Random Thoughts XI: Listen to the Whispers

[The_J]

I wonder if streaming is killing the universal heroes and cultural symbols, which everyone knows.
After all, things like Star Trek, Star Wars, LotR, Batman, Superman.... or Oprah even, etc. are things, which everyone knows, because everyone got exposed to them. With the TV, you would by accident run into things, because they were on. The cinema promotes their movies. Everyone has a chance to be exposed, because there is a limited selection, a public display, and access is free after a while. So everyone will know.
In 40 years, you will have kids, who will not have seen Micky Mouse or Donald Duck, because their parents didn't have Disney+, but had Netflix or AmazonPrime, or whatever. Or Star Wars. Or whatever will have been hip. Could it be, that in 50 years there'll not be anymore any universal cultural icons, which everyone knows? I wonder right now.

The same applies to the radio, and big pop hits. Although I think radio has some more time, because it is inherently also a background activity, in contrast to streaming vs TV.

On the upside is more diversity. And maybe Elvis was actually not that great, just every DJ on the radio had a weird taste. But I guess we'll never know.

 

[EnglishEdward]

That seems to me to be the way things are going.

Histortically in the UK, most english language stuff that was any good would end up beng shown on the BBC (licence
fee funded) or ITV (advertisement funded) sooner or later and everybody here would have the opportunity to see it.

Now I have people referring to stuff on amazon, netflix or sky for which I am not a subsciber, and I annot relate to their discussion.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I wonder if streaming is killing the universal heroes and cultural symbols, which everyone knows.
After all, things like Star Trek, Star Wars, LotR, Batman, Superman.... or Oprah even, etc. are things, which everyone knows, because everyone got exposed to them. With the TV, you would by accident run into things, because they were on. The cinema promotes their movies. Everyone has a chance to be exposed, because there is a limited selection, a public display, and access is free after a while. So everyone will know.

What "everyone knows" was an issue decades ago. I remember in junior high, hearing my classmates continually talking about a show called "Happy Days."

I had no idea what they were talking about. I'd never seen it. And that was when most people had a grand whopping total of TWO channels.

Fast-forward a few years, more channels became available, including four American ones... and the high school English teacher just blithely assumed everyone in the class watched M*A*S*H and included an essay question about it on a test. All I knew about it was an article or two I'd read in the TV Guide, so I used that information and muddled through. And I included a note at the end of my essay that said I didn't consider it a fair question because she shouldn't have assumed that everyone in the class watched the same shows.

When I got my test back, she wrote a counter-note to the effect of I should have let her know during the test, as she'd have let me write about Star Trek instead.

Yeah, that would have gone over well with the classmates ("teacher's pet").

Fast-forward several decades, and jokes and memes about The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Futurama just go over my head. I've never seen even one episode of any of them. Some of the TV shows I find comfortably familiar are ones that the younger generations now have either never heard of, heard of only vaguely, or heard of but consider hopelessly old-fashioned. It was actually refreshing a couple of years ago in the hospital to discover that one of my roommates was not only a Bonanza fan but that we liked the same episodes. And get a bunch of older Canadians together (my generation and older) and play "The Unicorn" (one of the best known of the Irish Rovers' songs). Just about everyone knows the chorus, if not most of the rest of it (it's the same with many of their songs).

In 40 years, you will have kids, who will not have seen Micky Mouse or Donald Duck, because their parents didn't have Disney+, but had Netflix or AmazonPrime, or whatever. Or Star Wars. Or whatever will have been hip. Could it be, that in 50 years there'll not be anymore any universal cultural icons, which everyone knows? I wonder right now.

Isn't there still a lot of tie-in merchandise associated with the Disney cartoons and movies? As long as it brings in $$$$$$, it'll be around.

What's been happening with cultural icons and what was popular is being distorted by the availability of older material made available with new technology. I just finished reading a Harry Potter fanfic in which Harry, in 1994, introduces Sirius Black to the concept of Doctor Who (apparently wizards aren't into Muggle TV shows or science fiction in general). I was left wondering how that could have been possible, since unless the older Classic Who shows were being rerun on TV in the UK then, this particular scene in the story couldn't have happened - there wasn't any new Doctor Who being made in 1994.

