This is such an interesting piece. It has immediately made me want to go and watch both of the series referenced: “I May Destroy You” because it sounds like a fascinating premise (not how I remember it being billed at all when it came out) and “Mr and Mrs Smith”, just to see how I feel about Jane Smith.
I don’t really feel this inter generational rivalry at all, maybe because I have always been careful to maintain positive interactions online and have stayed away from Twitter. I am more interested in the propensity I have to completely despise female characters in film and television in a way I definitely don’t with male characters and in a way that, in my experience, men don’t seem to do at all. It’s something that troubles me and that I find hard to break out of even though I am aware of it.
I do think, and this is pertinent to your essay, that self-righteous indignation is a very unattractive quality and that maybe we need to give people the benefit of the doubt for whatever views they hold (within reason). There is certainly a tendency among a lot of people (I want to say women) a little younger than me to see things very much in terms of black and white which I don’t always find helpful. I would say though that viewing a whole generation as one entity is also part of the problem. People are people. I have friends of all ages both in person and online and those relationships work well because we see each other as a whole rather than a generational package.
A fantastic piece Rowan. Thanks. One thing. You say.
‘Popular culture offers behavioural templates and feeds them back into the real world, where impressionable young people pick them up’.
I’m not sure about that. It’s a little close to the discredited ‘monkey see monkey do’ arguments of Mary Whitehouse era and their latter day equivalent, the ‘censor everything I don’t like-because you know-the kids’ attitude beloved of our enlightened classes.
Also, this stuff isn’t corrupting impressionable young minds. Because impressionable young minds aren’t watching it, in general, they’re very much giving it a miss. We should follow their example.
I watched the first episode of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and then was done. I found nothing redeeming in a TV show about two people so indifferent to humanity, their own and others, that they would blindly follow the orders of an unseen entity, and that after following those orders by delivering a bomb to a home that blows up a bunch of people, walk away essentially ending the episode without so much as a, "What are we doing?". Maybe I've gotten too old, but that's not funny, challenging or uplifting. If I want dark and sinister with unfathomable inhumanity there's always the evening news.
This is such an interesting piece. It has immediately made me want to go and watch both of the series referenced: “I May Destroy You” because it sounds like a fascinating premise (not how I remember it being billed at all when it came out) and “Mr and Mrs Smith”, just to see how I feel about Jane Smith.
I don’t really feel this inter generational rivalry at all, maybe because I have always been careful to maintain positive interactions online and have stayed away from Twitter. I am more interested in the propensity I have to completely despise female characters in film and television in a way I definitely don’t with male characters and in a way that, in my experience, men don’t seem to do at all. It’s something that troubles me and that I find hard to break out of even though I am aware of it.
I do think, and this is pertinent to your essay, that self-righteous indignation is a very unattractive quality and that maybe we need to give people the benefit of the doubt for whatever views they hold (within reason). There is certainly a tendency among a lot of people (I want to say women) a little younger than me to see things very much in terms of black and white which I don’t always find helpful. I would say though that viewing a whole generation as one entity is also part of the problem. People are people. I have friends of all ages both in person and online and those relationships work well because we see each other as a whole rather than a generational package.
A fantastic piece Rowan. Thanks. One thing. You say.
‘Popular culture offers behavioural templates and feeds them back into the real world, where impressionable young people pick them up’.
I’m not sure about that. It’s a little close to the discredited ‘monkey see monkey do’ arguments of Mary Whitehouse era and their latter day equivalent, the ‘censor everything I don’t like-because you know-the kids’ attitude beloved of our enlightened classes.
Also, this stuff isn’t corrupting impressionable young minds. Because impressionable young minds aren’t watching it, in general, they’re very much giving it a miss. We should follow their example.
As I said though. Loved the article.
So so good Rowan! Worth the annual subscription on its own!
It’s the cultural revolution in which the young can destroy the old- denounce their parents. Still there is revenge- time.
I watched the first episode of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and then was done. I found nothing redeeming in a TV show about two people so indifferent to humanity, their own and others, that they would blindly follow the orders of an unseen entity, and that after following those orders by delivering a bomb to a home that blows up a bunch of people, walk away essentially ending the episode without so much as a, "What are we doing?". Maybe I've gotten too old, but that's not funny, challenging or uplifting. If I want dark and sinister with unfathomable inhumanity there's always the evening news.