I kind of wonder when a young person has never heard of an actor or actress from just a generation ago-- like when someone 25 has never heard of Brooke Shields.
I guess vintage film viewing isn’t a thing anymore, because you stream everything, and stick with the familiar.
When I was in my teens, I watched any movie that was on from the 1930s or 40s (except westerns). If it said suspense, mystery, thriller or horror, I got up at 2am to watch it. But even the ones with other labels-- romance, biography, family, whatever-- I watched in the afternoon.
So I knew who Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, James Stewart, et al. were. And so did my friends. We watched these films together sometimes, and if we had a chance to see something in a theater!–OMG! we once crammed 9 people into my dad’s Chevelle and drove about 20 miles to see The Wizard of Oz on screen, even though we’d all seen it before.
I’m not surprised if my 25-year-old doesn’t know who Mary Pickford is, but cripes, Winona Ryder?
By the way, the key when mentioning ANY name is to check if people know who you’re talking about, and give a reference if they don’t.
I have a (brilliant) friend who thinks nothing of mentioning names of politicians, historical figures, scientists and celebrities (domestic and foreign, current and dead).
I’ve long given up asking who all these people are; I’d be stopping him every two minutes all evening long.
But I wouldn’t mind if he’d just toss in a footnote, like "Well, Stephin Merritt might beg to differ… do you know him? Frontman of The Magnetic Fields, he got called racist for saying he liked the song Zip-A-Dee Doo Da."
Which version did you see? Skinny young or fat old? Solo or band? Post cancer? My favorite time was just him and his guitar and a card table with a pack of smokes and a bottle.
Second best, at a fundraiser in the auditorium of his high school in Maywood, down the street from his childhood house on First Ave.
There’s a whole thread going about Neil Gaiman, and a surprising number of people had never heard of him. Mildly surprising to me. Having only the vaguest idea about him? Sure. But I wouldn’t have guessed at the number of people who had not even heard the name.
Might just be a selective memory thing. Why bother remembering a name when they don’t do anything you care about? Makes sense, really.
That’s me. Probably woulda been able to guess SciFi/fantasy author, but maybe not.
Right now I’m reading the last of Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire Novels. I HOPE a great many folk would at least think “old time dead English author.” But I’m likely fooling myself.
Not even a spark of recognition here. Nor for any of his works. Had to read down to “Notable fans: Alec Guinness” in the Wiki page before anything clicked .
They are saying that because up until his death was in the news, they were in that group. And maybe they were again - I think I might have noticed when he died, but I would not have remembered even that until you mentioned that he was ( at the time) one of the most famous people to die of COVID. If you had just mentioned his name to me , I would have had no idea who he was or what he did.
I think most “famous people” are famous to a particular group. That group might be bigger or smaller depending on what the person is famous for, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone never heard of most “famous” people. There are loads of people my husband thinks I should know - but I don’t watch the same movies or TV shows that he does, I pay no attention to sports, and as far as music goes, with a few exceptions, I won’t know the names of everyone in the band. And there are loads of people I know of that he has never heard of. Sure, there’s overlap - but most of it is people who are in the news all the time for reasons other than being entertainers.
Though there are a lot of cogent arguments against the “famous people die in threes” claim, my favourite one is that “what does famous mean?” because who I think is famous because they’re prominent in my country, or during my childhood, or works in my particular field of interest, does not mean anybody else would consider them famous, so would they ‘count’ in this rule of three thing?
I know almost no contemporary pop stars, few movie stars if they aren’t in something I’ve watched, or contemporary authors, or much of anyone else if they aren’t in some scandal-or-other.
I know Prine from the song John Denver recorded on his Rocky Mountain High album. The song was Paradise. I like it and should explore his work more. Hubster might know more. I’m sad to hear he died of Covid. I didn know.
I’ve always said that I’d love to play trivia at the bar, but I need to be on a team where someone knows sports.
I do hope your husband respects your choice of what you clutter your head with. I had a workmate show me a photo of a celebrity and then ask me who it was, in front of a dozen other people. He then looked disgusted and claimed I was lying when I had no idea who it was.
I think of John Prine’s heyday as being in the 1970s. All the songs of his I paid attention to were written by then. So it’s not surprising that he’s not more widely known nowadays.
My 40-year-old co-worker didn’t know who Gordon Lightfoot was when he died. But her father did.
Did you read this somewhere, or is this your gut feeling?
Because my experience with both younger co-workers (ages 22-30) and high schoolers (in tennis programs I’m involved in) is that they are much more knowledgeable than we were are their age about a vast array of topics.
The flexes my gen-X contemporaries like to use to show how ignorant these young people are seems utterly stupid.
“They don’t know what a floppy disk is!” [why would they]
I’m willing to bet that the average 25 year old knows MORE about FDR and Truman than the average 50 year old.
We are currently celebrating the Olympics at work. The young people know shed loads about countries on the other side of the world. Our 50- and 60-somethings seem proud to think that Bali is a country and Kiribati is a made up one. The “kids” know a lot more facts about China, Japan, Korea, Philippines. Older people seem to trade in stereotypes.
I was playing bar trivia once and my team was killing it. One team, comprised of women who appeared to be in their early 20’s, complained repeatedly when they did not know the answer to a question. Their refrain: “That’s not fair, that happened before we were BORN!”
The trivia host, to my astonishment, agreed with them and made allowances for their limitations, tossing aside questions that were “unfair”.
This happened more than a decade ago and it still twists my undies.
(Note that I am not citing this single anecdote as proof of my position on Mighty_Mouse’s statement about FDR and Truman)
As for John Prine, I am a longtime fan. The only folks I know who know him, know him because I introduced them to Prine. Except for the person who introduced him to me.
I remember when Manu Dibango died he was described as “one of the
first global stars to die from Covid-19.”
Followed shortly after by Lee Konitz.
(Both were sax players btw)
.