amazon did send me an email letting me know it was a Gold Box deal recently for the whole series— $70. Carol Burnett Show? I get to see teases on Youtube and would love to watch it, but alas not on DVD, not on Netflix or Hulu. I remember these from my childhood as reruns, when there were less channels so more people can agree on what’s good or not, but wasn’t able to fully appreciate them. In fact, due to the large amount of media one can enjoy, it is why I only recently learned of the genius that is the (sadly going to be cancelled) show “Community”.
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Btw, my friend introduced Columbo to both his 12 year old son and me and we both equally enjoy the show. His 12 year old son introduced me to the cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it too is quite excellent. I would be glad to introduce him to shows from Nickelodeon in the 80s or 90s, if it weren’t for the sad fact that Nickelodeon hates the shows from its past.
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So, as I said, I agree with you to an extent and support a change in education that fosters curiosity and creativity and cares a bit less on passing tests to get by, but I’m also ok with the fact that my childhood and the era of my youth isn’t perpetual. So when I sit watching GI Joe 2 this summer, I’ll keep to myself just how Cobra Commander, much like Starscream in the Michael Bay Transformers movies, aren’t voiced by the late Chris Latta, and sound nothing like how they should. Time freezes for no generation, for no culture— Han didn’t shoot first, after all. I like PAD’s approach to broaden back the horizon of his children to see what has come and gone, and especially to let his own be pulled forward in new directions by his own children, but there are limits to how far one can go and how thorough one can be.
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And my apologies to those who would respond with: tl;dr — you don’t have to tell me, I already know.
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“I found your disdain for purposeful ignorance an interesting thought experiment because you seem to be arguing for everyone to suffer a case of Wikipedia Syndrome.
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And education in the US frowns upon Wikipedia, just as it kills creativity and, along with bad parenting, squashes curiosity.”
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Nooo….
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I could care less if someone doesn’t track down every little related and unrelated factoid connected to a subject. I could care less if someone tracks down and watches every old television and movie out there. And I fully realize that time stands still for no one and for no one’s youth.
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Not my point and never was.
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I’m just somewhat disgusted with the mindset that I encounter in some people where the idea is that if it’s older than today’s news it’s not worth knowing. And I find it especially disturbing when that mindset is extended to matters outside of the pop culture bubble. While I find it strange that someone in their 20s might not have any idea who Madonna is when the cite Lady Gaga as their kind of singer, especially when Madonna has had records released in the last ten years, I find it downright scary when someone in their 20s comments on something of importance and makes it clear that they know nothing about what they’re talking about beyond the most recent year’s news and the talking points of the moment.
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Honestly? I can very often care less when someone doesn’t know what M*A*S*H was, let alone doesn’t know that it was a movie first or a series of books. But when some nimrod talks about how something in history, politics or other events is such and such and have absolutely no clue beyond the most recent year’s news and the talking points of the moment.
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You don’t have to know everything. But you should at least feel a responsibility to know more than just what’s right in front of your face.
“You may have also noticed that pretty much everyone discussing this is also pretty familiar with the history of various things that were from well before their lifetimes that were the inspiration for the stuff that we all loved. ”
I think that’s a bit unfair. Just by the fact that we are on a message board discussing such things puts us out of the norm. Id wager that a general poll of your peers when they were teens would have reflected a general unawareness of a lot of creative people from the past (be it music, film, etc).
And there’s also a matter of scale. For Peter, there were just a couple of decades of old films to be edjucated on. For you, maybe a couple more decades. Kids now, they’re looking at going on 100 years of pop culture.
And really, in the grand scheme of things – how important is it that a kid today know who Fred Astaire is?
Chris – “old school Looney Tunes. I had no trouble finding them when I was a kid, but I couldn’t tell you if they are ever on tv now.”
Every morning, 6am central time, on cartoon network.
Chris –
I’m not bothered by people not knowing what was “hot” when I was a kid. I am bothered by people not even knowing the names of the all-time greats in fields they’re supposed to be fans of.
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If you enjoy rock music, you don’t need to know all the bands that I enjoyed in the 1980s, but you MUST know who Mick Jagger was, for God’s sake. You just must. Any science fiction fan should know who Isaac Asimov was. Any cinema fan must know who Orson Welles was, and Fred Astaire, and Bette Davis.
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It has nothing to do with my own childhood. All of the names I’ve mentioned were already old when I was a kid.
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“Peter, there were just a couple of decades of old films to be edjucated on. For you, maybe a couple more decades. Kids now, they’re looking at going on 100 years of pop culture.”
