Last night, on a drive with the family, I spent a few moments on a complex, multi-level pop culture explanation for my daughter (who is thirteen now, and quite used to Dad’s strange verbal and/or vehicular side-trips.) When a Winger song came on the radio that we all enjoyed, I had to explain to her that it’s the only really good one, and that even in his heyday, Kip Winger got no respect. This was then exemplified by explaining the existence of nerdy kid Stuart’s t-shirt on ‘Beavis And Butthead.’ That then got sidetracked by her declaration that “That’s show’s weird!” and her forcing me to defend why so many of us loved it during our college years, leading to today’s justificational query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) boiled it down to “Generation X is a snarky and rude bunch, and B&B was tailor-made for our point-and-laugh mentality”, which seemed to satisfy her curiosity, asking: Which of your pop culture obsessions would you have the hardest time explaining to hypothetical future generations?
4 Comments
It would probably be Miami Vice. On the other hand, future may be like in those new retro wave things where everything is neon, pink or purple and everyone looks like don Johnson or Kurt Russell. Then they would get it in a heartbeat. Pun intended.
Off the top of my head, I can already think of pre-Special Edition “Star Wars” original trilogy (My one niece can’t understand why I like it better, which kinda breaks my heart), older cartoons that were basically long commercials (He-Man, GI Joe, Transformers, etc.) and older Tokusatsu series (such as early Super Sentai when the suits were a bit awkward looking and special effects are obviously cheap).
And then there’s Maude (see what I did there?). A lot of older sitcoms I enjoy are very much the products of their day, and it is difficult to accurately explain to younger people just how different a world it was and why certain things we have now were foreign concepts back then. I don’t believe it is going to get any easier, either.
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
You really had to be there…
MacGyver the original series
With the advent of cell phones and Google many elements of the show just don’t make sense to the newer generation/s.
Think tanks, gullible villains and some unique uses for chewing gum. Such a great classic series.