Does today's generation "see/understand" TV and movies differently?

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If you're too intellectually dishonest to understand what many of us here have said, then I guess I'll just set you both on ignore and see myself out.

I don't know why I ever bothered saying a word. Peace, love, and apple sauce.
 
Psab keel said:
If you're too intellectually dishonest to understand what many of us here have said, then I guess I'll just set you both on ignore and see myself out.

I don't know why I ever bothered saying a word. Peace, love, and apple sauce.
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Sorry you feel that way.
 
The op asked an interesting question but I didn't have to get past the first post to know this would devolve into chronocentrism.
Ironically, my daughter and I are in the middle of filming 8 episodes of film discussion/review that explores the perspective on various ages of films between a 50 yr old (me) and a 20 yr old (her).
Even though we share a lot of taste in entertainment we do look at everything through different lenses due to our varied experiences growing up.

On another note, almost everything I enjoyed on TV as a kid is unwatchable now, some of it is so bad I wonder how I ever liked it!
 
Bigdaddy said:
The op asked an interesting question but I didn't have to get past the first post to know this would devolve into chronocentrism.
Ironically, my daughter and I are in the middle of filming 8 episodes of film discussion/review that explores the perspective on various ages of films between a 50 yr old (me) and a 20 yr old (her).
Even though we share a lot of taste in entertainment we do look at everything through different lenses due to our varied experiences growing up.

On another note, almost everything I enjoyed on TV as a kid is unwatchable now, some of it is so bad I wonder how I ever liked it!
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I have actually thought of doing a similar thing with my 16 year old. It sounds like a lot of fun, and I imagine would be really interesting.
 
Bigdaddy said:
On another note, almost everything I enjoyed on TV as a kid is unwatchable now, some of it is so bad I wonder how I ever liked it!
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I feel the same, Transformers was gold standard as a kid, but I bought the DVD's and it certainly wasn't as glorious as I remember (The movie still is though). Even tried re-watching Seinfeld recently and it felt average. Sometimes memories of the past are very rose tinted.
 
Picard102 said:
I don't feel like you did anything of the sort.
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Not to derail, but I have definitely put members on ignore before whose opinions I found so obnoxious that I didn't want to have to read them.

As far as insulting anyone's intelligence, I dunno. I'm sure I've come off that way before. I have a capacity for snideness sometimes.
 
Some of my favorite comedy films are by the Marx brothers, the films are almost 100 yrs old and still have humor that is relevant and works today. That said there is some pretty racist stuff that's incredibly cringe worthy.
 
Bigdaddy said:
The op asked an interesting question but I didn't have to get past the first post to know this would devolve into chronocentrism.
Ironically, my daughter and I are in the middle of filming 8 episodes of film discussion/review that explores the perspective on various ages of films between a 50 yr old (me) and a 20 yr old (her).
Even though we share a lot of taste in entertainment we do look at everything through different lenses due to our varied experiences growing up.

On another note, almost everything I enjoyed on TV as a kid is unwatchable now, some of it is so bad I wonder how I ever liked it!
Click to expand...

Master Boda said:
A few years ago I thought it would be fun to watch He-Man and a few other cartoons and wow. I guess that might be why they say young and dumb.
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I've curated the stuff I show my kid from my youth. I've showed her:

- He-man/She-Ra (does not hold up)
- The Muppet Show (holds up)
- Muppet Babies (holds up)
- Dungeons & Dragons (does not hold up)

The shows that don't hold up are still fine for a kid to watch, but, like, a few years ago when Kevin Smith released his He-Man show on Netflix and people were all up in arms about how it tarnished the legacy of He-Man or some such, I wanted to say "Uh...have you ever actually watched He-Man? It's terrible! It's not even trying to be good! WTF are you on about with this 'legacy of He-Man'?"

For any of you who watch old stuff with your kids, I would LOVE to see the results. That'd be really interesting!
 
I don't have kids, but I have a cousin that's close to my age with kids. When they were younger I showed them a lot of the stuff we grew up with. They were unimpressed with most of it except for the OT and Land of the Lost.
 