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Are you kidding me? Peter is only about 12 or 13 years older than me. If you move him to the age that we’ve been talking about, mid teens to mid twenties, He had substantially more than “a couple of decades of old films to be edjucated on.” And since I’m only twenty years removed from a part of the age range we’re talking about, how is there really a significant difference between 80 years of film history and 100 years of film history?
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Besides, as has been discussed in other parts of the thread, some of us are more shocked by the fact that many have no desire to know or learn about what came before simply because it is older than it is people not knowing everything that came before.
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“Id wager that a general poll of your peers when they were teens would have reflected a general unawareness of a lot of creative people from the past (be it music, film, etc).”
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And you would have lost that bet. Most of the people I new who were music fans were listening to stuff that predated the 80s by quite a few decades; especially the guys who liked their music based on solid guitar work. While most of the people I knew in high school didn’t share my taste in old movies, as I freely admit that I loved “crap horror films” even back then, most kids I knew liked more than a few classic films that came before their time. And certainly the sports geeks could tell you about whatever sport they loved going back to the dawn of time.
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Yeah, there was a crew of kids in every school who had the attitude of old stuff sucked just because it was old and I had a few kids who looked at me with blank stares and asked how I could watch something because of the fact that it was in b&w, but they were hardly the majority of kids that I knew of.
“Are you kidding me? Peter is only about 12 or 13 years older than me. If you move him to the age that we’ve been talking about, mid teens to mid twenties, He had substantially more than “a couple of decades of old films to be edjucated on.” And since I’m only twenty years removed from a part of the age range we’re talking about, how is there really a significant difference between 80 years of film history and 100 years of film history?
”
I was just grossly ballparking with the decades, as I only have the vaguest idea of Peter’s age, and no clue on yours. I meant no offense.
But yeah, I do think there’s a fairly large difference between 80 years and 100, in pure volume if nothing else. How many TV channels were there in the 50’s? How many in the 80’s? How many NOW? The increase is almost exponential between each phase.
As for films, there are a couple thousand produced each year these days. That has fluctuated over the years (more were made in the early 00s and 90s, for instance, than now) but there were far fewer made annually pre-80’s.
And that’s not even factoring in all the other things that draw their time/attention that weren’t a factor, or at the least as much of a factor as they used to be.
As for your friends – that may well be true, but a point I raised elsewhere in the thread I think applies – by even having this discussion, we, and our friends – are well outside the norm. The fact is, this stuff doesn’t matter to a majority of people.
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“But yeah, I do think there’s a fairly large difference between 80 years and 100, in pure volume if nothing else. How many TV channels were there in the 50′s? How many in the 80′s? How many NOW? The increase is almost exponential between each phase.
As for films, there are a couple thousand produced each year these days.”
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I think your missing a rather large point. And your missing it by focusing in something I explicitly I’m not addressing. I don’t think that there’s any real problem with not knowing everything. There’s no way to know everything. But it strikes some people a little odd that some others are happy to be completely clueless about dámņëd near everything.
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I wouldn’t expect someone who claims to be a big wrestling fan to know obscure trivia like famed wrestling manager Jimmy hart having been a member of The Gentrys before he ever set foot in the wrestling business, but I would kinda expect them to at least know the names like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair or, well, as even our wrestling hating host knows, Steve Austin.
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I don’t expect someone now to know about an 80’s band as relatively obscure as the New York Dolls, but I kinda expect them to at least know (depending on genre they like) groups and artists like Run DMC, NWA, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, U2, Madonna or Prince.
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Likewise, I don’t expect people to know every world leader of the here and now, let alone every one in their lifetime or before that time. But I dámņëd sure expect people to know the ones who were either famous or infamous.
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It’s one thing to not know everything. It’s something entirely different to not know things about someone/some thing when the people/things in question are considered major moments, turning points or figures of the subject in question. It’s something else yet again to dismiss knowledge of anything just because it’s older than your first full diaper.
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Still, thinking on the subject a bit, it could have been worse. As least the girl Peter spoke to didn’t answer “Naomi Campbell.”
Storymark –
The argument that “100 years is too much for kids to absorb” doesn’t hold water, because it’s not like I expect all the kids to have listened to a whole Rolling Stones album, or to have actually watched The Godfather 1 and 2.
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I just expect them to at least have basic knowledgement of what those things were, and it’s just astonishing when they don’t even know the names. Or have the curiosity to spend 15 minutes now and again to learn the basics.
Been playing Trivial Pursuit again have we?
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Nah. I just don’t get many excuses to use the word outside of assuring people that I am capable of spelling a name like “Joe” or “David”. In truth, this is the first time it’s come up in decades.
