The correct response is:
"As of 2018 there are four TV series and ten movies."
I can agree with this!
JB
"So there's more than Voyager?"
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I can agree with this!
JB
As I enter my late 40s I'm beginning to realize that a lot of my pop culture references are going over the heads of my younger coworkers.
A couple of cases in point:
I once made a Simpsons reference to a coworker and his response was that was a cartoon his parents watched when they were teenagers.
Another instance was when a coworker said something and I ended my response by saying, 'And don't call me Shirley'.
It went completely over her head. She had never seen nor heard of the movie 'Airplane!'
I'm just going to have to get used to the sliding scale of cultural reference points.
A couple of cases in point:
I once made a Simpsons reference to a coworker and his response was that was a cartoon his parents watched when they were teenagers.
Another instance was when a coworker said something and I ended my response by saying, 'And don't call me Shirley'.
It went completely over her head. She had never seen nor heard of the movie 'Airplane!'
I'm just going to have to get used to the sliding scale of cultural reference points.
I never watched it, but thought the Simpsons was still going on.
I know that quote, but I didn't know it was from the movie "Airplane!" I guess I'll have to watch that someday.
I make it a point to endow my young children with proper pop culture references. And yes, that includes "I Love Lucy" references.
No, no, please don't over-generalize from my quip about intelligence! I was responding specifically to the proposition that someone would think the Flash and Flash Gordon, or Green Hornet and Green Lantern, were interchangeable characters. Someone doesn't have to be familiar with those properties to know that they're not; you just have to understand how words work.Say whut?
I guess that gives me the right to go around saying that everyone who hasn't heard of my favorite authors or TV shows or movies is of below-average intelligence, hm?
I'm still a big fan of physical media myself. But my point is that one doesn't even have to visit a physical store any more to browse the options... and it's not as if the search engine on, say, Amazon has a filter to limit results to "products younger than I am." Seems to me like it would take a proactive effort for someone to remain ignorant of older books, music, films, or TV these days.
Or reading.
(No surprise there, sadly. Only 72% of American adults report having read at least one book in the previous year. And the median number read is just four — whereas the mean number is 12, suggesting that most of the reading is being done by an even smaller share of the population.)
Intelligence aside, intellectual curiosity is definitely not distributed evenly across the population. I teach undergrads. It's a challenge I face on a regular basis...
Are these things no longer done? If not, why not? (Honest questions! I have no kids, so I don't know...)
Same here (metaphorically speaking... I no longer read a physical paper). But even though I am decidedly not a sports fan, I know that a quarterback, a halfback, and a fullback are not the same thing, or what it means when a batter has And I'm not a businessman, but I can talk intelligently about the difference between equities and securities, or describe what a derivative is. For that matter I'm not religious, but I can hold my own about issues of theology, textual and historical criticism, and so on.
And when I find myself insufficiently informed about something outside my areas of immediate personal interest, well, Google and Wikipedia are just clicks away. So again, matters of raw intelligence notwithstanding, it's a lack of curiosity that really seems to be the key factor for some people.
Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. Seems like it would take more effort to be unaware of such things.
But... but... but Airplane didn't even originate that joke. It's a classic pun. It works on its own! How could she not get it?
1001001 said:
It's basic math.
Please re-read my whole post. It should be obvious that I wasn't talking about math. I was talking about the notion that somebody is stupid (below average intelligence) for not knowing about the same pop culture things you (general you) know about.
I can express surprise and mind-boggledness (to coin a phrase) because somebody doesn't know who Henry VIII is (and who would therefore not begin to understand the Tudors TV series or enjoy the novels by Philippa Gregory, but that doesn't mean the person is stupid. That person may never have taken any history courses that mentioned the Tudors, or had any interest in the history of that era. Or they might not be interested in historical drama (yes, I'm aware this genre often plays fast and loose with historical details, but they're based on real historical people and events).
Do people often pick up dictionaries to read for fun?tharpdevenport said:
Agreed. I'm often confronted by people on this very forum who think I'm somehow lacking in intelligence because I've never seen even one episode of Seinfeld, miss the pop culture references, and don't care.
True. It's all over the place, but unless I'm into it, I just ignore it. It becomes part of the background, the same way I ignore other things I'm not interested in. As another example, I collect both books and penguins. I've got stuffed penguins, penguin pictures, and penguin figurines all over my apartment. The only person who ever noticed them right away was the plumber who came over a few days ago to fix my sink drain - because he's into penguins, too. Other people who visit immediately notice the books, but the penguins might as well be invisible.
