I Got a Rock...
Am I getting old? The answer, apparently, is a resounding yes. A fact hammered into me last night during a viewing of the holiday classic, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", which I watched with Perfect Wife and the 2 kids.I love this special, as does everyone, I assumed. I was wrong.
While I watched and marveled at the cool graphics and laughed at all the parts I always laugh at, the kids were bored to tears. One left halfway through, the other stayed because she had heard my raves and I think she was waiting for something "good" to happen. Or maybe she was humoring me.
When I expressed my disappointment in the kids' reaction to PW, she said that maybe the show was too "old fashioned" for them. How can that be?! This is PEANUTS for crying out loud! Everyone (I assumed) knows/loves these characters! Their appeal crosses over all generations! Is Shakespeare old fashioned? Is Mozart? Are the Three Stooges?!
On reflection, I decided, yes. Maybe there is no such thing as "timelessness". Each generation has some cultural icons that they embrace, that the next one rejects, or just doesn't get. This may explain why my Mother could never get me to enjoy "I Married Joan". Someday perhaps, our children may wonder why their kids aren't into "Spongebob" re-runs.
It's sad. One thing is certain. We won't be watching "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" this year!
Labels: abbot and costello meet frankenstein, halloween, Peanuts
posted by Bill White at
10:29 AM
10 Comments:
I love your drawing!! Of course, your nearest and dearest know you actually played Charlie Brown on stage recently... but, we won't go into that.
As for holiday classics, I think the reason they resonate so fondly with our generation is that when we watch shows like The Great Pumpkin, it reminds us of our youth and a time when we didn't have any responsibilities except to learn and have fun. Kids these days (mine included) don't have that comparison. They just look at it as something vaguely familiar which comes across the TV each year and which their parents and grandparents say they "must see".
Also, when we were younger, you could only watch these specials once a year which made them even more endearing. Now, kids can rent them, buy them or watch them on YouTube any time they want. It kinda takes all the emotion out of the watching experience.
Anyway, your thoughts and drawings never cease to entertain me and make me ponder.. Keep it up!!
Again, Pepper (a.k.a. Perfect Wife) sums it all up perfectly.
Why doesn't she have a blog?!
I prefer to stay in the background and ride on your coat tails... :-)
It's The Great Pumpkin is and always will be one of the best. Kids these days! I agree with Ms. Potts/PW - the fact that we had to wait all day, get in our pajamas and make watching the cartoon an EVENT - well, that's lost on this generation. Too bad... I'm thinking about Cinderella - how can they ever know the joy?!?!?
I'd still show them the Abbott and Costello film. It's a masterpiece of fun, though kids don't like BW movies so that may turn them off anyways ...but I digress.
I went to see Indiana Jones 4 with a friend of mine who is close to my age and we were there back in '81 seeing it like 10 times and we were going to take his nephew who is 15 with us to see the new one. He went, but it was a fight to get him to go! He said "I don't want to see that. It's an 'old people's' movie."
Sheesh...!
Scott,
"Sheesh", indeed!
Did he like it when he went?
BW - The fabulous Nancy and I fell off our chairs seeing the round head kid and his faithful dog here . . . very fun drawing.
I too got a back of rocks teaching an after school comic book class a couple of years ago - if it's not Manga it's BORE-eeeng to a 4th grader.
I have found, however - among the washed up relics in the old fart pop culture icon bag - that the Beatles kinda still hold water among the "youngs".
I love this drawing! I hope you note that I am now reading the blog.
Love,
P.
Bill,
He did like it but wasn't blow away by it. I on the other hand saw Indy 4 three times and loved it! He was bored by Episode III of Star Wars also and went out of the theatre to the lobby to play a video game. He said it was too slow. Like every kid in today's world, they are inundated with a million other things and there's nothing special anymore. If you don't capture them young with the good stuff, they will miss it and not care later about it. There's no Star Wars that is out or coming out that will change the way they look at things. There's just too much of everything...being an artist and working on the licenses that I do I can see first hand how these kids respond to one thing over another and why these corporation make the same choices they do. Where'd I park my Delorean time machine...cause I'm going back to the 70-80s and ask Kristy McNichol out on a date!
Scott, "Walked out on Star Wars"? Yikes!
One note of hope to all: The kid who left Charlie Brown halfway through watched Disney's Icabod & Mr. Toad and liked it! He also enjoys watching the Looney Tunes DVDs, so perhaps, all is not lost!
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