One thing I've noticed about Star Trek fans in particular is that those who grew up after the invention of the VCR and other video recording devices have a kind of disconnect with the older fans who had to make do with reruns and wait for a decade between live action and the first movie and 18 years between the end of The Original Series and the premiere of The Next Generation. In an age without instant online gratification in the form of contact with other fans, sharing stories, etc., we had to learn patience. It was especially difficult for those in the areas where there weren't a lot of conventions going on.

The same applies to the radio, and big pop hits. Although I think radio has some more time, because it is inherently also a background activity, in contrast to streaming vs TV.

On the upside is more diversity. And maybe Elvis was actually not that great, just every DJ on the radio had a weird taste. But I guess we'll never know.

Radio is actually something I've never really been that interested in, and that's something that one of the media ratings companies can't wrap its head around. Somehow I got on their list for being asked to keep a log of the shows I watch/listen to, and they would not take "not interested" for an answer when I told them it was absurd to expect me to spend the next four weeks keeping a diary of the radio shows I didn't listen to, because I never listen to the radio. They insisted that it was very valuable information I could give them, even if it all added up to basically nothing (the survey never asks why the participants don't watch or listen to certain shows or at certain times, so there was really no way to tell them that the answers added up to "never listened to anything" for the reason that I just don't listen to the radio).

That seems to me to be the way things are going.

Histortically in the UK, most english language stuff that was any good would end up beng shown on the BBC (licence fee funded) or ITV (advertisement funded) sooner or later and everybody here would have the opportunity to see it.

Now I have people referring to stuff on amazon, netflix or sky for which I am not a subsciber, and I annot relate to their discussion.

Most of the UK-made TV shows I've seen has been thanks to them being shown on the American PBS stations (those are part of the basic cable package we get). Or at least that applies to the dramas, comedies, and science fiction. For the science shows, there were a couple of David Attenborough series, but I hadn't realized just how much more he'd done until subscribing to BBC Earth.

 

[amadeus]

Dun dada dun dun
Dun dada dun dun
BONANZA
I don't know how the theme song goes
This all I know!
Doo doo do, doo doo do, doo doo do do do
I remember the restaurant BONANZA
You could get a steak for like $2.49
That was cheap back then
Na na na, na na na
Dun dada dun dun dun
BONANZA

I was going to chime in with a similar point to @Valka D'Ur in that going back to the sixties and seventies there were TV markets out there that did not have some network affiliates so some of the pop culture at the time wasn't exactly universal then, either.

 

[tjs282]

I just finished reading a Harry Potter fanfic in which Harry, in 1994, introduces Sirius Black to the concept of Doctor Who (apparently wizards aren't into Muggle TV shows or science fiction in general). I was left wondering how that could have been possible, since unless the older Classic Who shows were being rerun on TV in the UK then, this particular scene in the story couldn't have happened - there wasn't any new Doctor Who being made in 1994

IIRC, canonically, Harry was born in 1980.

So he could conceivably have seen the last couple of seasons of Classic Who, with Colin Baker and/or Sylvester McCoy, before the show got axed (in 1988, or thenabouts), and so been able to tell Sirius about them. He'd probably only have been able to watch it while the Dursleys were out, though.

(Dudley would probably have enjoyed Who — even if not Vernon + Petunia — but Dud had his own TV, and no way would Harry have been watching that when Dud was home!).

(You probably already know this, but) a lot (all?) of the classic Who serials were also novelised (in the UK, at least): my (south central UK) local and school libraries both had fairly large collections of those, so we could head-cannon that Little Whingeing's probably did too. The Beeb also published audiobooks (I used to have the Tom Baker story "State of Decay", though I never saw that one on TV: I was only 5 when it was broadcast!).

But Who wasn't re-run in the early 90s, AFAIK — the BBC Director General of that time hated SF in general, and Who in particular (why he axed it in the first place). So Harry wouldn't have been able to show any episodes to Sirius, unless he had access to a VCR. And how likely is it that the Dursleys would have given him that?

