Sad Fact about me

[Olivia Bauer]

MST3K has so many pop culture references from before my time I had to watch episodes with my Dad around so he can explain.

Is it bad that I wish I wasn't so young?

[Flick James]

What you're talking about is not so much a wish to be older, but simply to have been alive at an earlier time. There is nothing inherently wrong with this and it can be perfectly healthy and fun provided it does not consume the individual. If you are entertaining the past at the expense of being in the present, well, that's up to you to work out. Do you feel that is happening?

[Mofo Rising]

I was born in 1978, so there's a lot of pop culture stuff I'm not privy to.

I remember being amazed when I first started listening to the Beatles after I graduated high school. There was a world of Beatles references that I had never noticed before. It literally reconfigured my previous understanding of the world. It flabbergasted me. There was this entire world of references that I never even noticed, but it was understood by everybody that was a decade or two older than me.

I never would have noticed a pun of "Magical Mystery Tour" because I would have never noticed or cared. Now that it was knowledge I was now privy to it amazed me just how much of this knowledge was ingrained in people. Not something like secret knowledge, just information that was available to everybody who lived through that time.

[Psycho Circus]

It isn't a bad thing at all AJ. If you prefer stuff from before your time, that's good as it shows that you're not some mindless drone of society who was "born yesterday". You then have the pleasure of discovering and learning more from decades and decades of movies, books, music, events etc... I pretty much live in a bubble of nostalgia and am happy with that. I know a lot more about the past than the present because it interests me more, even when there's pop culture references I may not get, I look forward to understanding them.

[Criswell]

With something like MST3K there are so many references so its okay if you don't get a few. If you don't get one joke you'll likely be laughing at the next.

[The Burgomaster]

It seems to me that young people today don't have as much knowledge about things that occurred before they were born than young people did when I was a kid.  When I was very young in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was well aware of the movies, music, and history of my parents' generation and earlier.  I don't think that is necessarily the case today.  Part of the reason is television.  With so many cable and/or satellite channels available, it is difficult to get exposed to movies, documentaries, television shows, and other programming from the past unless you specifically look for it.  When I was a kid, we originally had 6 channels to choose from, and much of the programming was re-runs of old television shows (FATHER KNOWS BEST, OZZIE AND HARRIETT, LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, OUR MISS BROOKS), old comedy shorts (3 STOOGES, OUR GANG/LITTLE RASCALS, LEON ERROLL, EDGAR KENNEDY), and old movies (HUMPHREY BOGART, JAMES CAGNEY, MARILYN MONROE, MARX BROTHERS, LAUREL & HARDY, W.C. FIELDS, DEAN MARTIN & JERRY LEWIS).  So, I saw one or more of these programs almost every day and became well aware of what was happening years  or decades before I was born.  Now, unless you watch Turner Classic Movies or TV Land or rent a DVD or something like that, you may never see any of these things.  

A few years ago we were watching a movie at work during our lunch hour.  One of our younger employees (in his 20s) had no idea who Bela Lugosi and Jerry Lewis were.  This amazed me.  I can't think of a time in my life when I DIDN'T know who Bela Lugosi and Jerry Lewis were.  When I was a kid, barely a weekend passed when at least one Jerry Lewis movie wasn't on TV.  Try to find one now.  All you get is current programming unless you really go digging for the older stuff.

 

[AndyC]

Nothing wrong with wanting to be in on a joke, or to share some knowledge and experiences with people older than yourself. That's normal and natural and healthy.

And I agree with Burgo. Until about the late 80s, old movies and shows were still getting recycled as cheap filler by local TV stations. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I got to watch Leave It to Beaver, I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith, Lost in Space, original Star Trek, Gilligans Island, The Flintstones, etc., even though all of these were over a decade old or more. Plus all of the Three Stooges, Little Rascals, Laurel and Hardy, Bugs Bunny and other shorts going back as far as the 30s. Movies from the 40s to the 70s were on frequently, and all on regular TV. Then came the gradual disappearance of independent stations, the use of canned network programming, the coming of specialty channels, and bulk-selling the non-prime hours for infomercials.

That and there is just so much programming specifically targeted to younger viewers, who often don't have to share a TV with the rest of the family, kids have little opportunity to be exposed to what is available.

Still, at 18 or 19 years of age, I wouldn't worry about not getting all the old references. It takes time to pick it all up. Even now, I run into a few MST3K references I only get by considering the context.

And the great thing about MST3K is the variety of references they make - a deliberate choice to keep the show from becoming dated. There's really something for everyone.

[Olivia Bauer]

I still watch older shows and movies. But old black and white films are hard to comeby these days.

Today the movies are over-saturated with modern crap. Crude humor, s**tty romance comedies, and unimginative animated films. I wish I lived back in the 80's.

[The Burgomaster]

That and there is just so much programming specifically targeted to younger viewers, who often don't have to share a TV with the rest of the family, kids have little opportunity to be exposed to what is available.

This is another good point.  When I was a kid, we had a TV in the living room and we all decided what we would watch and the family generally watched it together.  We all had TVs in our bedrooms, but we didn't use them very often.  (We only had 6 channels to choose from, so even if you went to your room to watch TV, there wasn't much to choose from.  Generally, the "family decision" was the best program on at the time).  Now, everyone can scurry off to another room to watch TV and have hundreds of channels to choose from.

[Rev. Powell]

I wish I lived back in the 80's.

Oh no! Another Circus!  What do you guys see in the 80s?

When I lived in the 80s, I wished I was living in the 60s.

[Doggett]

I wish I lived back in the 80's.

Oh no! Another Circus!  What do you guys see in the 80s?

The clothes, the music, the movies, the hair...



I wanna be in the 80's too!

 

[bob]

I have experiences simliar to AJ's. Once in a while when I'm watching episodes with friends and the riffers reference something one of us doesn't get we pause it and see if anyone gets the reference. If one of us does we explain it, if not we keep watching.

[LilCerberus]

I used to ask my Mom about the pop culture references in the comic strip Bloom County.
She never answered my questions, she'd just launch into a tirade about what poor taste it was in.

[Hammock Rider]

The 80's weren't all cakes and ale my friend. Had you been alive back then you very well might have attended a Boy George or WHAM concert, sat through 21 Jump Street or walked around in a pair of parachute pants. There were neither intenet nor cell phones on which to watch movies and the '49ers dominated pro-football

  I think I see some of what you're saying. Aside from missing out on cool references, which even I sometimes do and I was born in '65, the 80's seems like the last decade before entertainment became simply another product to sell.  But cheer up Bucko, at least you know enough to watch MST3K!

[The Burgomaster]

The 80's weren't all cakes and ale my friend. Had you been alive back then you very well might have attended a Boy George or WHAM concert,

Actually, one of the most memorable concerts I ever went to was in the 1980s:

* A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS (sounded terrible "live")
* THE FIXX
* THE POLICE

The concert was in an open-air football stadium and it lasted about 6 hours if you count the breaks between acts.