I think there's some definite truth to that. Since the mid-1960s at least, the western world's culture has seemed to be more oriented towards youthfulness, while in the prior times it seemed to be oriented more towards classiness. Obviously these are just sweeping general observations though and there are certainly many counterexamples to be found in both times. Stuff like this is never either/or, or black & white. Even though I'm from the latter era, I'm still not going to pass judgment on either time.
Oh yeah, and these trends have gone full bore in recent decades. See how comic books have evolved into higher quality graphic novels and big budget movies that some seriously say should be thought of highly in a critical sense. Or the boggling variety of sneakers now available. But to the naysayers, I'm not complaining or criticizing ...
You forgot sandals and tee shirts, which along with shorts, I wear on a daily basis. Weather permitting, i.e.
Just slid into my Archie'sYou forgot sandals and tee shirts, which along with shorts, which I wear on a daily basis.
Have those
Have those
I do DM Industrials for work.
Vans have been my goto for about 20 yrs. That is when I figured out they are actually very comfortable compared to Chuck Taylors
I've worked in construction for 30 years. I won't wear boots. I wore them for my Uncle Sam, that was enough.
Same with most things us old people complain about, especially when it comes to how younger generations do things
Just an assumption on my part, your dad was an active AK member? If not he fit the mold
I see this in popular movies in particular. All of those superhero type movies that have been so big in recently years would have been no doubt amazing if they had come out when I was a kid. My parents though and parents of my friends I'm pretty certain wouldn't have been much interested in them at all, but now they're the kinds of things that are popular with a really broad age demographic. I remember the big movies, both from a popular and critical standpoint from way back in the 70s, were very often the kinds of things that were mostly aimed at adults and not such "broad demographic" kinds of things. I personally don't quite understand the popularity of those superhero films with older folks like me. To me, they come across as trying too hard to be entertaining at every moment so that the effect ends up becoming mind numblingly dull, with little plot, well written dialog, or acting being the main focus, but the art direction and special effects, like constant explosions (and running away from them) are what takes center stage.
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Just an assumption on my part, your dad was an active AK member? If not he fit the mold
I knew plenty of parents like your dad. I was lucky with my pops, he is a "I listen to everything" audiophool so I was exposed to all kinds of stuff by him. At 84 he still listens to newer stuff on the radio to keep up with what's going on.
Yes. As a big example, didn't the Beatles' "1" hits compilation go to number one in 2020 (or close to that), 50 years after they had split up? That would be like a music act from 1920 or earlier going to number one in 1970, which just seems absurd, yet here we are.
I finally got fed up with the superhero film trend too. It was one of the Avengers sequels that did it for me (maybe the third one - I forget). In the movie, the city was basically turned into a war zone where the superheroes were battling their evil nemeses. It was just so overblown and kind of left me with a bad feeling afterwards too. I still fondly remember the movie that kicked off the trend though - the original Superman movie which had kind of a special charm about it. I also saw most of the Batman movies, but finally got my fill of them. Same thing with James Bond (although they're not superhero films).
Attention spans are getting shorter among so many people, maybe most even. There's just such an overload of stimuli coming from all directions these days, something which didn't exist to anywhere near that degree in past decades, and you just really have to set personal boundaries and heavily filter stuff out or you'll totally get swamped. The best way IMO is to carefully focus on what you like and try to filter out all that other stuff as just extraneous noise instead of shortening your attention span on everything. I believe that at least a minority of people are still doing that (like the people here!).
I really feel that this kind of thing speaks to the lack of truly inspired ideas in today's popular music, that people are so bored with it that they're reaching for music that's so old.
Though I get that they are all light entertainment kinds of films, I would put the Bond movies in a separate category. At least the early ones had a sense of sophistication, romance and a bit of camp to them that I don't see in superhero movies. Bond, besides being a spy/badass type was a sophisticated, worldly guy. Though I know that some of the recent Bond movies have been pretty well recived, I miss the old old style that they had, as today's Bond just seems like another action hero type rather than the charming sophisticate, ladies man of old.
No doubt, and I have to admit that I've fallen victim to this whole thing as well. I don't play video games, but I end up watching a lot of YouTube, and various series that are paced in a way to make one binge watch the things... and I of course play on the internet way too much. This means that it's more of an effort for me to sit still for some side-side long epic piece of music or a stylish old B&W movie that's beautiful, but slow paced and may have subtitles to read. I make a real effort though to still my mind so that I can enjoy that kind of stuff though. When I do, I typically find the experience to be more rewarding than the typical short-attention sapn theatre that I end up checking out far more often...
I have never seen tickets cheaper than $40 plus bogus "processing fees", and it all goes through Ticketmaster. Three people, two shows recently, so six tickets altogether - $500. I don't like live shows THAT much.