 

[amadeus]

IIRC, canonically, Harry was born in 1980.

Nine more years and he's eligible for AARP membership.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Dun dada dun dun
Dun dada dun dun
BONANZA
I don't know how the theme song goes
This all I know!
Doo doo do, doo doo do, doo doo do do do
I remember the restaurant BONANZA
You could get a steak for like $2.49
That was cheap back then
Na na na, na na na
Dun dada dun dun dun
BONANZA

I was going to chime in with a similar point to @Valka D'Ur in that going back to the sixties and seventies there were TV markets out there that did not have some network affiliates so some of the pop culture at the time wasn't exactly universal then, either.

You have one too many "dun"s in the second line.

Here's a video of clips from the show, with Lorne Greene singing the theme song.

Lorne Greene had a much better singing voice than he demonstrates in this recording. He was known in Canada as "The Voice of Doom" because he was a radio announcer during WWII - and of course there was often a lot of bad news he had to deliver to the listeners. It's a good thing they went with the instrumental version of the theme song. Lorne Greene could sing, but the lyrics themselves were awful.

Pernell Roberts (Adam) was an excellent singer, as well. He sang in several episodes, and released at least one record I'm aware of. There are only two versions of "They Call the Wind Maria" I like - the original from Paint Your Wagon, and this one:

Here's the original from the musical:

Paint Your Wagon is one of the musicals we studied in my Grade 7 music class, and the teacher decided it would be a terrific idea if we sang the main theme song for the Christmas concert that year(!). So among all the carols and Christmas-themed skits, here's my class singing a song that finishes with the line "But who gives a damn, we're on our way!"

The other song we did was "Do You Hear What I Hear?"... that one went over very well at the Kiwanis Carol Festival that year, where a bunch of 11-12-year-olds (us) outsang an adult choir who did the same song.

The time frame I'm talking about here is December 1974 (I know, might as well be the Dark Ages to those here who weren't born until 20 years after that...).

IIRC, canonically, Harry was born in 1980.

So he could conceivably have seen the last couple of seasons of Classic Who, with Colin Baker and/or Sylvester McCoy, before the show got axed (in 1988, or thenabouts), and so been able to tell Sirius about them. He'd probably only have been able to watch it while the Dursleys were out, though.

(Dudley would probably have enjoyed Who — even if not Vernon + Petunia — but Dud had his own TV, and no way would Harry have been watching that when Dud was home!).

(You probably already know this, but) a lot (all?) of the classic Who serials were also novelised (in the UK, at least): my (south central UK) local and school libraries both had fairly large collections of those, so we could head-cannon that Little Whingeing's probably did too. The Beeb also published audiobooks (I used to have the Tom Baker story "State of Decay", though I never saw that one on TV: I was only 5 when it was broadcast!).

But Who wasn't re-run in the early 90s, AFAIK — the BBC Director General of that time hated SF in general, and Who in particular (why he axed it in the first place). So Harry wouldn't have been able to show any episodes to Sirius, unless he had access to a VCR. And how likely is it that the Dursleys would have given him that?

Thank you for confirming that the show wasn't re-run in the '90s. We had reruns here, courtesy of PBS; in fact, that's what led to me being able to meet Sylvester McCoy in 1987. His first season started that year, around the time that he was on a cross-the-US tour of the PBS stations, to promote the show being back and his taking over from Colin Baker. A friend in Calgary phoned me up a couple of days before Labor Day weekend and said, "I've been back in classes for three days and I'm bored. Let's go to Spokane this weekend and meet Sylvester McCoy!" (she was attending a film course at SAIT that year). I told her, "I'll call you back in 20 minutes" (figuring I'd need that long to convince my grandmother to let me go - yes, there was a reason why I needed permission). And sure enough, 20 minutes later I called my friend back, and we made plans for me to take the Greyhound to Calgary and she and another friend and I would then drive from Calgary to Spokane. My grandmother's chief objection to my going had been safety but figured that if a man would be with us (the other friend), it wouldn't be as bad.