Solo4114 said:
Ok, I'm going to try to explain this. Yes, Charlie Chan is racist. It's a white guy putting on yellowface to play a caricature of Asian people. You want to say "But it was acceptable in its time." Yes, it was. It was absolutely a product of its time. It was entirely acceptable and not remotely seen as racist (which, I'd argue, in the 1930s was barely a concept to begin with) in its day. None of that changes the fact that it's racist. It can be two things: (1) a product of its time, and (2) racist. I'm not disagreeing with you that, in its context, it was what it was, and that's just how the world was. That's all true. And that was racist. I mean, it doesn't actually seem like you're disputing me on this. It seems like we actually agree with each other that (a) it was acceptable in its day and it's a product of its time, and (b) it's racist.

Again, this isn't just "because it makes you feel bad." And you can try to dismiss this as all being about "emotion" and not "intellect," but intellectually, it's still racist, man. I'd say that the detached, intellectual point of view is to look at the material, acknowledge the society that produced it and recognize that it was entirely within the normal bounds of good and polite taste within that era, and still be able to say "And it's racist." The emotional position is to try to argue that it's somehow not racist merely because it's a product of its time. It can still be a product of its time and be racist or otherwise objectionable. Are you trying to argue that position? You may want to reevaluate it, if you are.
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This is getting way off topic, but you're still wrong. You SEE it as racist, but that doesn't mean that it was. This is what happens when you try to apply modern sensibilities to every point in history equally. It doesn't work that way. At the time, it wasn't seen as racist. Your views today don't change the reality of yesterday. Now that's a pretty common thing, lots of people have done that over the years, but it was wrong for them just as it's wrong for you. You are assuming that you have the one and only definition that applies to everyone, everywhere and you're wrong.

This is also about the point that a lot of people have a strong emotional reaction to being proven wrong and either start throwing around incoherent threats or just run away to sulk somewhere else. Hopefully, you're better than that.

Solo4114 said:
I'll give you an example. Agatha Christie's novel "And Then There Were None" didn't originally have that title. I won't post here what the title was; it can be looked up online. But the original title is absolutely, 100% racist. Was it a product of its time? Sure. Back then, it was -- evidently -- perfectly acceptable to include that specific racial slur in the title of your book. That doesn't magically cloak it in some shield that makes it not racist. The fact that we view things differently now doesn't make the original title ok. It makes it a product of its time, sure, but that doesn't change what it is.
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Is it racist today? Sure. Was it then? Nope. Your views today are entirely irrelevant to the views of the past, just like, in another 20-30 years, when future people look back at what's thought acceptable today, they're not going to have a positive view of modern Americans. "Acceptable" is a constantly moving target. You are no more absolutely right today than anyone else has ever been. It just takes life experience to figure that out.

Honestly, there isn't a whole lot more to say in this, other than to acknowledge that you've fallen into every trap along the way. You don't have to agree with me because I don't care, but you've spent a lot of time declaring yourself to be right without ever once actually demonstrating that you are.

That's not really a good sign.
 
Paul Andrew said:
I see your point, but I have to disagree with it on a fundamental level.

Yes those things were acceptable back in the day, but any number of things that are unacceptable now didn't used to be. That doesn't make them OK then, it only explains the context in which they occurred. And to be frank, the context is $&#@ed up.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but what I'm reading is that old racist stuff is OK because society didn't recognize it as racist at the time it was made, and I don't even know what to say to that concept.
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No, it doesn't make them not okay either. Just because *YOU* don't like it doesn't mean anything. You are not the standard bearer for moral judgements ever. It's essentially stomping your feet and holding your breath until you turn blue because you really want to be right.

Reality doesn't work that way. Now that's a discussion that is way off topic for RPF, but it's one of ideology and how a lot of ideologies fail the rational sniff test. It's why there are so many problems, because people don't actually have a cognitive leg to stand on.
 
Cephus said:
At the time, it wasn't seen as racist.
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It was actually. The term in the original book title was seen as racist in the 1850's. The book was published in 1939.
That it was okay to be racist was the reason it was even considered, not because it wasn't racist.

Nevertheless, to claim that racism didn't exist because it was accepted is pure fantasy.

Cephus said:
you've spent a lot of time declaring yourself to be right without ever once actually demonstrating that you are.
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Oh boy...
 
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