Excuse the clunky title. Prompted by this thread and Thelma Lou’s excellent suggestion that this topic might merit it’s own discussion. I’m not sure exactly how to define “younger generations”, but, for instance, **Kayaker **mentioned his daughter who at 25 has not heard of the movie Logan’s Run. I work with a bunch of twenty-somethings and while some are more well rounded than others, I was amazed that no one recognized the phrase "if you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. . . " I mean, even if one isn’t in to the genre, shouldn’t they have heard *Another Brick in the Wall *at *some *point? I worked with a young woman, who was very smart and seemed to be into pop culture type things and when George Harrison died, she honestly wasn’t sure who he was. When we told her he had been a member of The Beatle she of course had heard of them but couldn’t name any of the other men in the band. I realize these are just a few random examples and maybe it’s just coincidence that I’ve come across people who have no awareness of some pretty popular things that came before them. Anyone else encounter this and if so, any idea why that might be?
Firstly it happened before they were born, of course. Secondly the movie output substantially increased over the last few decades such that keeping up is a lot harder. Also, where we watched movies from our parents generation as they reran on tv, there’s less of that now. Less late night movies more late night talk shows. And it’s been at least a generation or more since one generation sat around listening to the older generation talk about their favourite films etc. Kids are busy these days playing video games or e nagged with each other on their phones etc.
I worked in a high school about 15 years ago. I was talking to another teacher about music and I used the word “album”. One of the students said, “Those are those things like big CDs, right?”
My 25 year old daughter knows quite a bit about the music from my generation, but very little about movies. She had never seen Ghostbusters or Blazing Saddles, for instance, but had heard of them.
I think they have more knowledge of music from the mid-60s and before than my generation X did of a similarly old time period. Sure they don’t know as much about mid 60s throughs mid 80s music as boomers and gen-xers do, but the fact that many of them know a lot of classic rock songs is equivalent timewise to imagining gen-xers knowing a lot of 40s pop! I’d expect people of my generation, when we were on our 20s, to maybe know a couple Sinatra and Bing Crosby songs, certainly not the dozens or hundreds of classic 60s through 80s songs the average millennial has a passing knowledge of.
My short answer is, “there are just too many damned things/people/works to remember, and none of it really matters in the end anyway.”
I don’t totally believe myself when I say that, but I think it’s kind of an unassailable position. I mean, think of how many hundreds of thousands of pieces of pop culture are being created every year. Can you really make an argument that Another Brick In The Wall deserves someone’s attention more than [fill in the blank] that isn’t based on either “well, it’s what I like so it’s important,” or, “it’s important academically, so if you’re interested in period culture you should know it.”?
I personally believe that my tastes are superior and everyone should watch the movies I like and listen to the music I like, but I’ve kind of given up trying to convince people that their opinions mean less than mine. 
I’m by no means making an argument about anything. It’s not that ABITW deserves more attention (or that I even like it that much) it just seems like one of those songs that “everyone” will have heard. I realize that’s possibly just my perception because it came out during my adolescence but that’s why I posed the question. Does Sinatra’s New York, New York *deserve *more attention? I can’t remember a time when I and everyone I know wasn’t aware of that song and it’s not as if our parents played it at home. I wonder if there are any iconic songs today that most people of all generations would know.
I suspect there’s an element of confirmation bias. The 20somethings who do know who George Harrison is don’t stand out to you because they’re conforming to your expectations of general knowledge.
Here’s my perspective on it, based on my own life.
I’m currently 30. So I’m by no means young, but I also am in “the next generation” from most of those on this board/my bosses at work.
My knowledge of some of the older movies/TV shows, honestly, comes from Seth MacFarlane. If you don’t know who he is, he’s the creator of Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, The Ted movies and other things. I think his stuff is (overall) pretty funny, and I’m directly in his wheelhouse for demographics.
I loved the early Family Guy seasons (not so much now) and you would be surprised just how many older pop culture references are included in those episodes. Including what originally prompted this thread, which was Logan’s Run. There’s an episode of FG where Brian is talking to his therapist and said he had a dream that was reminiscent of Logan’s Run. It was the first I’d heard of the movie, so now I know it.
I used to actually impress my boss at work because he would say an older reference, outside of my generation, and I would understand it, solely because it was a joke on one of those shows.
Paul Lynde is basically lost to me, other than that he’s the inspiration to the voice of Roger on American Dad. Stewie is Rex Harrison (I’ve never seen Gone with the Wind), The Electric Company, Krull, Flash Gordon…I could go on. Each of these have been some joke or parody on his shows/movies and I know what they are because when I didn’t understand them…I’d look them up.
Basically, I think unless a younger generation has something (or someone) directly reference something from the past, they aren’t going to know it exists…regardless of its popularity at the time.
Us oldsters may chuckle, but turn that 180 degrees. Nothing makes me feel as old as when I watch Jeopardy! and the category is popular music. I’ve never even heard OF most of these people! Or when kids these days use their own references or in-jokes to things I have no knowledge of. I feel just like I’m sure I made my dad feel back in the day when he didn’t “get” something.
So we say “kids these days just don’t know anything”, while said kids are calling us Herbert behind our backs, laughing at us that we don’t know about the three shells! Or that we can’t even program a rudimentary PGH in our ANTE-hemils. If we even have one!
Knowing old pop culture always depended on seeing reruns of it on traditional big-tent media like tv. Nowadays you have to seek it out, and socially, there is no reason to, and some reasons not to.
I think you have to be part of a scene of some kind, such as the Americana or hot jazz crowds in music, both of whom are overwhelmingly under 30. But they center on roots culture, not pop, altho they can be gateways to pop culture.