Well, when I got to Calgary I learned that the other friend couldn't get time off work, so he couldn't go - it would be the two of us (when I told her what my grandmother had said about safety on the highway, she roared with laughter, as her friend was a very mild-mannered guy who isn't aggressive at all and wouldn't intimidate anyone). Obviously I never told my grandmother about all this, as she would have had a fit.

The trip was fun, getting across the border was easy, getting to the actual studio was harder (some women drivers hate asking for directions, too - and I finally just said, "There's a gas station over there, let's either get directions or at least a map"), but we did get there.

The station manager (someone we'd seen on TV during the pledge drives) was very nice and said, "You gals are from Calgary? There's four fellas here from Edmonton, maybe y'all know each other!" (uh-huh...)

Actually, it wasn't impossible that we might have already known them, if they were also regulars at the two SF conventions held in Alberta every year. But they were complete strangers, more into meeting actors than conventions where the emphasis was on writing, publishing, science, and art.

Sylvester McCoy himself was very gracious, and I still have the picture he autographed for me. There was a traveling display of various Who-related things, and we were allowed to go onto the TARDIS control room set and take pictures... and ditto with Bessie (the Third Doctor's car). So I can say I've sat in the Doctor's car.

Yes, the fanfic I read stated that Dudley watched Doctor Who until he decided there wasn't enough fighting and explosions to suit him. Normally Harry wouldn't be allowed to watch TV while the family was home (or when they were out, but of course he did watch TV anyway). In this particular story, Sirius is exonerated when they prove Peter Pettigrew is still alive (and therefore Sirius wasn't guilty of murder), and he just shows up at the Dursleys' during the summer between books 3 and 4 with a suitcase, and informs the Dursleys that he's Harry's godfather, they have a spare room, so he's moving in during the summer to make sure Harry is okay. The Dursleys aren't happy, but since they're a bit nervous about having an ex-murder convict in the house who isn't limited by the rules against underage magic, they really don't have a choice.

So Sirius is introduced to Doctor Who (which left me wondering 'WTH' since the only new Who that was on TV in the '90s was the Paul McGann movie). But anyway... in this discussion of pop culture references lost to time as entertainment sources become more scattered... I'm happy to be able to mention this stuff here and be reasonably sure that at least some folks know who/what I'm talking about.

I have the Target novelizations. After acknowledging in 1982 that I had become hooked on the show, of course I wanted to catch up. PBS was running the Key to Time season (honestly, if you're going to introduce anyone to Classic Who, "The Pirate Planet" is a very bad choice... I didn't actually like the show until the more whimsical "Stones of Blood" came along a few days later). It's too bad that you didn't see "State of Decay." That story was originally supposed to be part of one of the seasons when Leela was the companion, but for some reason it was delayed several years until it became the second of the three stories set in E-space.

That story is where they discover Adric has stowed away in the TARDIS, rather than going with his people to the planet they were originally supposed to be heading to:

Most people, it seems, didn't like Adric. He could be annoying, but whatever. He was a teenager, and most of the teenage characters on Doctor Who were annoying to a greater or lesser extent (yes, even Susan). Some people found this particular story silly (vampires; I've never been into that particular subgenre). But I will say the costumes for this story were very well done. I'm glad they waited for a later season, as I don't think Leela would have been suitable for it.

 

[The_J]

That seems to me to be the way things are going.

Histortically in the UK, most english language stuff that was any good would end up beng shown on the BBC (licence
fee funded) or ITV (advertisement funded) sooner or later and everybody here would have the opportunity to see it.

Now I have people referring to stuff on amazon, netflix or sky for which I am not a subsciber, and I annot relate to their discussion.

Yes, totally true, but you're aware of it.
Think about it: In 50 years, there could be 2 children talking to each other, and they don't share any of the same childhood heroes. None. That'd be freaky.

What "everyone knows" was an issue decades ago. I remember in junior high, hearing my classmates continually talking about a show called "Happy Days."

I had no idea what they were talking about. I'd never seen it. And that was when most people had a grand whopping total of TWO channels.