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We’re basically discussing a mindset seems to care nothing about anything but what is right in front of them in the moment.
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No, we’re discussing assumptions based on poorly conducted research, the same sort that lead to racial bias within IQ tests for a long time.
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There’s something wrong with a mindset that looks at something and does not have any curiosity about how it works or what came before it that lead to what is before them in that moment.
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Is there? You’ve heard that, “Curiousity killed the cat,” but did it occur to you that the cat might not have been the curious one in that statement? Witness the Chernobyl disaster for the most extreme example of that point.
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For all of its advantages, curiosity is correctly associated with trouble. Convincing people that it’s also worth the trouble is not so easily done if you’ve been on the receiving end of one too many, “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” pitches from people who don’t have your interests, best or otherwise, at heart.
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Curiosity leads people the way of the Balibo Five, or in a lifetime’s pursuit of such things as the Babson Task. Not everyone is prepared to pay those costs, and I’m not sure everyone should be, even while I agree that curiosity offers humanity longterm benefits.
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Newt says stuff about his past that’s full of šhìŧ. If you were there and paying attention, then you know that. I know early twenty-something Republicans who have no knowledge of Newt beyond what he says and have no interest in looking back to see where he was and what he was before now.
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If they did, would it necessarily change anything? He’s a self-absorbed, opportunistic liar… and a lot of people see those things as indicators of strength. When you’re looking for someone to be larger than life, the ability to overpower the truth starts to look like a qualification.
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Seriously, if you can’t be intellectually motivated enough to look up the name of a singer, band or actor that one or more of the big stars of the here and now that you’re hot and bothered for keep calling their idle, inspiration or mentor when it’s so much easier to do so than it is to look up the political history of a person or a movement; just how intellectually dead dead are you?
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“No one remembers the singer. The song remains.”
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There’s a wonderful joke lurking behind that quotation, but the point stands. Sometimes, the moment is overwhelming enough… at the moment. I had a friend who loved, loved, LOVED Prince and everything about him back in 1984. Then she saw James Brown perform at an event taking place in that year, and it ruined her on everything about both of them.
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I’m sure she’s grown up a lot since that moment of revelation, and maybe even come to appreciate James Brown. But in the short term, that little bit of intellectual curiosity killed something beautiful for her. Her case, with other examples of icons, is hardly isolated. That may make such people shallow, but it doesn’t make them dead. That’s just a label we can use to write others off, and it’s at odds with decrying a lack of curiosity.
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But the mindset behind that ignorance, especially when it extends to every facet of life, bothers me.
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You value curiosity, so this is understandable, but I think you are jumping at shadows a bit. You may receive a different reception in places where the other person doesn’t feel the need to keep a guard up, as is often the case online or where we work, finding more fragments within those facets than you saw elsewhere.
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“No, we’re discussing assumptions based on poorly conducted research, the same sort that lead to racial bias within IQ tests for a long time.”
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No, we’re not. We’re not throwing around bogus facts and figures and we’re not stating point blank that it’s everyone of a certain age or below. But the fact is that all of us, many of us from complete different regions of the country and a few from other countries, have commented in this thread as well as older threads that we all run in to what is a very common mindset in younger kids these days.
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I freely admit it has existed before and I freely admit that I know older people who aren’t much better about expanding their horizons a bit. However, my experience with people in their late teens to late twenties (and I meet a lot of them thanks to my job) in the general population is that they almost seem to take more pride in not knowing that “old stuff” than even some of the nimrods I grew up with and I see it more often these days.
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There’s a bizarre mindset in many that says that it’s okay to be incurious about the world around them. To anyone who has a mindset geared to at least wanting to have an idea about what came before and built and shaped what’s in front if them now, that’s a perplexing mindset to see at work.
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“Witness the Chernobyl disaster for the most extreme example of that point.
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For all of its advantages, curiosity is correctly associated with trouble. “
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No… Just… No…
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No one here is saying that we should be curious about things with no sense of caution or common sense when the subject of our curiosity could kill us. I’m one of the people that freely admits to getting a bit queasy whenever they talk about using supercolliders to create mini-black holes in science labs. I’m certainly not big on people who just pick up certain possibly lethal equipment on training days and flips it over and about while asking what it is and how it works.
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But we’re not talking about anything like that here.
