essaysbysean.blogspot.com
“Those who forget history are
condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana
You know, I am easily amused. The
queer thing about being middle aged is seeing history repeat, and wondering:
Doesn’t anybody else get it? When politics repeats it’s grim—too grim for here,
today. When “the environment” repeats it’s frustrating—I will touch on it,
later. But when TV repeats it’s mostly amusing, and so most of what I will
dwell on here is TV.
The other day at the bowling alley,
where there are suspended color TV screens, I caught a glimpse of a crime show
called The Glades. My mind flashed back
to a crime show in black and white, Everglades, that began with the hero wielding a little pistol,
taking pot shots, while piloting an airboat in the everglades. I had never seen
such a boat. I recall two control rudders and a giant fan at the back of “…a
fellow there, who will protect these rights, Lincoln Vail of the everglades, …”
This was before Vietnam, before idealism collapsed into cynicism, back when you
could still sing about large heroes protecting rights. How sad to think if they
ever re-make Daniel Boone there
won’t be any larger-than-life song about him.
A floor wax commercial for
housewives of the time showed a man in a prone position rapidly firing white
bullets (like from my daisy Winchester) at a parked jet, bullets that went
bouncing off the transparent canopy, as transparent and tough as floor wax.
That was before Vietnam too.
A few years back they made a movie
version of 21 Jump Street, another
detective show. I feel like I’m the only one who remembers an earlier address,
and the sound like snapping fingers, like cool steel fans on snare drums, and
the cool refrain, “Seventy seven, Sunset Strip.” One of the characters, Kookie, had a fine head of
hair, swept back fifties style, and a pop song of the day went, “Kookie,
Kookie, lend me your comb.” That was back when TV advertising was real
expensive, to be used only for really keen products, like, “Brylcreem, a little
dab’ll do ya.”
You probably know that Hawaii
5-0 is a re-make of the popular 1970’s
show, a show that had an excellent montage of pictures under the credits. I can
remember a budget black and white show, with an ending sans montage, only a
still shot of a wall as credits rolled, a wall filled with Hawaiian masks, “Hawaiian
Eye…eye!” (Private eye) I’m sure no one
else remembers. And why would they? TV back then was merely a repeat of radio
plays, heard by the whole family, now moved from the radio set to the TV set, (only one) merely popular culture full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing of lasting value. I suppose now for many
people pop culture is culture.
They don’t know any better.
As I see it, pop culture is like
when a mainstream movie is rated in stars, and you can advise perfect strangers
on whether or not they will like it. Culture is like an “art movie” when even
for a film with 4/5 stars you just can’t recommend it, not unless you know the
person you’re talking with. Because Art requires an attention span: You won’t
get it until you are willing to sit with it.
Meanwhile, pop culture keeps
pinwheeling along with shows like Whirlybirds, (black and white) Chopper Squad, (in color, at the beach) Chopper One, (in California, where they can search the beach)
and, after the Blue Thunder
movie, Airwolf. Oh, and at last
there was a show where they gave the dragonfly to the hero’s buddy (A Black
pilot) instead of the hero: Magnum P.I. It had a beach too, again in Hawaii. And say—talk about being
desperate for novelty scripts—I dimly remember Ripchord, a show where the heroes with a fixed wing aircraft
would parachute into their adventures. That’s one show that won’t be remade.
Ever since the 1980’s, whenever the
latest pop culture figure from, say, comic books arrives on the big screen, and
when entertainment reporters note his previous incarnations, I am the only one
who remembers they’ve missed things. When I hear the 1980’s Superman movie theme I still half-expect a missing homage to
the televised cartoon version, but no else recalls it. Just as when they remade
Planet of the Apes: While they
remembered there was a TV series, no one recalled the original movie trailers.
I might have seen a trailer narrated by Rod Serling as he posed the premise,
and showed the actor’s real faces next to their made-up faces. I don’t suppose
anyone in Hollywood had kept the old trailer footage, for Tinsel town is very
disposable, but darn it, not to me, my childhood is not disposable!
Understandably, I’m in no hurry to
buy the latest 3-D TV, in real HD, for I know it will be still the same old
shows in “new” and “exciting” and “improved” clothing. Still the same old
time-filler… not too bad, I guess, for days when it’s too rainy to get over to
my library. And what of the future of television? I don’t suppose westerns will
come back—now that we adults have replaced nature with suburbs, our children
don’t have wild spaces to play in; while we adults don’t want to historically recall
how terrified we were of those who took only short-term captives, not “prisoners…”
I don’t expect to ever see a funny
remake of “Car fifty-four, where aa-are you-uuu?” (although they did try an awful movie version) Nope, no slapstick comical weekly police shows, not when our urban
environment crime is too grim, too real, and we are all too serious.
Now, let me touch on our natural
environment, while history is repeating. My father is the only one to remember
a species of commercial fish going extinct. He told me this after a government
hullabaloo banning certain commercial fishing indefinitely. But none of the TV
news reporters remembered what my old man remembered.
Meanwhile, a few years back there
was a nation wide outbreak of deadly listeriosis, traced to a plant where the
luncheon meat machines had not been properly cleaned. Dad remembers something
reporters don’t know… he remembers telling a meat salesman he could detect
garlic. The salesman insisted that no, the meat was garlic-free. Dad agreed,
and then explained that he had an allergic sensitivity, which meant the machines
had surely not been cleaned properly since their previous meat cycle, a cycle
producing meat with garlic. The salesman was energized! He had the machines
cleaned up pronto. Father told me crews get lazy, standards slip, and history
repeats.
As I see it, the simple reality for
nature and politics (and it is perfectly OK to me) is that we mustn't get lazy: we can’t ever cease
our efforts at moving back the ever-present four-legged rats, just as we do the
two-legged rats. New babies are born every day; history repeats; human nature
remains. If we “cop out” to say “let George do it,”—if we
say “never mind oversight by citizen and government,” in order to make room for
“market fundamentalism,”—if citizen inquiry and participation
collapses into a peasant-like “quietism,” then, inevitably, history responds
with an increase in the rodent population.
The fifties remains my favorite
decade, but—I also like Buffy and Angel and an unbelievably good “art show” remake of Battlestar
Galactica. Sometimes, I guess, things do
get better.
Sean Crawford
Beside the big cathode ray tube
In the big box
In the big box
January 2013
...What do you think?
...What do you think?
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