"So there's more than Voyager?"
- Thread starter JRoss
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Yes, exactly! Because that's just what people do. Unless they're so incurious as to be indifferent to the world around them.
I agree completely.
This is where we see things differently. As I've mentioned upthread, I don't think it's an age thing. Most of the people in my social circles are Millennials, and most of them are intellectually curious people, with high cultural literacy and wide-ranging interests.
(Just off the top of my head... swing, salsa, and kizomba dancing, classical piano, musical theatre, marathon running, historical fiction, nature photography, cooking and baking, home brewing, Euro-style games, political activism, and more... plus of course the standard-issue geek stuff like comics, SF, and old movies.)
One could argue that like seeks like, I suppose, and that I'm predisposed to gravitate toward people like that. This would be true. But my point is, they're not hard to find. People like that are all over the place. That's why the incurious ones remain surprising when you do run across them, as in the OP.
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I'm looking beyond just my social circle to the culture at large, but I'm certainly in agreement that it's not about anyone's age. There's plenty of people outside of the millennial age group contributing to our cultural slog. The one in my original post happened to be 23, & I've seen it on the rise amongst that group, but it's spread out into other age groups too. When I comlain about this generation, it isn't all about young people. It's about this age we are in, & how we ALL are contributing to its worth or not, & I see a lot of worthwhile cultural history being neglected. Some city's symphony orchestras are struggling their asses off right now, for example
To be fair, symphonies have long been an artifact of "high culture," not "popular culture." Like opera and ballet, they've never really had widespread public appeal — at least, not since long before anyone's living memory — and they typically rely on philanthropic benefactors.
This used to be my experience as well, but it's becoming less and less common to encounter people who are curious beyond their personal experience and having far more narrow interests.
When I was a teenager most of my exposure to music and movies was what was coming out at the time in the late 90s. But then when I was 19 or so I got tired of it and decided the majority of it was crap, and that's when I started really exploring. First I went back to the big classic rock bands like The Beatles and Bob Dylan, and after instantly deciding they were way better than what was on the radio, I kept looking in more and more niches, finding more and more good music, then later did the same with film.
I think when you first really getting into music or movies, you probably start with what's popular at the time, then if you get to a point where it doesn't quite satisfy you, that's when you search outward.
I think when you first really getting into music or movies, you probably start with what's popular at the time, then if you get to a point where it doesn't quite satisfy you, that's when you search outward.
Very true. It’s the good stuff that endures. Listen to any pop chart from the 60s/70s/80s (and it just struck me that Dale Winton died, who will replace him), and most of the songs are forgettable forgotten dross.
I felt the same about nineties music being largely just noise, but looking back now, I only remember the good ones, and it was a golden age.
True, but I didn't know there were all these cool indie niches that weren't being played on the radio yet.
Just about literally, at this point.
Same as the 1960s. Or 70s, or 80s, or...etc.
Folks like me, Baby Boomers, were for the most part oblivious to or uninterested in popular culture from decades before we were born...until we got older. Our consumption patterns virtually economically obliterated whole genres of music because they Weren't Rock.
It's the same now.
Honestly, Trek isn't as relevant or stimulating now as it once was, because everything the show did that made it seem unique for a while has been taken up in some measure by other stories that are more contemporary in design and execution. And much of it is irrelevant, period - such as the notion that allegorical or symbolic storytelling is a valuable tool for communicating political, social or moral commentary in the mass media.
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On Pick of the Pops? Paul Gambaccini's done it since 2016, and Tony Blackburn before then. Hasn't been Dale since Gordon Brown was prime minister!
I heard The Ramones on the local oldies station. No lie.The local oldies station changed format recently.
They started playing all my favorite music.
It was bizarre.
"Blitzkrieg Bop" is now an oldie.
If you say so. They don't seem to loom particularly large on the pop culture landscape.
The point isn't that you can't do this shit - obviously Trek still tries to do it, badly. The point is that it doesn't matter any more, and you're not going to build a growing fanbase of folks who are all that intrigued by the trick. It's very ho-hum and dated.
Well, sure. Sturgeon's Law applies, to music as to anything else. But we put up with the 90% so we can find our way to the 10%!...
I can agree with the first part of that. But the latter part? Come now — irrelevant? Allegory has been an important part of fiction for as long as fiction has existed. Trek didn't invent it, and it certainly didn't sign its death knell. Using an invented reality to convey a message about actual reality has always been effective, and nothing about postmodern mass media is so fundamentally different as to change that.
That tripped me up, because it sounds like you're saying that your parents were Baby Boomers...which I assume from context isn't the case.
It's over 40. World War II was younger than that when the song came out."Blitzkrieg Bop" is now an oldie.
Yeah I know, I know...I expected that objection. But Star Trek rarely did anything with the technique beyond playing Trojan Horse for a lot of stuff that's routinely talked about and dramatized in direct ways now, because the only reason Trek did it was to skirt the timid standards of American commercial television in its day. And when Trek tries to go back to that well, they do it in exactly the same way they did fifty years ago. It's stale, pointless and there's nothing about it that's going to engage a contemporary audience. What it does do, apparently, is impress some fans at their own perspicacity at being able to appreciate the "disguised" message.
The franchise can't grow any more just by flattering its audience.
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