What We Forget
We just discovered that Josh’s co-worker’s mother is younger than he is. She had her child in her twenties, and her child just passed into her twenties herself a few years ago. The math makes sense. It just makes me feel old.
My co-workers are mostly my age. I think. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. I guess I could point in their face and say, “Where were you when you heard about the Challenger?” I know that someday I will have a co-worker who answers, “I was an infant.”
I am also aware that YOU may be reading this and thinking, “Where were you when Nixon resigned?” Um… I was an infant.
I recently read a piece on how art and culture gets lost as generations age, and how little remains in the collective consciousness over the years. It made me sad to think that, one day, people may not know John Lennon. That, right now, there are groups of people who cannot identify the song “Imagine” much less something like “Starting Over.”
Popular pieces have a lifespan of 5 – 30 years and then start to pass out of the collective consciousness, remembered by fewer and fewer people over time until very little remains. Take a look down this list of books published in 1919. How many do you actually know (vs. recognize the author’s name)? How many have you read?
Three — I’ve read three on the fiction list.
And yet back in 1919 or 1924, people would have been familiar with these works. They would have read Winesburg, Ohio.
Can you imagine people in 2119 reading John Green books? Or Twilight? Perhaps Harry Potter will survive the next 100 years, but I can’t imagine most people still knowing Rainbow Rowell even though there will always been a small sub-set of people who remember books the general public has forgotten.
I’m sad about that future world where people don’t know about John Green books.
They’re probably sad about our world and how we didn’t live to see their greatest AI author, AlphaZ.
What items (books, movies, television shows) that are popular today do you think we’ll still remember in 100 years?
15 comments
Oh the age thing. I go through this a lot lately. My younger daughter is in preschool and I am the age of (maybe older?) at least one of the grandmas. I’m 41. But my daughter’s friend was born to a very young mom, who had been born to a very young mom. And I guess I’m an old mom.
For that matter, my daughter’s birth mom could be my daughter, thus making me a grandma.
I don’t have co-workers but I end up interacting with other parents and that’s when I find age disparity.
I realize that was a tangent I just took up there. I think HP will survive but I don’t know what else. I think about the shows I watched years ago and, even if they aren’t forgotten, they just aren’t relevant anymore, some even cringe-worthy.
I hope some of my favorite authors will still be read, but again – will people care about what I care about today?
Because I work in a hospital, I’m about right in the middle of ages of everyone. In my particular department, I’m definitely older than most newer people coming in, but there are still plenty of people that are my age or older, they just tend to be the ones who have worked here forever. The older you get in my field the less you tend to jump around jobs, and due to the physical nature it’s not one you can do forever into past retirement age. I do remember just starting out and being the youngest at my first hospital jobs and it was really hard to have pretty much nothing in common with anyone.
What will still be around in 100 years??? I don’t think too much. There aren’t a lot of things that have the same impact as they did. Take music. Frank Sinatra and Elvis were larger than life and the music was unique. The Beetles represented a movement. Pop of today is all overproduced and sounds the same, none of it really stands out and is all pretty forgettable. I love Lucy was comic genius, and really special. I don’t see anything on TV now that is even a little like that. Law and order might still be around, because that seems to be a show that just goes on and on and on. Even the original Disney films seem to be a bit irrelevant now…my kids don’t even know a fraction of the movies I grew up with, although I have tried. Alice and Winey the Pooh (the originals) seem timeless. But remember all the movies for Disney that Hailey Mills did? Where are those??? You have opened a black hole here, Mel😜
I don’t think any of it will still be around and read unless it’s assigned. I mean, who still reads Shakespeare for fun? I’m sure someone does but…lol Even TV I’m happy to see that my nieces and nephew love Friends (it was off the air before they started school) but other than that and West Wing I can’t even think of anything I still want to watch. I can’t comment on Twilight or Harry Potter because they aren’t my cup of tea- I watched the HP movies for my husband but I’ll never read them. If I have time to read it’s going to be a genre I enjoy and that’s just never going to be fantasy/science fiction no matter how much he wishes it were. I’ll choose mystery/thriller any day. And as popular as he is now, I don’t see James Patterson being around in a 100 years. But, I’m also the worst person in the world to answer any of this as I’m “culturally deprived” as my husband calls it and would know pop culture if it bit me. So, there’s that. 🙂 And a really mortifying story from junior high that goes along with it but…I’ve made myself awful enough here for now. 🙂
I think Harry Potter will still be around—the original series not the newer additions.
I’m in the thick of preparing for 3 (gulp) separate interviews for companies where I’m considered old. On one hand, I have some advantages but its hard not to feel like I’ve done things horribly wrong to be surrounded by people who are visibly younger than I am.
I hear what you’re saying about art and cultural influence. It’s hard to predict what will remain and what will be pushed to the wayside. John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, and David Bowie will always be around. I have similar thoughts about Harry Potter. I love Rainbow Rowell and how her books continue to influence. But others will go to the wayside, with the hope of being rediscovered again. And it’s those rediscoveries that I hope are both timely and surprising.
I was just talking to the grandmother of one of my daughter’s classmates – I’m pretty sure I’m closer to her age than I am to her daughter’s age. Same with our neighbors next door. And by the time we get any of the trainees who are supposed to come work with us, I will definitely be old enough to be their mother. :/
I think some of the stuff we enjoy will retain its appeal over time. Many people still enjoy music from the past – Beethoven to the Beatles, most people have heard of it. Movies are another thing people will watch far longer than we’d expect. The Wizard of Oz is 80 years old, isn’t it? I think some things are left behind just because they’re no longer relatable. But we’re about to have another version of Little Women, and they remake Pride and Prejudice every few years, so I think some things continue to endure.
