I’ve been taking a trip down memory lane, revisiting some old posts from The Pop View. Today’s is from around May/June of 2000.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE: We present a quote from a 1959 TV Guide interview with Lucille Ball. At the time, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour was beaten in the ratings by Gunsmoke, Wagon Train and Have Gun, Will Travel. Substitute another show format (e.g. game show or reality-based programming) for the word “western”: “Kids dominate the dial. I don’t think they should have so damn many westerns. But this is the problem with networks. And why do the networks have two good programs opposite each other? Comedy is a victim of the western trend.”
I FEAR FOR THE SOULS OF THE YOUNG: Speaking of Lucy, here’s more evidence (if you needed it) that our young people are in serious trouble, culturally speaking. While writing a piece for the MUSIC section, I looked up The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love on Amazon. [The comment is no longer online, but was a review headed "Is there a minus number of stars?"] This customer hated the book, which is about two Cuban brothers who become music stars as a result of appearing on I Love Lucy. The person wrote, “I thought because some of the cultural references were beyond me (e.g. it took me a while to figure out that Desi Arnaz was in ‘I Love Lucy’, only having seen the program twice in my life) I didn’t ‘get it’.” When Desi Arnaz references are too hip, then we as a nation are in serious trouble. It makes the work of this Web site all the more critical.
Later, an acquaintance reminded me that this is the natural order of things. The new generation comes along and develops their own frame of reference. The old pieces of culture fade away. I get it, but it saddens me. The other day I was having a conversation with somebody and a Fibber McGee & Molly reference came up. It’s not like either of us was that old, but the program went off the air in 1959 and we were still referencing it.
Today, we celebrate the pop culture of the past forty years all the time. For example, thanks to VH1, I’m guessing there are a lot of young people who know a lot more about the Seventies and Eighties than they really need to. I guess I’m saying that if I had my way, nothing would ever go out of style. We’d all still read Little Nemo in Slumberland, listen to the Mills Brothers from time to time and know how to sing the Chock full o’Nuts jingle, when called upon — while at the same time knowing who MF Doom and Robert Rodriguez are.
Diversify, diversify…
3 Responses
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Peter Nellhaus Says:
This reminds me of when I was at this store that specialized in various gift and novelty items about ten years ago. I bought a magnet that was a small version of a poster for Angel with Marlene Dietrich. The young girl behind the counter commented on how that was “before her time”. I haven’t got use to a culture for whom film history begins with Star Wars although I did convince one person to see Hidden Fortress.
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The Pop View Says:
Here’s another one for you. Last week a colleague and I were standing in my office, discussing something of the sequencing about the songs on side two of The Beatle’s album Abbey Road. A 27-year-old co-worker stared blankly: “Side two?”
Oh, right. In a digital world, there are no sides to an album.
Damn.
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The Pop View » The Tonight Show: Battles in a War Long Gone Says:
[...] We used to have variety shows on TV, lots of them. We used to have westerns. Soap operas used to have huge audiences. Slowly, these things are changing and fading away. We can mourn their passing, but we should not hang on unduly long. (See this previous post on I Love Lucy.) [...]