I found an old Garfield comic recently. I used to love Garfield comix as a child and had several anthologies. Now when I look at it it seems like the least funny cartoon in existence. Several other comic strips have also not stood the test of time for me. I used to also love Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. Now when I look at them they just don’t make me laugh, or interest me too much. Perhaps part of it is over-exposure, I read some of the C & H anthologies dozens of times but some of these books I haven’t picked up in 10 or more years and I can’t recall punchlines, stories arches and the like. Maybe my tastes are more (or less) sophisticated now. I’m sure some of it is that Garfield etc was aimed at and appeals primarily to childen but when I was young much older kids and adults read this comix and found them as hilarious as I did.
I’ve also lost alot of interest I once had in anime/manga. I still read the odd manga or see the odd anime that I find interesting but they don’t stimulate me the way they used to. There’s also so many to choose from I’d probably feel overwhelmed if I attempted to start watching anime and collecting manga again.
Just to clarify there are certain things from my childhood or earlier in my adulthood I still enjoy. I have a few Transformers DVDs and although the animation in some of them is crude, the storylines still interest me and the overall look and sound is still engaging. Bloom County/Outland that I loved as a kid I like more now because I get far more of the jokes. I didn’t understand contemporary American politics/culture when I first read them but I loved the characters and their relationships with each other.
So tell me, what comix, books, tv series, movies etc do you feel you’ve grown out of? This isn’t specifically for those who have no nostalgia for childhood stuff but also maybe there was a book you read years ago that you loved then tried to read again.
ALF. The show with the wisecracking alien that looked like an anteater. I waited for years for it to show up on Nick or TVLand, but it only took me a couple episodes to say to myself “What did I ever see in this show?”
Star Wars. When I was growing up, I LOVED the movies - I had action figues, vehicles, the whole works. (well, not the whole works, knowing how extensive Star Wars is, but I was into it) Now I own the whole set of movies on DVD…I don’t think I’ve watched them more than once. And most of my DVDs get numerous viewings.
Yep both Alf and Star Wars I would also include. I watched Alf recently and he just annoyed me. It was really really lame. The continued fascination with all things Star Wars of a huge percentage of the adult populace just terrifies me!
I used to be addicted to comic books-mostly the X-Men universe, and now I can’t get into it. I still go see the movies, but I don’t obsess over the new comics the way I used to.
Lost interest in: Comic books, video games, computer programming, Role Playing Games, pets
Kept interest in: Lord of the Rings, quality SF, movie drama, sex, playing that rock & roll music
Gained interest in: Kids/parenting, proper home and vehicle maintenance, speaking Mandarin Chinese, conversation
To give specific examples: I can still watch Maltese Falcon, or Lion in Winter, etc. and they’re still great. I can’t stand any online or local video game of any description. I go back and read Tolkien, Heinlein and Niven and such regularly. All comic books bore me now–I used to read all the DC and Marvel lines religiously.
The two bands I’m in gig on occasion. We play “Classic Rock” and some funk and some current stuff (Train, for instance) and I still love it–the playing part in particular.
Clearly, having kids has affected my life, but I’m not sure how much maturity has come from it.
Star Wars. I loved the original trilogy for most of my life, but when Episode One came out, the veneer started to crack. It was frustratingly disappointing, and made me reconsider the older movies with a more critical eye. Episode Two didn’t help, and by the time Episode Three came out, even though it was by far the best of the prequels, I was past the point of caring. I can’t be bothered to even think about Star Wars anymore, much less consider myself a fan. George Lucas’ recent snotty comments about Spider-Man 3 (a movie I enjoyed from a director I respect more than him) didn’t help any.
Comic books. I still consider myself a fan and even a student of the medium. As a librarian, I am always supporting getting more graphic novels and trade paperbacks into libraries to encourage kids and teens who are reluctant readers, and to show adults that there are great works in the medium and that not everything is meant for children. But I quit collecting monthly comics a few years ago, and only buy a couple trade paperbacks every year now. The mega-hyped events, shock value deaths, creator fads, and phasing out of my favorite B- and C-list characters all turned me away, as did the slavish devotion and antisocial, immature behavior from a lot of the online fanboy communities. There’s still good stuff coming out, but I am a lot less interested in sifting through all the dreck to seek it out, or paying the rising prices for it.
Video games. I used to love the NES and SNES, and there are a few good games on the more recent consoles. But I don’t care about most of what’s out there, and refuse to get involved with playing any of the.
