Turning into our parents
Yesterday the blogotwittofaceosphere was all abuzz over the
Oscar nominations. Over the past couple of years, I’ve gotten completely away
from going to the movies, something I used to love. Part of that was economic –
a night at the movies for two cost more than a month of Netflix and Hulu
combined. While we enjoy the experience and the movies at Spectrum8, the other
theaters around are unpleasant experiences, and the few times I think we should
go out, there’s never anything I want to see. (How much do I sound like my
parents now). And so while all this Oscar buzzing was going on, I realized that
once again I had not seen a single movie they were buzzing about. In fact, I
think I had only even heard of one of the movies.
Ultimately, this is how we turn into our own parents. It’s
partly accidental, as over time there are just too many new things to keep up
with, too many things to pay attention to, and too few that we actually need
to know to get through life. So things like texting emerge, and we ask, “Isn’t
that just email to your phone?” and the kids shake their heads. (It is, by the
way.) Or the latest thing that replaces that last latest thing comes along, and
you’re just not ready to move on (“I just got ON Facebook!”)
It’s also partly intentional, because, as always, so much of
pop culture is just crap that fills the time. And there are so many gems
from the past that need to be read, watched, listened to, it seems like there’s
no time or room for the cascade of the new, which is unculled and untested.
Occasionally something marvelous suddenly catches my eye or ear (Florence +
The Machine) and I’m actually a little bit plugged into the zeitgeist, and
sometimes I hear something at the skating rink that doesn’t actually offend me, and I’m forced to ask the main (or perhaps emergency backup) teenager
who it is, and it turns out to be someone with actual talent (Adele) that I chose to ignore because she was just one more one-named singer.Again and again I hear the names of actors and actresses whose work I’m absolutely unaware of, and I find that I don’t really care to figure it out. I know there are such things as Ryan Reynolds and Megan Fox, and that’s exactly as much as I know.
My willful ignorance, however, cannot overcome the absolutely
insidious omnipresence of Khardashians, which I view as truly a sign of the
end of days, or at least an admission that we no longer require our
entertainment to be in any way entertaining, just that it be on and
omnipresent.
So, this is how we turn into our parents. Turns out it’s not
entirely accidental.