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We’re talking about basic knowledge here. We’re talking about not knowing things that scream of an incuriousness that most intelligent people find bothersome and maybe not a little bit frightening. Forget not knowing who Paul McCartney is, I know people who can’t tell you who the sitting VP is. Screw not knowing Madonna’s greatest hits, I know people in their late 20s who can’t tell you the capitol city of their own state or anything about the political decisions being made by the people working in and around that capitol. Their POV on the issue is that it’s information that doesn’t really impact their lives in “important” ways so who really gives a šhìŧ.
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And, at least with some of them, they’re proud of it. Some of the Twitter stuff about McCartney discussed above was likely idiots just being silly. Some of it was just as likely people who didn’t know who he was. But you know what? They were posting to the web. In almost the same amount of time that they posted that, they could have easily looked it up. But they didn’t. Why? Some of them didn’t care enough to obviously. But I don’t doubt that some thought they were being cool by being ignorant. They didn’t know who he was and, since he was an “old guy” on the stage, it was cooler to just slag on him than actually know who he was or know how much of the music they’re listening to now might have been influenced by that “old guy.”
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“If they did, would it necessarily change anything? He’s a self-absorbed, opportunistic liar… and a lot of people see those things as indicators of strength. When you’re looking for someone to be larger than life, the ability to overpower the truth starts to look like a qualification.”
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It might change things actually, but that’s not the point. The fact is that Newt has a very easy to look up history that is really not that old; certainly not in regards to the real big highlights. And yet there are people who were supporting him in droves a short while back and repeating as gospel every non-fact his campaign put forward because they couldn’t be bothered to try and find out something that wasn’t the here and now.
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Not a good mindset.
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“You value curiosity, so this is understandable, but I think you are jumping at shadows a bit. You may receive a different reception in places where the other person doesn’t feel the need to keep a guard up, as is often the case online or where we work, finding more fragments within those facets than you saw elsewhere.”
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I’m around people all the time who have no reason to keep their guard up. Sometimes they don’t have their guard up for the simple reason that I’m not dealing with them at all. Sometimes I’m just sitting and listening to what’s being said around me.
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I live near a college town. Well, actually I live near a couple, but the closest one to me is Richmond and VCU. A lot of the places that I like to go and eat or enjoy a little downtime at have a lot of college kids and collage age kids around them. I hear some pretty dûmbášš stuff and frankly I occasionally hear things that scare me in just just completely dûmbášš they are.
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Was my generation pure and pristine and free of the taint of this particular sin? Hëll no. I knew some serious boneheads when I was their age. I even knew a few of the proud to be ignorant crowd and the ones who would practically brag that they didn’t read. But I have noticed in all the time that I’ve lived around here that there seems to be more of that attitude on display with each new college generation that passes through here and the idea that what was is unimportant because it’s not right now is more and more prevalent. And some of these people, again, are college kids.
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It’s not everyone, but it’s a lot of the ones I’m around.
Not long ago at work we were talking about classic rock. Fleetwood Mac came up, and one of my co-workers had heard of the band, but was shocked when she found out that Stevie Nicks was a girl.
And Lindsey Buckingham is a guy!
To be fair, I imagine our grandparents might be irritated that our parents don’t know who Francis X.Bushman is…was.
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And they would have every right to be upset that their children showed such poor tastes in film that they didn’t see The Phantom Planet.
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Not sure that they’re comparable though. Bushman might be comparable to a a-ha or Wang Chung. Big in their moment, but not seen as having any great impact or lasting influence. Madonna and to a much greater degree Paul McCartney are more the equivalent of people like Lon Chaney, Humpry Bogart or Clark Gable. Not only were they huge in their day, but their days were much greater in number, their influence was far greater than many know and they are cited by many as influences.
Which would be odd considering *I’ve* know who Francis X. Bushman was since I was a kid. I saw “Ben-Hur,” really like it, started reading up on its history, and found out there was a silent version starring an actor with the interesting name of Francis X. Bushman.
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PAD
I just watched the silent Ben-Hur a couple of weeks ago and I still don’t know who Francis X. Bushman is!
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Never saw The Phantom Planet, but I did see the band Phantom Planet perform once. Probably doesn’t count, though.
Anyone wanna take a whack at who Elmo Lincoln was (without looking it up.)
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PAD
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Him I know, but I couldn’t name more than one role he did. And, yeah, it is that role.
Yeah, but the one is enough.
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PAD
Elmo Lincoln, I know. The funny thing is that just yesterday, I was reading the comic book Blackhawks, which has a character named Lincoln, and I was trying to remember what his first name was, and my first thought was “Elmo? No, wait…”
And some who were kids in the 90s and find out about Bushman now get the “Frances X. Bushlad” joke from Tasmania. Of course the same can be said of anything from 1940’s WB Cartoons, Bullwinkle, certain Seseme Street bits at least as far back as “Me Claudius”, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, etc. Tons of jokes that went over your heads as kids that are histerical upon rewatching.