Fast-forward a few years, more channels became available, including four American ones... and the high school English teacher just blithely assumed everyone in the class watched M*A*S*H and included an essay question about it on a test. All I knew about it was an article or two I'd read in the TV Guide, so I used that information and muddled through. And I included a note at the end of my essay that said I didn't consider it a fair question because she shouldn't have assumed that everyone in the class watched the same shows.

When I got my test back, she wrote a counter-note to the effect of I should have let her know during the test, as she'd have let me write about Star Trek instead.

Yeah, that would have gone over well with the classmates ("teacher's pet").

Fast-forward several decades, and jokes and memes about The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Futurama just go over my head. I've never seen even one episode of any of them. Some of the TV shows I find comfortably familiar are ones that the younger generations now have either never heard of, heard of only vaguely, or heard of but consider hopelessly old-fashioned. It was actually refreshing a couple of years ago in the hospital to discover that one of my roommates was not only a Bonanza fan but that we liked the same episodes. And get a bunch of older Canadians together (my generation and older) and play "The Unicorn" (one of the best known of the Irish Rovers' songs). Just about everyone knows the chorus, if not most of the rest of it (it's the same with many of their songs).


Isn't there still a lot of tie-in merchandise associated with the Disney cartoons and movies? As long as it brings in $$$$$$, it'll be around.

What's been happening with cultural icons and what was popular is being distorted by the availability of older material made available with new technology. I just finished reading a Harry Potter fanfic in which Harry, in 1994, introduces Sirius Black to the concept of Doctor Who (apparently wizards aren't into Muggle TV shows or science fiction in general). I was left wondering how that could have been possible, since unless the older Classic Who shows were being rerun on TV in the UK then, this particular scene in the story couldn't have happened - there wasn't any new Doctor Who being made in 1994.

One thing I've noticed about Star Trek fans in particular is that those who grew up after the invention of the VCR and other video recording devices have a kind of disconnect with the older fans who had to make do with reruns and wait for a decade between live action and the first movie and 18 years between the end of The Original Series and the premiere of The Next Generation. In an age without instant online gratification in the form of contact with other fans, sharing stories, etc., we had to learn patience. It was especially difficult for those in the areas where there weren't a lot of conventions going on.


Radio is actually something I've never really been that interested in, and that's something that one of the media ratings companies can't wrap its head around. Somehow I got on their list for being asked to keep a log of the shows I watch/listen to, and they would not take "not interested" for an answer when I told them it was absurd to expect me to spend the next four weeks keeping a diary of the radio shows I didn't listen to, because I never listen to the radio. They insisted that it was very valuable information I could give them, even if it all added up to basically nothing (the survey never asks why the participants don't watch or listen to certain shows or at certain times, so there was really no way to tell them that the answers added up to "never listened to anything" for the reason that I just don't listen to the radio).

Most of the UK-made TV shows I've seen has been thanks to them being shown on the American PBS stations (those are part of the basic cable package we get). Or at least that applies to the dramas, comedies, and science fiction. For the science shows, there were a couple of David Attenborough series, but I hadn't realized just how much more he'd done until subscribing to BBC Earth.

I'll say that nothing is truly universal, but many of the really popular things probably reached 95% of the population, which we'll probably not see anymore in the future.

 

[Zkribbler]

Nine more years and [Harry Potter's] eligible for AARP membership.

Now that's friggin' depressing.

 

[CKS]

Nine more years and he's eligible for AARP membership.

Actually he'd be eligible now so long as his spouse/partner was at least 50.

I got my AARP membership at 40, when I was pregnant with my second child. We used to go to Denny's on kids eat free night and use the AARP discount. It took me a while to get over feeling guilty about it.

 

[Chicken Pizza]

Who are you people, not watching Futurama, Seinfeld or Simpsons?

Bart complementing Lisa on the bus to get one of the cupcakes she's baked for the teacher, and she says: what do you like best about me?

George realizing that he can be anyone he wants while waiting for a girl Jerry's gonna pretend to bump into, and begs of him to let him be an architect.

Bender getting intoxicated and nostalgic, explaining that he used to be a bender and could bend girders... 35 degrees... 34 degrees...

 

[amadeus]

Who are these people that aren’t watching Fatty Arbuckle (he was innocent as they never matched the buttprints to Roscoe), Phil Silvers, and Laurel and Hardy?