I'm not saying I don't have Star Wars stuff. I used my babysitting money to buy the original set of 12 action figures in the late '70s, and considering I got 50 cents/hour and they cost $2.99, it took awhile. I still have most of those. My great-aunt gave me a Star Wars blanket for Christmas, and I still have that, too. But it's been a very long time since I actively sought any of it out. I think the last time I bought any action figures, it was at a garage sale when I told the person that I'd be happy to give her a couple of bucks for Lando Calrissian, but I didn't want the rest of them since I already had them, and what would I do with 6 identical Luke Skywalkers anyway? (she was selling it as a must-take-all item)
So she reasoned that it was better to make a few dollars from people who were just missing one or two figures than be stuck with everything. She sold me Lando, and he's still around here somewhere.
I found him super-nice, and his wife, too. We chatted for a few minutes at the convention I met him at, and talked about his cat (the one in some of his publicity photos).
I got into the fanfic project because I wanted more of the story, and was hoping somebody might have written some. All I found was a plea on LiveJournal from someone else, wondering the same thing.
So I figured that if I wanted more, I'd have to write it myself. It's been fun, imagining what happened next to some of the characters, and filling in some of the gaps (like what happened to Voris Kerguelen, Rissa's uncle - since when she tried to find him after being freed from Total Welfare, she discovered that he'd basically been erased from ever existing). And I also wondered what ever became of the baby Tregare fathered with Erdis Blaine... some future meeting many years later would throw some sort of wrench into everything, since Tregare never told his family of that baby's existence.
So you're denying the existence of Final Frontier, Nemesis and Into Darkness?
Hmm, Netflix recommends other series -- I'd expect it to recommend at least one other Trek to them.
Kids today. (born during voyager?!) *cry*
Just don't mistake Flash Gordon and Flesh Gordon
Highly recommended.
I always figured they called the TV show ARROW to avoid confusion with Green Lantern, Green Hornet, Green Goblin, etc.
Not really. Not based upon my interactions with people 18 and younger.
Since I resubscribed to the Space Channel, I've seen plenty of advertising for a variety of movies and TV shows. But to me, most of it is just background noise. I don't go to theatres anymore, and I got out of the habit of too much TV watching (being without cable or even a working TV for enough years will do that). The only SF I watch these days are Star Trek, The Handmaid's Tale, and Timeless.
So it's not that surprising that people with far less interest in science fiction would tune out even more of it. With some people, if there's no interest, nothing about the ad makes enough of an impression to be retained.
Well, hopefully the audience knows the difference!
I was flabbergasted when I watched a YouTube video of Neil Degrasse Tyson giving a talk to some junior high students. The location was the school auditorium, and the stage was littered with pieces of sets. The headmaster (it was a private school) apologized for the clutter and said the students were getting ready to put on Romeo and Juliet, "one of the classics of American literature."
I just about fell off my chair. I honestly do not understand how anyone, let alone a teacher, could not know that Shakespeare is not, and was not, American.
Thanks for clarifying. But do keep in mind that to people who aren't into superhero comics or TV shows or movies, or aren't familiar with that genre, it all sounds like the same thing.
I've had my own conversations with people who are honestly clueless about the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars.
All it takes is a school system where the curriculum doesn't include Shakespeare or poetry or classic novels, or parents who see no point in having books around. It's disheartening that so many of the younger generations have such a lack of regard for older literature, music, and TV/movies.
I was very lucky that way; both my parents read, and so did my grandparents, in a wide variety of genres; my grandfather even started reading science fiction, once I started bringing SF books home. I was actively encouraged to read, and my family started teaching me when I was about 4.
There were times when I'd babysit the neighbors' kids, and once finished my homework, I'd look around for something to read. One place had a dismal choice: the newspaper (already read it), the Encyclopedia Britannica, or two fantasy novels. I wasn't into fantasy at that point, so I picked a volume of the encyclopedia at random, and started reading.
I predict this will continue, as people are already used to the idea that all the wisdom on the internet is found on Wikipedia.
I can relate to @MAGolding on this point. The only times I ever took a bus to school was when I lived on an acreage and the county school I attended was located within the nearest city, and many years later when I went to college. When I moved into the city, I was expected to walk to and from school. We got rides maybe 3 times during those years, during a really vicious cold snap in the early '70s.