Elmo Lincoln I had to look up.
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Now, if you’d said Gregg Henry (no relation) I could have told you instantly.
Didn’t have to look it up. But only know him for that one role. I imagine he must have done something else as well.
Elmo Lincoln… why would anyone need to look that up?
Heard he actually killed a lion on set when it attacked someone, but that may be apocryphal.
Heard he actually killed a lion on set when it attacked someone, but that may be apocryphal.
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Well, Lincoln claims that’s what he did. That it was all filmed and is in the movie. Interestingly, the author of the books upon which the movie series was based actually incorporated that anecdote into one of the books…except he had the genuine item killing the lion rather than the actor. I forget which book it was.
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PAD
I didn’t know either of them. But I dont enjoy silent films.
(Ive tried, and have watched many of the seminal silent films – and I still dont like ’em.)
Try “The Artist.” It’s the best film of the year. “Hugo” is a close second, and that’s about silent films.
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PAD
Fair enough. You tried and found them not to your liking. Far better than the “Silents? Oh, I’d never watch a silent.” dismissal attitude.
I’ve often felt we should have some small sympathy for kids today, learning history; there’s more of it than there used to be.
World’s first history class–
“I came in, crossed the cave, said this. Test tomorrow.”
if you had asked me at that age (five years ago) I would have known all those references. WHAT NOW MR. DAVID?!
I’m 42, and while the aches and pains of getting older are.. well, a pain, what you’re talking about here is what has been really driving me crazy about aging.
The other day I was listening to a morning radio show. A local DJ was talking about exposing his younger girlfriend to “the classics”. When his coworker suggested Pink Floyd, he worried that might be too “obscure”. I nearly broke my neck as I whipped it around screaming, “OBSCURE???”
That, however, was nothing compared to the incident a year ago. I’m in the grocery store, and two twenty-somethings (a man and a woman) are behind the counter. The guy sees my Billy Joel concert shirt and asks, “Isn’t Billy Joel the guy who keeps crashing his car into bushes?” Before I could respond, the young woman chides her partner, saying, “That’s what you know of Billy Joel? Not his music?” The guy responds, “Oh, and you know Billy Joel?” She huffs, “Dude, I’ve got a father!”
I was too in shock to do or say anything.
On a Billy Joel note, consider his little history lesson in song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” If the names that Madonna checks in “Vogue” are a bit unknown to today’s “young people,” it just makes you wonder how many of the events that Joel mentions would be understood by them.
The guy responds, “Oh, and you know Billy Joel?” She huffs, “Dude, I’ve got a father!”
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Ha. That reminds me of the Bloom County comic that explains why kids those days like heavy metal. Our parents can be downright embarrassing in how they express their tastes (and distastes).
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Bruce! Bruce! I am the Piano Man!
While I love Billy Joel, his last album of original material (other than his classical album) was released in 1993, when those twenty-somethings were infants. The vast majority of radio stations don’t play his stuff (other than, possibly, “Piano Man” and a few others on adult contemporary stations). Where else are they likely to hear about him, other than from their parents?
Glee, for one. They recently did an excellent rendition of “Uptown Girl.”
Let me guess: You don’t live in Long Island.
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Radio stations around here, every fifth song or so is Billy Joel.
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PAD
One theory I was thinking about.
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Maybe it’s true that until the 1980s, people had a greater sense of history? We grew up and lived during the Cold War, so we had to know a little bit of history, since the Cold War came from World War II, and World War II came from the Great Depression and World War I.
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So there was this sense of continuity to all of it, to Western culture.
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Then we had the end of the Cold War, and many heralded it as the End of History, and there is this kind of break from all that came before, maybe that affected people’s conscience of pop culture too.
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I see a lot of that in comics. A greater sense of history with the fandom that entered the hobby before 1988 or so.
Well, it makes it pretty easy to spot the cool folks now–just throw out some essential pop culture reference and see if they get it.
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teaching an honors class this semester has really brought home how a good percentage of the high achievers are the kids who seem to have a pretty broad range of interests. It’s fun to throw out some semi-obscure reference and see if a few get it. Their little eyes just light up.
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And it’s never too late to learn. I’m going through a silent movie phase right now. Holy crap, Murnau’s FAUST, where have you been all my life?
Yeah. I haven’t seen “Faust” but teenage daughter and I saw “Sunrise” a couple of weeks ago. With live cello/percussion/French horn score composed by Lori Goldston (who has worked with David Byrne and Nirvana). Sadly under-attended.
