David Sirota: The test of time

[marmar]

from the Denver Post:



The test of time
Some films of the '80s and '90s are already obsolete because major portions of their plot rely exclusively on a lack of today's technology.

By David Sirota
Creators Syndicate

Posted: 02/07/2010 01:00:00 AM MST


Like many thirtysomethings, my wife and I watch a lot of TBS movies, specifically from the 1980s and early 1990s. And, like a lot of thirtysomethings, my wife and I are also thinking about having children. So lately, we've started wondering if our kids will someday lambaste our cultural tastes as those of the crotchety curmudgeons we sometimes chuckle at.

Specifically, will the children of 2032 laugh at us when they see us watching TBS reruns like we laugh at our own parents when they watch flicks on that other Ted Turner creation, Turner Classic Movies (TCM)?

TCM, as any channel-surfer knows, is a museum of archaic Hollywood, providing non-stop reruns of John Wayne, Greta Garbo and Clark Gable. Perhaps the only TCM movie I've ever seen all the way through is "Gone With the Wind," and that one I was forced to watch on VHS tape in my middle-school history class.

When I've seen my parents or grandparents watching TCM, I find it funny not just because they are either in black and white or cartoonish Technicolor, and not just because the ties are thinner, the cars boxier and the language more prudish, but because the plots they present as modernity are so outdated, so divorced from the epoch we live in now. "Vertigo" presents the now-grimy and crumbling San Francisco as a clean 1950s suburb; "On the Waterfront" is about struggles with the kind of all-powerful unions that no longer exist; and "West Side Story" is about gang warfare plaguing a now-ritzy section of Manhattan whose most dangerous element is aggressive Zabar's shoppers.

While watching, say, the Bill Murray classics "Ghostbusters" and "Groundhog Day" on TBS, I've reassured myself that there's no way my 20-year-old child in 2032 will feel the same disconnect I feel with, say, TCM's "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof." I've based this belief only on the fact that Hollywood's language, sex and violence barriers broke somewhere in the early 1970s, and haven't gone back. Whereas TCM flicks of the 1950s and 1960s seem so old, in part, because there's no cursing or nudity, and very little carnage, TBS movies seemed to endure because there's plenty of that stuff. Sure, the lapels and the glasses look too big, but Peter Venkman and Phil Connors are as lewd as any of today's — and probably tomorrow's — typical funny men, and their story's modernity has therefore always felt timeless. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14336557

[proudohioan]

1. Funny, my 21 yr old daughter..

absolutely LOVES TCM. Her idea of a great snow day is snuggling up on the couch to a day of old movies. Her apartment is filled with posters of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. I don't know how many times she's called to let me know that "My Fair Lady" or "Oklahoma" will be showing on TCM at such and such time.

Personally, AMC is one long commercial, showing the same movies over and over again.

Just thought I'd mention.

[earthside]

2. Embarrassing Column for David

I like Sirota's take on politics, I listen here in Denver to his radio show ... he doesn't just spout the party line, he can be provocative and original.

But when it comes to entertainment and social culture he comes across less a thirty-something and more like a self-absorbed fellow stuck in his 20s. So, as per his column, I don't think he's ready for kids ... for instance, if you're going to be a good father the time you can video game is sharply curtailed and the way he talk's on his show, one would wonder if he is quite ready to give that up for changing diapers and mopping floors (I assume he is a good progressive and wouldn't let his wife do all the drudge work).

Frankly, the article itself reminded me of the arguments my now twenty-one year old son used to make to me when he was eighteen about entertainment and culture -- he thought anything worthwhile in the world was created with his birth. (He doesn't do that so much anymore, kids can grow-up fast when in the real world.)

And ... I know young folks who watch TCM and 70s and 80s movies and are deep enough and/or knowledgeable enough to place those films in their proper context and have fun or find meaning with the stories. Furthermore, if Sirota has really only managed to watch "Gone With the Wind' as a film from the 30s or 40s, then his ignorance of movies and motion picture history is astonishingly thin; he has no idea what he has been missing from Hollywood's Golden Age.

This is an embarrassing article for Sirota, I would have expected a little more mature perspective from him. He ought to forget that he ever wrote this and move-on ... way on.