Fast-forward a few decades, and I'm absolutely baffled by parents who wail and start brandishing verbal pitchforks when it turns out that their kids have to walk to a bus stop. And I've seen complaining about the "hardship" of kids having to walk a few blocks to school.
At least they didn't have to ride a horse, like my grandmother and great-uncle did. That's how life was a hundred years ago, for some rural kids in this province.
I'm sure that rural kids didn't walk ten miles to school and back every day. Maybe something like five miles and back again was the limit for rural kids walking, but that's just a guess. I think that kids who lived farther away from school would ride horses or buggies and then later autos if their families had them.
But kids in cities like where I lived were driven by their parents when young and then walked. In grade school we walked to school, back for lunch, back to school, and back home, and I often walked to the public library after that. A long time later I looked at the map and was surprised to see it was only half a mile one way. In sixth grade we moved to an older inner suburb and the new house was next door to the grade school playground, and the high school was across a street from the grade school. So I never took a school bus except on field trips - I don't even remember if the second school district used buses except for field trips, though I remember many kids walking to and from school.
At the crossings near the grade school in the city there were crossing guards. There may have been adult crossing guards, but I remember the kids, members of the safety patrol. Nowdays, living in the farther suburbs or countryside, I notice only adult crossing guards when passing schools. Some sources indicate that at the present student safety patrol members assist adult crossing guards and thus would not be at crossings without crossing guards.
I used to watch The Simpsons in the nineties but it's been done to death so I gave up on it before the millennium! But if someone doesn't know the quote, "And don't call me Shirley!" Then something is definitely wrong with the current society! That or we have alien invasion going on right under our noses!
JB
JB
Hey, don't dis Wikipedia. It has standards, and it's scrupulous about citing its sources. I've read countless undergrad papers that would have been considerably better if they'd just taken the trouble to crib from Wikipedia.
I walked roughly a mile to school each day, in elementary and again in high school. (The only time I rode a bus was for one year of middle school.) I also served as a crossing guard when I was all of nine years old. And I'm not exactly old. My parents are Boomers. I ask again, sincerely: do kids no longer do these things?...
Yeah, it's so scrupulous that I found a rather egregious error in a diagram of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that ruled Rome (from Augustus to Nero). No way to correct it, and who knows if it ever got fixed?Hey, don't dis Wikipedia. It has standards, and it's scrupulous about citing its sources. I've read countless undergrad papers that would have been considerably better if they'd just taken the trouble to crib from Wikipedia.
Did you tell anyone?
I agree though, I've never seen any undergrad papers with an error in
Things fade away sometimes. I was rather startled to discover that my youngest siblings had never heard of PEYTON PLACE. It wasn't that they were only vaguely aware of it as a mildly scandalous relic of the past. The words "Peyton Place" literally meant nothing to them.
To be fair, I've never read the book or seen the movie or TV series either. But I know that it was a once-notorious novel from days gone by. But I guess it's not so notorious anymore and has gone the way of FOREVER AMBER . . .
(And how many people would get that last reference anymore?)
To be fair, I've never read the book or seen the movie or TV series either. But I know that it was a once-notorious novel from days gone by. But I guess it's not so notorious anymore and has gone the way of FOREVER AMBER . . .
(And how many people would get that last reference anymore?)
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Yes, I reported it and asked someone (whoever was able) to fix it. I checked back a couple of months later and absolutely nothing had been done. It wouldn't surprise me to find it still unfixed.
Yes, if it's not something that isn't a big hit right at this moment, people just gloss right over it and tune it out.
Kor
My wife, who has never read Shakespeare, at least knew that!!
The correct response is:
"As of 2018 there are four TV series and ten movies."
Now, now, some of the TNG movies are worth watching twice.
Meanwhile, I admit to being a little taken aback that a twenty-something friend had never heard of THAT GIRL with Marlo Thomas, but I guess that show didn't live forever in syndication like I LOVE LUCY or THE HONEYMOONERS or whatever.
Even sadder, recently an editor flagged a throwaway reference to Emma Peel in a manuscript, arguing that a twenty-something character in 2018 would not be casually referencing an old spy show from the sixties in dialogue. He was probably right, so I changed the reference to "Miss Moneypenny."
But that stung a bit.
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