While we’re on the subject of Murnau, The Last Laugh is pretty much the perfect silent film. And he did it all without any dialogue or narration (aside from an explanatory note)! Come to think of it, it would be the ideal film to show someone who says they don’t want to see The Artist (or any silent movie) because they don’t want to read.
yes, The Last Laugh is wonderful…I have to admit I liked the ending forced on them by the American distributors, because I am very sentimental and Murnau’ original ending is too sad. If I want sad I can think about my cat dying.
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For that matter, I prefer the version of NIGHT OF THE DEMON that shows the demon. It’s a kick ášš demon. When I go to a movie called NIGHT OF THE DEMON, I want to see a demon, preferably at night.
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Check out WEST OF ZANZIBAR. Lon Chaney Sr plays a character so vile it almost defies belief they got away with it in 1928. In fact, some of the pre-code movies are really mind boggling in their weirdness and perversity. SIGN OF THE CROSS makes the Roman Colosseum games even more horrific than they possibly were and ISLAND OF LOST SOULS…wow.
I love the ending, too. Not so much because I wanted a happy ending, but because it’s such a great mockery of happy endings. Really, it’s the only way it could have ended. An unhappy ending would have just been pointlessly depressing, and a realistic happy ending would have ruined the whole story. I think he found the perfect compromise.
Spanish Inquisition story: outstanding.
As for knowing famous names… yeah, kind of depressing, but there’s always something some segment of the population is ignorant about. I don’t think it’s a condemnable offense (which is good, ’cause one thing I know for sure is that there are tons of people I should probably be familiar with and am not). Probably most of the folks reading this site are familiar with the names PAD listed, but how about the likes of Erich Hartmann, Richard Bong, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa,Ivan Kozhedub, Johnnie Johnson? I daresay each and every one of those names made more solid history for the world than most hollywood stars, but most folks nowadays can’t tell you who they are without an assist from Google. 😉
The question is, why you consider important that youngsters know who Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers or Bette Davis are?
Be ir Gandhi or JFK, I can see the point, but some old time stars? I can be perfectly happy with people of 2102 not kowing who Jim Carrey is.
It means they’re missing some of the greatest performers in film history through sheer indifference. And it’s the indifference that’s the big problem. It’s becoming epidemic, the proud proclaiming of one’s own ignorance as if it’s some badge of honor. The attitude that Beavis and Bûŧŧhëád lampooned is slowly becoming the standard. We’ve already seen what happens when people with lack of intellectual curiosity wind up in charge: total disaster.
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The fact that you had all those idiots declaring, “Who’s Paul McCartney” is disturbing, not just because they didn’t know who he was, but because they sat there on line–with access to dozens of means of finding out the answer–and instead voiced this idiotic question because they didn’t care. The point wasn’t to learn; it was to prove that they were too cool to be bothered to find out because, hey, who cares, it’s just some old guy.
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Let me put it another way: I’ll bet there’s plenty of comic book readers and Star Wars fans who have zero idea who Sidney Poitier is. But without Sidney Poitier paving the way, chances are you don’t get Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury and Mace Windu.
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If, as the saying goes, you dance with the one that brung ya, you should care about who got you to the prom in the first place.
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Oh, and I’d bet the number of people who don’t know who JFK or Gandhi would be alarming.
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PAD
THIS!
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I can tolerate lack of intelligence, lack of curiosity, laziness, even indifference. But being proud and arrogant about your lack of curiosity really, really bugs me.
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Yeah, yeah, I get it. Young people. It comes with the territory, this drive to symbolically destroy the previous generations. It’s still idiotic.
A-frickin-men to that. Like many others here, I don’t expect everyone to know every weird pop culture moment that I’ve been exposed to (that’d make my students’ reactions even weirder than they sometimes are), but you need to know SOMETHING about your own culture’s past and your own world’s past. It’s called cultural literacy, and while I don’t quite rank it up there with scientific literacy in terms of importance, it’s not far behind.
These are the same teens who more often than not can’t even name who our Vice-President is. Maybe I was raised differently or something, but back in the 80’s I was fully aware of who Elvis was, so it’s rather surprising that this girl barely knew who Madonna is.
To be fair, though, I am not familiar with Lil’ Wayne or any of his songs. God, I feel old.
Congradulations on the old movie education. I’ve tried the same with my daughter and it’s been hit and miss. Be careful using the “Princess Leia’s Mommy” entry point. When I first told my daughter who Queen Amidala was she looked at me and said, “Oh, she was in “Singing in the Rain”.
