A lot of boomer behavior and beliefs make sense when you realize this. A lot of them were raised by whatever garbage was on TV due to neglectful parents.
Do yourself a favor and watch an episode of one of these shows some time. MASH, Gilligans Island, the Andy Griffith Show, etc. Pure escapism. Simple black and white moralistic protestsnt values.
Now realize that when boomers reminisce about a time when “townspeople knew the local cop” that this never existed. They are literally just going off what they seen on the andy griffith show as a kid during their formative years.
They really were the first online generation. After World War 2, pretty much all the functions we associate with the internet were present, but slower and spread out over multiple systems. Radio, television, telephone - even older forms of mass media like magazines and newspapers played some role. People even note that the sixties marked a new cultural phenomenon - by that point the first generation raised in this “analog online” was old enough to be contributing to it’s cultural output. It marked the start of the feedback loop.
The Baby Boomers experienced a lot of firsts for whats now considered the standard experience of growing up in the US. It… really explains a lot.
Gilligans Island […] Pure escapism. Simple black and white moralistic protestsnt values
revisionist bullshit regarding a Marxist show? on my hexbear?
At the height of the Cold War, Gilligan’s Island depicted seven Americans living in an analogue of a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors have to rebuild civilization. Remarkably, the society they create is pure communist. Interviews with the show’s creator and some of the surviving actors, as well from professors from Harvard, reveal that Gilligan’s Island was deliberately designed to be dismissed as low brow comedy in order to celebrate Marxism and lampoon Western democratic constructs.
So Gillian’s island was promoting communism along with Star Trek. Pretty cool, however 90%+ of boomer viewers didn’t get it and still became reactionary dickheads. 😞
Dragnet was like catnip for boomers. “Look at these stupid evil kids with drugs. We got em good!”
Mathnet, the educational parody, is an unironically better show and I’m willing to die on that hill
I haven’t thought about Mathnet in decades
(actual decades!)
right back to Square One
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
In defence of MASH: I like it don’t be mean to me :(
MASH was an anti-war, anti-violance, anti-racist show.
Its not like the others on the list.
It is all those things to a degree, but it’s also very racist sometimes. Korean characters are often just not played by Korean people, and are just saying gibberish that’s supposed to be Korean for example.
Also in the movie one of the main characters has a very racist nickname that they all insist on using
Although we are referring to the TV show that Alan Alder managed to get boomer to loath due to being so “PC”.
Yes they did get a cast from other Asian countries to represent Koreans, however I think that most issues we would have were due to ham fisted producers who didn’t “get it”.
It improved significantly over the years, and although retrospectively it might seem racist, compared to the other shows listed it was fairly progressive.
Don’t watch it now. Don’t watch it as a progressive piece of programming, you will only be disappointed as its over 50 years old, and it was battling stereotypes of over half a century ago.
And yet even now its far more progressive than most Republicans.
Now realize that when boomers reminisce about a time when “townspeople knew the local cop” that this never existed. They are literally just going off what they seen on the andy griffith show as a kid during their formative years.
To be be fair, I know a couple of old ladies that I work with for which this is true but, only because their fathers literally were the local cops.
generational politics
Baby Boomers were called the “Me Generation” by their parents and they never recovered.
-gen x
Gen X shows were less often black & white moralistic shows once we got out of the 80s. Yeah, they still existed for sure (and still do), but things started to pick up more grey morality. Antiheros were inescapable in the 90s, and sometimes you’d even see tragic or relatable villains. Seinfeld never had an aesop – they were just kinda asshole protags. Frasier was quite often wrong. Batman had you rooting for Mr. Freeze.
And beyond that there was just a shitton of shows that didnt engage with moral questions at all, or that settled on moral apathy
It’s the 1% vs the working class, not generation vs generation.