Totally. I was treating ABITW as one hypothetical example, as you were (sorry if I made that less than clear).
I am constantly surprised at the things I thought were “so big that everybody knows it,” that actually turn out to be “known by only an arbitrary sub-set of people who might have had a similar upbringing to myself around the same time.”
So, even beyond, “oh, everybody who was a teenager in 19XX knows this,” it’s more like “everybody who was a teenager in 19XX, and who lived in select areas, and who was white, and who was in the rebellious crowd (but not the rebellious metal crowd or rebellious punk crowd).”
Related story:
I’m about to start work on a production of The Who’s Tommy (Pete Townsend and others turned the album into a Broadway show in the early 90s).
When I tell friends about this and advertise auditions, I’ve been shocked at the number of people my age and younger who I consider my peers, and with whom I share many cultural touchstones, who have never heard of the album Tommy, have never heard of Pinball Wizard, and even only have a vague recognition that ‘The Who’ is some band that used to exist (If I tell them that the CSI theme song was by The Who I get occasional glimmers of recognition).
Ultimately, I think that almost nothing has the penetration that we feel like it does.
You pose an interesting question, but I’m not sure this is the best example. I saw Logan’s Run when it came out. I barely remember it myself, and would be shocked if anyone under 30 had heard of it. Just as I’m sure there are tons of movies made in the 1950s that wouldn’t ping my radar.
In a way, young people’s lack of knowledge of movies and tv of their parents and grandparents is counterintuitive. Growing up in the pre-VCR era, with only 3 tv channels available, it was understandable if I didn’t know the movies that came out in the in '40s and '50s. Once in a while one would be aired on tv and I could see it then, but for the most part, older movies or tv shows weren’t readily available. In contrast, modern young people have virtually any old movie or tv series available on cable syndication or through various streaming services. They have access to almost any visual media on demand at any time. You would think this would result in their having encyclopedic knowledge of older movies and tv. Apparently availability doesn’t translate to interest, however.
I took the online qualifying test for Jeopardy! a couple of years ago. I did horribly on any questions about recent music, TV, and books (I’m 51). So, I can definitely identify with that.
Anecdote: a couple of years ago, I was sitting at a fast-food restaurant, when a group of teenagers walked through. There was a couple – a boy and a girl – walking hand in hand; he was wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, and she was wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt. They were both probably about 15 years old.
My first reaction was: “cool, those kids are going old-school”. Then, I thought about it for a bit. Both of those performers had been popular in the late 70s, and were essentially done by 1981, due to the deaths of Bonham and Marley. So, this couple were wearing shirts that were commemorating performers who were at least 35 years “out of date”.
Then, I thought about myself, at their age, in 1980. Had I been wearing an analogous T-shirt, for a music act which had been at its peak 35 or so years earlier, I would have been wearing a Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman t-shirt…something which I don’t think would have been even remotely considered by any but the very niche-iest of my age group.
FYI, it was Leslie Howard who played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind. Both Leslie Howard and Rex Harrison played Professor Henry Higgins, Howard in Pygmalion (1938) and Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964).
I’m 61, and grew up watching old movies on pre-cable TV. I’d like to think that my interest in the cinema would have had the same result even today; i.e., I make it a point to watch as many old movies as I can just to build my awareness of the art. (Plus, I do think old movies have modern ones beat by a mile in terms of storytelling, characterization, and so on.)
I’ve never felt as old as I did several years ago when I happened to mention Carly Simon, and my daughter (then 17 or 18 and pretty well-versed in pop culture) asked innocently “Who’s Carly Simon?” All I could do was bury my face in my hands and say “Oh my God, has it been *that *long?!?”
(In her defense, she was born in Moscow and lived there until she was ten, so her exposure to English-speaking pop stars was at that time somewhat limited…)
You make a good point, especially the part I bolded. On top of that, music and movies have always been my subjects of interest so thinking about it now, of course I might have a broader knowledge than someone who is not only younger but may not really be interested in movies or music in general, much less “classics” Heck, I couldn’t tell you about anything sports related, except maybe 70s / 80s era Dodgers.
It’s with noting that some of the basic foundations have changed. Rock and roll isn’t as dominant as it was even 10 years ago, and so young folks are much less interested in history of rock. But you’ll find more kids with an awareness of, say, early electronic music.
Likewise a lot of the energy once spent on classic movies is now spent on classic video games.
We have better access to old TV and movies than we used to in some ways, but it’s still not exactly complete. First of all, many if not most younger people don’t have cable, so they’re not going to be watching things on cable syndication. Netflix does have some older TV shows and movies, but they are dwarfed by shows and movies from since 2000. I believe it’s similar on other streaming services.
Also, since we do have more easy access to stuff from now, there’s less reason to go back for older stuff. I’m guessing that there are plenty of people who’d like to watch more classic movies, but feel like they need to watch the culturally relevant and talked about shows right now and the big award winning movies from this year, and so they never get the chance to go back and watch old stuff.
I was shocked when, fairly recently, none of the contestants (who I would guess were in their early thirties at least) could identify photos of Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, et al.
I remember one episode of CSI where a twenty-something actor was introduced to Grissom as a “movie star.” Grissom just shook his head and said something like “He’s not a movie star. Clark Gable was a movie star. Humphrey Bogart was a movie star. Errol Flynn was a movie star.”
(To show how vapid the actor—the prime suspect in a murder investigation—was, the first thing he says to Grissom is “Would you like an autograph?” To which Grissom replies “What?!?”)