Jeff
Y’know, this discussion makes me think of a tangent that is probably quite significant. As noted, there are a lot of younger folks today who ask, “Who were the Beatles?” “What was Casablanca?” “What was ‘Guys and Dolls’?”
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I think the same may be applicable to the state of the comic book industry. “What was so special about Captain America?” “What’s the big deal about Superman?” “You mean there were X-Men before Wolverine?”
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More than a little, I miss Marvel Tales, 80 Page Giants, Marvel’s Greatest Comics, 100 Page Super Spectaculars, et. al. I do NOT mean the Essentials and DC Showcase Presents (although I very much enjoy them both.) I mean collections of classic comics that are easily affordable point of purchase pick ups. Well, as affordable as ANY comics can be these days.
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It’d be worth it, just to hear, “Hey, that Curt Swan was really good!” or “I didn’t know Roy Thomas wrote the Avengers! That book is COOL!” or especially, “Did you see those old Fantastic Fours? OMG! Best! Books! EVER!”
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It won’t happen, comics are on a downward spiral into the black hole; there’s no time, space, or budget available for what were the good stuff. But a little history could go a long way…
On the upshot, all this means that, one glorious day, no one will know who Snooki is.
That day can’t come soon enough for me.
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PAD
Ditto.
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For the upcoming Snooki JWow spinoff, they’re actually shooting in Jersey City, which borders my home town. Somehow the feeling that they’re that much closer to me makes me sigh even more deeply than I did when that show first broke out.
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As far as movies and stuff, what I found unfortunate is the possibility that people who are only familiar with classic movies through remakes may not seek out the classic version. Sure, sometimes the remake is better (The Longest Yard, for example), but I wonder if in other cases, someone may be predisposed to not bother with an older version because they figure, “Well, the newer one was good, how good could this earlier one be? It’s in black and white, for cryin’ out loud!”, or worse, “This recent movie sucked, the really older version must be even worse!” I shudder to think that if someone curious enough about the play Twelve Angry Men, for example, decides to seek out a filmed version, that they might actually get that piece of crap 1997 Showtime flick, simply because it’s in color, rather than Sidney Lumet’s brilliant 1957 version. (I’ve never seen the 1954 version with Norman Fell.)
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“Sure, sometimes the remake is better (The Longest Yard, for example)”
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Yeah, but which remake was better? I’m still partial to the 2001 remake. Wasn’t as big on the 2005 one.
The problem with remakes and sequels is that Sturgeon’s Law resets for them. The original usually passed, but then the remake has 90% of chance of being crap.
I only knew about ‘Snooki’ becuase of South Park. I was rather alarmed to find out that was an actual person.
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Why stop there? Why not dream of a day when once again people think only of a beach front area when they hear the words Jersey Shore and not group of people that would otherwise have been shunned in polite society had they not been made celebreality “stars” by M(ornons on)TV.
Or, you know… morons… Not enough coffee.
Morons. Make sense. I misread it and was trying to figure out the Mormon-MTV connection since Google wasn’t very helpful. They do seem to be everywhere these days.
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It’s a running joke between some friends and I. We started saying some time back now that Music Television had changed into Moron Television some while we weren’t looking. And given that their biggest shows these days have been about the northern version of poor white trash and knocked up teenagers.
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Who would have thought that the days of MTV’s spring break coverage of bikini contests and mud wrestling were the days of their intelligent programming?
Similarly, I’ve long said that I remember when the “M” in MTV stood for “music,” rather than “miscellaneous.”
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It’s made even sadder when you consider that, after moving to their misc programming, they launched MTV2 to run music videos, and now MTV2 also runs the misc programming.
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–Daryl
This might hit closer to home:
In 1997 I was teaching SAT test preparation to a group of high school students. One of the questions from the provided textbook asked them to name as many crew members as they could from the original Star Trek series in 30 seconds. I stood there facing 17 blank stares while 30 seconds slowly ticked by. Finally, one student tentatively said, “Dr. Spock?” None of them had any idea what I was talking about.
I never asked the question again. It was subsequently removed from the textbook in response to a barrage of instructor complaints that no students recognized the reference.
These weren’t dumb kids, either. One got a perfect score on his SATs.
So he got a perfect score. Big deal. If he doesn’t know the important things in life, he’s useless.
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PAD
Can’t argue there. He did tell me, though, that he “thought his dad used to watch that show.” So I blame poor parenting.
