recurring themes

[lauralh]

A year ago - more or less - I was in Boston with my two best friends. We stayed up too late talking about things, since we never see each other, and talking on the 'net or on the phone is nothing like talking to someone you've known most of your adult life in person... we wondered if our generation's malaise and dissatisfaction was unique, or just something every generation has gone through. We decided that it was just more extreme now, for many reasons:

1. Our generation has no war or anything else to focus on. Cold War was around for a bit, but in the 80s it was pretty much a joke.
   
2. Not everyone in the world is as fortunate as in America or Europe, but in these societies most people are getting their basic needs met. We don't have to worry about making a living, so we worry about such nonsense as "happiness" and "fulfillment."
   
3. The prevalence of education means that most of us are literate - and even if we're not, TV shows and films exist - and can read/watch/learn about other people living life, doing whatever they want, etc.

This weekend hotcrab and I were talking about how TV and film really has fucked up our generation. Because, you know, it looks so much like reality, except nicer. It's a fantasy world where problems are resolved after two hours, and almost always with a happy ending. Happy endings are more marketable. You don't want to really get involved with miserable people for a couple of hours, right? Because that's the problem, it's so close to reality you can actually get emotionally involved.

And then you grow up and realize that there are no endings, let alone happy ones. This wasn't a problem so much with books - maybe with plays, since again, real people, but the movement of Realism in theater is also a fairly recent development - since you were always another level removed from their reality. But with film, you aren't. You grow up with TV characters and probably like them better than people you actually know in real life. They're so much more attractive and charming, after all.

Comments

dude, it is me, live from holland

[(Anonymous)]

"we have all got out of the habit of living, we are
all in a greater or less degree crippled. we are so
unused to living that we often feel something like
loathing for `real life' and cannot bear to be reminded
of it. we have really gone so far as to think of `real
life' as toil, almost as servitude, and we are all
agreed, for our part, that it is better in books. "

-- fyodor dostoevsky

yay! netherlands in the hizouse!

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

Very apropos.