I had MANY of these moments when I was working, particularly in the later years, when I realized I was the same age, or just a wee bit younger or older than some of my young colleagues’ parents. :p And the generational gap in references. One example: I actually worked with two young women named Kate and Ali, and I started giggling when I realized, hey, “Kate & Allie.” I tried to explain to them — “you know, that old TV show with Jane Curtin & Susan St. James”? I got blank looks from both of them & the one said to me, very kindly, like she was addressing a very old deaf person, “I’m very sorry, but I have NO idea what you’re talking about.” Then I realized that if they were even born when “Kate & Allie” was on, they would probably still have been pre-schoolers. :p Oh well.
And just today, our 30-year-old nephew was posting on Instagram about how he’d just discovered this amazing album… it was “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd. Better late than never, I guess…!
I recently posted about the mail-order library service I enjoyed when I was growing up, and some of the authors I loved back then. Most of those books were written back in the 1950s, and I very much doubt most of them are on library or bookstore bookshelves today, or that children/teenagers today would recognize the authors’ names. (I was happy to learn some of them are available in new editions via Amazon, though!)
I had a moment a couple of years ago when I called a physician at work and this…very young person walks up to me and goes “Hi, I’m Dr. So-and-So”. All I could think for just a second was “AAHHHHH, how have I gotten to the point where now some of the fully-qualified doctors are noticeably YOUNGER than me?!” Ah, well, it had to happen someday ;).
Culture definitely does change. Shakespeare was mentioned above – I was reading a book by a historian who does a lot of proofing/work/living history for films and such and she said she and her colleagues laugh a lot more at the comedies than most of the audience because they’re immersed in that culture often and pick up some of the more time-period-sensitive jokes. Occasionally, I’ve taken the time to read biographies of authors or history of the time/place when I run across a book I like and it often really changes how I read the original book (I hadn’t fully realized, for example, just how often the Ingalls family was on the brink of starvation – it makes all the very vivid writing surrounding food in the “Little House” series stand out more. Or reading Lousia May Alcott’s “A Long Fatal Love Chase” and recognizing more fully from where Jo’s writing stems). Basically, I think that it’s quite true that a lot of stuff fades in culture – it’s a labor of love and a fair bit of work to really recapture the atmosphere of the day when you’re not immersed in the time/place that produced that work.
As far as what will be around in 100 years….hmmm. I think “Harry Potter” stands a fairly good chance because underneath, it’s a fairly timeless story. Evil/resistance crops up in most generations, so it will most likely hold its resonance and since it only barely takes place in the “muggle” world, technology and such won’t date it as much.
yesterday I was at my (almost 6 year old) daughter’s indoor ski training. Behind the counter stood a middle aged woman, I would have guessed early 50s. When we were leaving she suddenly asked my name, and remembered we were in the same year in school, same field hockey team. Oops, means she is 46 just like me. O well.
Honestly, I’m not that familiar with that many works published in 2018. Looking at the bestseller list, other than the authors I follow on social media (whose books I haven’t read yet), the only ones I recognize did not actually come out in 2018. (Not to say I didn’t read books that came out in 2018, but K J Charles, for example, did not make the NYTimes top 100.)
Looking at the 1919 list: The Sheik is terrible. The league of the Scarlet Pimpernel is nowhere near as good as The Scarlet Pimpernel (which will endure)– it’s basically a bunch of somewhat repetitive short stories. I’m fairly sure My Man Jeeves will last (though Wodehouse’s racist work has already disappeared from publications and libraries!) I read Helena but it wasn’t memorable as is evidenced by my not remembering anything about it.
I did not know Jerome K. Jerome had more than two books! I do think that Three Men and a Boat will stand the test of time through blatant stealing of its jokes, even if people don’t read the source material. It is part of the Western collective now. (The sequel oddly starts out with an incredibly unbelievably racist and completely unnecessary scene which is why we don’t read it, even though the rest is a funny and interesting picture of Germany before WWII.)
The Magic of Oz will last. Tarzan will probably not stand the test of time in any form. The Gold Diggers is probably on its way out. None of AA Milne’s adult stuff seems to have endured the way Winnie the Pooh did, though what I’ve read honestly isn’t bad even for modern audiences.
Strunk will endure forever, though in updated forms so long as the English language persists. That alone makes 1919 an important year for books!
Though I will say… another nostalgia test for me was watching Back to the Future with my kids when my eldest was the same age I was when I watched it in theaters. Marty’s parents were the same age as my parents when I first watched it. And then I was the same age as Marty’s parents when my kids first watched it. 50s:80s :: 80s: 2010s
I once thought the Brady Bunch would be around forEVer, but I’m seeing that as generations move through the giant conveyer belt of life, it is being left behind.
(Not that it’s great art, just that it was such a cultural phenomenon for many decades.)
This is why we have conversations about what in out culture(s) is valuable and why.
It starts with the family: what do we share with our children?
Then extends outward into the rest of the culture. What is valuable to everyone (generally speaking).
It’s important not to forget how to have those conversations.
I’m older than one of my coworker’s parents too. It does come as a shock the first time you realize it!
But you never know what will stick—my husband works with a high school senior whose favorite musician is Bob Seger.
I think HP will survive. My boys looooove HP and the one with glasses wants them to resemble Harry’s as much as he can. It’s very hard, as that is not a popular style these days. The glasses style hasn’t survived, but my boys love him!