Because I've seen this issue come up in more than a few places recently, I feel that it's my duty as a retrologist to set things straight.
The Good Old Days, as seen through a nostalgia filter:
The Good Old Days, as seen through the lens of reality:
I think the point is rather self-evident, but let's use another example that carries a bit more personal resonance for the post-boomer demographic.
How we'd like to remember "those days":
How we truthfully remember "those days":
Yeah, I realize I just violated the music bloggers' equivalent to the Geneva Convention there, but drastic problems call for drastic solutions. Nothing can be ruled out. We must be prepared to use any and all options at our disposal, even if it means injecting a disconcerting double shot of classic postpunk into your recalcitrant cortices.
Joy Division - I Remember Nothing (from Unknown Pleasures, 1979)
Public Image Limited - Memories (from Metal Box, 1979)
Posts
3 comments:
I try to fight what I call "Wonder Years boomer douchebaggery" as best I can on Last Days. What I have found is that it is the kids who werent around yet in the 1980s who seem to think the Smiths were pop and that lotsa kids were rockin Black Flag. Most of us who were there found the 80's to be so traumatic that we shudder at the thought of it.
Yeah, I'm with you 100% on that, Joe, and I have a massive tolerance for retro crap.
There were two specific inspirations for this post:
- a comics blogger who insisted that people on the internet were more polite in the old days. (HA!)
- a news article about a Christian youth rally where one of the participants claimed that the 1950's were a utopian era. (True, perhaps, if you were a white, middle-class, Christian male.)
And now that I think about it, here's a way in which schools sucked more then than it does now, even for the white kids: bomb drills. We may have the specter of school shootings hanging over us now, but it sure beats nuclear annihilation.
Post a Comment