I second the anime/manga. During college, I lived with a guy who was very into anime, so I watched it with him a lot. At some point during my senior year, though, it just stopped appealing to me. I definitely feel like I grew out of it.
I think I’ve sort of outgrown The Neverending Story. (The film, that is.)
I was crazy about it as a kid, and then I rented it again recently so my girlfriend (who’d never seen it) could watch, and I really couldn’t get that excited about it. It was really rather depressing, all said and done… the entirety of the movie save for the last 10 or 15 minutes was about how dire and grim the situation was and how hard it was going to be to do anything about it. The flying dog-dragon was kind of cool, but far creepier to me now than I remember it being… probably because I’m used to the more convincing CGI of today as opposed to the comparatively unnatural-looking animatronics of that era.
As for books, I’ve definitely gotten over the Chronicles of Narnia. It seemed so magical and immersive when I was a child, but now I read it and I’m just like, blah. I must have just been fascinated by the story itself then, but I can’t get past the boring and unimaginative writing style now.
Star Wars and most music recorded in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Generally, if it’s on a “Classic Rock” station, I probably grew up listening to it, and now I hate it and the band that recorded it (With some exceptions, of course. I still like Floyd, Zep, and Hendrix, for example, but generally not the tracks played on the radio.)
SciFi / Fantasy literature, in a nutshell. I used to have an adolescent reverence for the creativity of SF writing, but you get a little older and read some of the real classics, and it gets hard to appreciate the contemporary SF/fantasy bookshelf.
Gene Wolfe is still my favourite author, for old times sake, and I’ll enjoy the next GRRM, but the standard of writing is pitiful in the genre at large.
Anime. Granted, I never got the chance to be ‘into’ it like those 1/2 my age, but I truly enjoyed the serial nature of the stories. Now I’m older, and my daughter loves it and watches endlessly, and as I see the recycled storylines inching forward at a snail’s pace (actually, the snail reading over my shoulder just got insulted, so take that for what it’s worth), I don’t understand the appeal. It’s not like the 70s and 80s, where you got one, maybe two series. Now there are dozens, and it is the same story, over and over, with the same character types, yet anime fans don’t seem to tire.
Silly comedy movies. I don’t know if my tastes have changed, or if these types of movies have gotten worse/changed.
I loved, and still love movies like Tommy Boy, Billy Madison, Naked Gun, Ace Ventura, etc.
“Today’s” movies like Talladega Nights and 40 Year Old Virgin are OK, I don’t feel ripped off, but they are different somehow, or I have just outgrown the genre.
Yeah. With me it’s either that I outgrew the genre, or the genre devolved, and frankly I think it is a little of both. When you can see plot twists coming a mile away, when the characters are typically one step removed from a hoary stereotype… Well suffice it to say I haven’t read anything remotely in a fantasy vein since the final Dark Tower book left a very bad taste in mouth, and I was someone who read almost all the classics (Elric, Morgaine, Amber, Leiber, etc.).
Same thing with role-playing. I’d role play in a heartbeat if I could find a GM who run his game in the vein of a Shakespearean drama, with lots of emphasis on characterisation and real role-playing. Instead, I know if I call one of those numbers on the bulletin board of the local hobby shop I’ll get suckered into a endless series of sessions with a bunch of hack-and-slashers, something I have less than no interest in.
Horror movies. Haven’t seen one in twenty-five years that induced fear instead of just shock or gross-out, and haven’t seen a trailer for one in five years that interested me n the least.
Science Fiction as a whole. But I am sure that I am just a victim of the long-lost golden age syndrome. I can still re-read most of the stuff I had liked (up to the cyberpunk “revolution”) but there are only about three authors of the past twenty years who I have ever read more than one work. And I seriously cannot remember the last time I anticipated a book enough to buy it during its first month of release…
Blackadder. And it shocked me. I borrowed series 2,3 and 4 from a friend a couple of weeks ago and watched them. This was a show that at the time made me hurt with laughter, but I barely raised a smile this time around. Mind you, it’s not actually bad, but something in me has obviously changed. The ending of series 4 is still poignant as hell though.
It actually made me wonder about my sense of humour, so I watched some old dusty tapes of Frasier that I’ve got and all was well.
It was a fun and fluffy diversion when I was in college, but at this point I just want the last book out so I can read it, chuck it, and never think about it again.