Things come and go.

Dust in the wind, man.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Actually he'd be eligible now so long as his spouse/partner was at least 50.

I got my AARP membership at 40, when I was pregnant with my second child. We used to go to Denny's on kids eat free night and use the AARP discount. It took me a while to get over feeling guilty about it.

We grabbed AARP membership for the healthcare plan they offered, but once sign into that never kept the AARP membership. They are mostly an insurance broker organization. I do have to put up with getting their junk mail though.

 

[Chicken Pizza]

Who are these people that aren’t watching Fatty Arbuckle (he was innocent as they never matched the buttprints to Roscoe), Phil Silvers, and Laurel and Hardy?

Things come and go.

Dust in the wind, man.

I understand that everyone has their thing to feel safe and evolve in their own pace, if they even want to, it's entirely optional.

But surely, you can't compare deeply human situations with buttprints? That suggests to me that you've given up in some way.

Or already understand it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Now that's friggin' depressing.

I saw a note on a fanfic published last year that wished Sirius Black a happy 60th birthday (official birthday is November 3).

Too bad he was killed off when he was 35 (especially after spending 12 of those years in Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit).

Actually he'd be eligible now so long as his spouse/partner was at least 50.

I got my AARP membership at 40, when I was pregnant with my second child. We used to go to Denny's on kids eat free night and use the AARP discount. It took me a while to get over feeling guilty about it.

Harry Potter's canon spouse is Ginny Weasley, who's approximately a year younger than him.

Who are you people, not watching Futurama, Seinfeld or Simpsons?

I don't presume to speak for anyone else in the thread, but I'm someone who doesn't particularly enjoy bizarrely-animated people or modern American humor. Especially when they're combined. I find all the Simpsons characters repulsive to look at, and there's a lot of American pop culture I just find baffling. I don't understand why it's supposed to be meaningful or funny, unless it's the more serious stuff. For instance, remember my previous mention of M*A*S*H? At the time I was in high school I hadn't ever seen it, although we were taught the lyrics to the movie soundtrack when I was in my junior high music class and it's one of the songs I eventually learned to play on the organ.

Fast-forward multiple years and I'd kept my dad company when he was watching it. I got to be familiar with most of the characters and realized what an effective job Alan Alda did in his role as both actor and the other roles he did on the show (if memory serves, he also wrote and directed some episodes).

Then along came the year I was working backstage on yet another musical, and the night the M*A*S*H finale was on TV coincided with a rehearsal night. The director realized that nobody would have their mind on the play, so she gave us the night off to stay home and watch it (this was before the era when everyone had a VCR). I stayed home, watched it with my dad, and got hooked (I often do things like these backwards). Over the next few years I watched the show, and one summer in BC we stayed with my great-uncle for a few weeks. During that time the show was on several hours a day on a number of stations, so some episodes are very familiar to me. I don't think I've seen all of them, but it's a good bet I've seen most of them by now.

 

[amadeus]

But surely, you can't compare deeply human situations with buttprints?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

View attachment 584459

You do realize the original context of that quote...? (honestly asking)

 

[amadeus]

You do realize the original context of that quote...? (honestly asking)

You’re really testing the limits of my memory. The FLQ abducted the Premier of Quebec and held him hostage, right? Trudeau was declaring martial law in Montreal, I think, and was asked by a reporter how far he’d go in restricting civil liberties.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You’re really testing the limits of my memory. The FLQ abducted the Premier of Quebec and held him hostage, right? Trudeau was declaring martial law in Montreal, I think, and was asked by a reporter how far he’d go in restricting civil liberties.

Sorta. You got the FLQ part right. But it wasn't the premier who was abducted. It was two others, one of whom was killed.

Justin hasn't come close to that point yet (not that we actually want a situation like that), but there have been other situations where he should have been tougher.

 

[CKS]

Harry Potter's canon spouse is Ginny Weasley, who's approximately a year younger than him.

Of course, it depends on what you see as canon, but the oldest he was (in what I think is canon) is 37. He could be married to someone else now and moved to the USA.