Even when we think we know something …
My 10 year-old watches a lot of Cartoon Network and I’m often in the same room when he does. A lot of the shows on there make a lot of retro pop culture references. So much so that my son tells me that when I hear one I should tell him to pause the show so I can tell him what it was and pull up an old youtube video of it.
From an episode of Gumball that they were using in promos a lot, the dad was sliding back and forth yelling “ohhhhh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh”. So I showed him the old McHammer ‘Can’t Touch This’ video it was referencing.
Teen Titans does it a lot also. Just from one episode I had to stop it 3 times to show him Spalding the volleyball from Castaway, RunDMC, and Mr. Rourke from Fantasy Island.
Huh! I’d’ve guessed it was a reference to Oliver Hardy trapped in a sawmill. :dubious:
I’ve always had a lot of fun watching shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy with my daughter (b. 1995). I’ve lost count of the times I had to explain a reference to her. I told her long ago “If they make a joke you don’t understand, it’s probably something from an old movie or TV show.”
I was quite surprised to learn fairly recently that she still didn’t get a lot of the jokes in cartoons until after she moved to Canada at the age of ten. F’rinstance, we first watched Chicken Run together when she was five, and she laughed at
*
“I’m from the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
“What, Scotland?!?”*
She was ten or eleven before she learned that Rocky’s line was from the American national anthem.
I think he means Gone with the Wwhhhhhind
Why are you saying that so weird? :dubious:
Thing about having lots of stuff available on demand is that you have to actually demand it in the first place. You’re not going to on Netflix and search for a movie you don’t know exists.
When your only source of tv shows and movies was those 3 tv channels you’d have little choice but to watch what was on, even if you hadn’t heard of it before.
For a more mature version of the same, I was watching some Tarantino films with my 17yr old son. While you can certainly enjoy Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill on its own merits, you lose something without exposure to the 1970s homage source material.
Because that’s how Stewie would say it.
My mother always kept an open mind. She was from the Glenn Miller generation–although that meant Bob Wills, too, although I didn’t realize that until we went to a Texas Folklife show featuring new & old Western Swing musicians. She discovered that good new music (sometimes with old roots) kept being played.
And she watched a lot of TV. I was surprised that she’d seen some Cheech & Chong movies. She said they reminded her of the Road pictures. Which does make sense…
Next time I’ll prefix the question with [IN THE VOICE OF BRIAN GRIFFIN]… :rolleyes:
Yeah, but that’s really no difference for how it was when I was around 9, 10 years old. When I was that age (around 1970) every Sunday after church our family would go over to my grandmother’s for lunch.
While there I’d watch a show that aired all the old Merrie Melodies cartoons. These weren’t the Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck** Looney Tunes**, but were the really old Warner Brothers cartoons that had characters coming to life off of product packages or book covers. They were specific references to radio performers or ad jingles, etc… from the 1930’s & 1940’s. Did I get any of them at the time? Nope.
But I still enjoyed them. It would be many years later, after I’d learned a lot about that time period that I’d “get” the jokes.
Think of how kids growing up in the early 1900’s were exposed to pop culture – movies, music, etc. How many shows could they watch on demand? If they wanted to listen to a particular musical artist, how easy was it to do? Much of this technology didn’t exist – even radio didn’t exist. Movies didn’t even have sound.
Then think about kids in the 1950’s. Big improvement, but still, many limitations. If it wasn’t on TV tonight, playing at the Bijou, or at the record store, it didn’t exist.
Contrast that era with today. So much material is available, in so many forms, readily and cheaply, that the field has exploded. Who can blame kids nowadays for not being able to keep up with the deluge? Unless we figure out a way to expand the human brain, we will have to impose a filter on culture and much stuff gets lost or overlooked.
I think a lot has to do with impact and how you relate it. For example, I was an extremely sheltered kid experience wise, so hearing about A Clockwork Orange growing up sounded so risqué and wild and out there. And although I was over twenty when I saw it (it being released a year after I was born), I was still blown away by its themes and imagery because I’d never lived through anything even remotely like that. So it had a huge effect on me and I’ve always felt it’s a “must see.”
Fast forward to talking about it with someone almost two decades younger than me, before they were twenty. I really hyped it up because I felt it was so groundbreaking and needfully shocking. His reaction? Meh. He’d grown up with the Internet and had probably already viewed things more intense on three minute YouTube clips. And sadly (to me at least), because this really didn’t resonate with him at all, any further “You gotta see this! It’s iconic!” were pointless because he just didn’t feel it was true. My idea of relevant just didn’t mesh with his and, in hindsight, I remember similar conversations with people older than me while I was growing up.
So, if you missed the zeitgeist of the time, newer generations have undoubtedly already moved on. And despite me trying to stay relatively current myself, I’m definitely no movie buff like I used to be. The reason that’s true when I could keep up with all and sundry was because what came before me was 1) limited and 2) compulsory ;), but also an avid field of interest. Nowadays, I’m hard pressed to even be able to tell much of young Hollywood starlets apart and see no reason to update my trivia on genres that no longer hold my interest. Who cares about most coming of age films (and the actors) at 48? Therefore, it does cut both ways.
Right, this. At one time, the easiest type of pop culture to have enduring purchase on the popular imagination was written fiction. But even then, you had cases like Melville almost totally disappearing and then being revived. Then music became somewhat easier for people to remember because they might check out their parents’ old records or hear it on the radio. Or with movies or TV shows, they might show up as repeats. But now nearly everything is available (not quite everything, which can sometimes be frustrating), but there’s just been too much of it piling up.
Even since the DVD was invented, and cinephiles started collecting (or at least renting) classic, foreign and independent “great films”, think of how many more have been released. And someone who is 25 today would have their hands full just trying to catch up on all the great TV released in the past twenty years or so (starting, roughly, with The Sopranos). Expecting them to go back and become familiar with Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, Cheers, etc. is just too much.
This is exactly why you’ll never see an immortal hip vampire. Think of your most clueless grandparent and multiply by ten. Even worse if they’re stuck looking young. They’d never fit in anywhere.
Keep in mind, popular culture is supposed to be disposable. A lot of kids do get exposed to the old TV shows via cable, etc. And a three-minute song requires less of an investment that a two hour movie.
With current music, I know who the performers are and I might know the song but I have no idea which is responsible for what.
Shit. It was My Fair Lady wasn’t it?
My workout partner is 32, I’m 56.
The only area that really highlights our age difference is pop culture. I’m continually amazed at how many “classic” movies he has not only never seen, but never even heard of.
I’m a movie buff, and I have to remember not to make movie references in our conversation, because he won’t get them.
I met him for dinner one night, and brought my 25th anniversary copy of Animal House with me, and waved it at him and said “We need to watch this!” He laughed and said “Dude, I don’t even have any way to play that!” (He streams everything).
There are so many great films he’s never seen (Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, 2001, etc, etc.) but not enough time…
This. Used to be the only thing on TV after the 11:00 news was old movies. Though I lived in L.A., and we had more than 3 channels. But they played old movies, too.
I’ve probably watched, as a percentage of all the movies I’ve watched, almost as many movies made before I was born than after. And I’m old!
Bingo! Now who was in GWTW?