Yeah, when the song “I Got the Moves Like Jagger” first hit the airwaves (and somebody, please, make it stop), a local news station did a man-on-the-street asking kids if they knew who Jagger was. Some of them thought that he was a singer a long time ago. Most of them had no idea.
But really, we’re living in a world where everybody has to know everything the second it happens… and nobody cares about it a minute later. I’m impressed if they can recognize references from last year’s top ten movies. That’s soooo 42 seconds ago.
Me, I pride myself that I once got a bunch of kids to watch Casablanca by writing a fanfic that took large chunks dialog and substituted Space Cases characters and references (“I remember every detail. The Spung wore green, you wore blue.”; Elmira: Play it, Thelma. Play As Time Goes By. Thelma: Oh, I can’t remember it.) But that was more than 15 years ago already. Those kids are now 30-somethings complaining that nobody remembers Hanson.
Nobody remembers Hanson anymore! Get off my lawn! 😛
At least “Moves Like Jagger” references him in a way that makes sense. (Honestly, I’ve never heard the original version…just the Glee cover that mashed it up with “Jumping Jack Flash”). In Ke-dollar sign-ha’s “Tik Tok” (which I’ve also only heard as a cover by Glee’s lovely Heather Morris), lyrics mention that she and her friends kick potential suitors to the curb “unless they look like Mick Jagger.” Really? Early twenty-something boozing party-hound girls want guys who look like senior citizen rock legends?
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–Daryl
Why not start at the root of the tree. Find out how many teenagers know who Madonna is.
To a lot of them, she’s the Lady Gaga rip-off who sang during the Super Bowl.
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To me, Madonna fading from the public consciousness is a good thing.
I’m a bit surprised that in a college classroom nobody else was familiar with Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition bit. It was well known among the “nerdier” kids when I was in school a few years ago and I still hear MP quotes on occasion and see them in internet memes being shared by current college students.
Yes, but do they know the MP source, or do they only know the memes? I’m 46, and a 30-year-old coworker was surprised to hear me use the line “They see me rollin’, they hatin'” (when a co-worker with a broken ankle was using a wheeled mobility device). But I only know the meme from the Cheezburger sites; I have no idea what the source is.
It’s a rap song called “Ridin’ Dirty.”
Which I suspect a number of people (including me) know considerably better from Weird Al’s “White & Nerdy” parody. I suppose “Weird Al Syndrome”, as TVTropes calls it, is its own special area of cultural blind spots.
I prefer the Wierd Al version “White and Nerdy”.
I used some “Holy Grail” clips to help teach a unit on Medieval lit a while back. Out of 25 or so High School teens – ONE had heard of Monty Python.
On the upside, they ALL wanted to watch the full movie after I showed them the Black Knight scene.
It’s only a flesh wound.
I still remember when Ariel was about twelve and we showed her “Holy Grail.” We got to the end and she said, “Where’s the rest?” We said, “That’s it. That’s the end.” She refused to believe us. She thought we were having her off. I settled it the only way I could: I said, “Call your mother. Ask her.”
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So she calls her mother and she asks, “Mom, how does Monty Python and the Holy Grail end?” And she tells her. And of course her mother has zero reason to lie about it, and Ariel STILL suspected that it was some sort of nefarious plot to fool her.
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PAD
I remember having a similar experience myself when I watched it for the first time too. I watched the credits in FF hoping for the movie to kick back in again. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of “that’s it”.
Actually, I’m pretty sure Graham Chapman had a whole reel stashed away with the proper ending, but it was eventually used to line the inside of a traffic light near a wrestling ring.
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Or is that too silly?
I had a similar reaction when I first watched Holy Grail.
I’ve used Holy Grail for years when teaching projectile motion. Sometimes I’ve used it on a test: estimate the quantities you can from the clip, then calculate the launch speed of the cow and discuss whether it’s reasonable.
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About half the kids, on average, are familiar with the film beforehand.
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I also use the opening minutes of “Moonraker” to discuss terminal velocity. Far fewer kids have seen that one, which I personally consider a good thing.
On this general topic – Im frankly amazed at how much kids like Family Guy. Quality aside – I have to imagine they only get, at best, a third or so of the pop culture refrences on that show.
Hëll, I have a hard time getting my room-mates (Both in their mid 20’s) to understand the awesomeness of “Bloom County” without it being lumped into the “That was the 80’s. Everything in the 80’s was superficial crap” argument.
Then again, I’m also such a nerd I almost threw my remote at the TV watching “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” when 43% of the audience thought the star Beetlegeuse was Orion’s bellybutton…
Yes, as opposed to now, when geniuses like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga make Shakespeare look like a Hallmark card writer, right?