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How horrified are the older generations of new entertainment?


NickGOT456

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17 hours ago, Martini Sigil said:

I don't think the "older generation" is horrified, as much as some of our seniors simply don;t "get it".... before the Sopranos ushered in this era of TV... shows in my dad's generation always wrapped up in an hour, and things always worked out in the end.... when i was a kid we watched happy days and welcome Back Kotter every Tuesday night... shows like Bonanza, and Adam 12 were the only types of drama available... Some older folks simply don't have the patience to sit through these longer arcs.... let alone the nudity...

If I sit in the living room and put something "modern" on TV my mom automatically picks up her crossword or Sudoku puzzle.

 

I remember when I was a teenager and sitting in the restaurant watching my little portable TV. A couple regular customers asked me what I was watching. I told them "The Simpsons". They were somewhat aghast and told me they didn't approve of it's "Underachiever and proud of it" message.

Isn't "Simpsons" or classic Simpsons at least, considered a positive values program now?

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17 hours ago, Bronn Stone said:

I'm over 50. 

This is the greatest era in the history of television, beyond a doubt.  And I love every minute of it.

QFT!

As much as I'm a nostalgia freak and the old shows like All In the Family, Welcome Back Kotter, MASH, etc give me the warm tinglies, I know for sure television* has never been better than it is now.

Yes there's more dreadful shit than ever, but that's just because there just MORE! than ever including bad shows, mediocre shows, and awesome shows.

*Do we keep calling what this is television though or with streaming and smart devices and such should it be now called something like Programming? or does that too 1984-ish or connotative of brainwashing? Programs? Vids? 

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14 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

*Do we keep calling what this is television though or with streaming and smart devices and such should it be now called something like Programming? or does that too 1984-ish or connotative of brainwashing? Programs? Vids? 

The Television is the device you watch it on (unless your screen necessitates separate audio).

Streaming services would more be a replacement for Channels.

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On 12/5/2017 at 7:53 PM, Martini Sigil said:

I don't think the "older generation" is horrified, as much as some of our seniors simply don;t "get it".... before the Sopranos ushered in this era of TV... shows in my dad's generation always wrapped up in an hour, and things always worked out in the end.... when i was a kid we watched happy days and welcome Back Kotter every Tuesday night... shows like Bonanza, and Adam 12 were the only types of drama available... Some older folks simply don't have the patience to sit through these longer arcs.... let alone the nudity...

The long arcs and the nudity are what keep me coming back. 

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  • 1 month later...

I don't think most of them are as bothered by the quality of television today as you might think. My grandfather is 80 years old, and by now he's watched The Leftovers several times over. Both of my grandparents watch Game of Thrones.

I think they basically ignore the more salacious parts of modern television and focus on the parts they like instead. My grandfather, for instance, loves the love story between Kevin and Nora. 

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20 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I don't think most of them are as bothered by the quality of television today as you might think. My grandfather is 80 years old, and by now he's watched The Leftovers several times over. Both of my grandparents watch Game of Thrones.

I think they basically ignore the more salacious parts of modern television and focus on the parts they like instead. My grandfather, for instance, loves the love story between Kevin and Nora. 

Your grandpa has great taste. I only recently saw The Leftovers and it's a great show, and Nora/Kevin are among my favorite fictional couples now. I was rooting for them from the start.

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My mother loved Upstairs, Downstairs back in the day.  But she readily agrees that Downton Abbey is a vastly superior execution of a similar concept.

The only TV to horrify her these days is the news and the acts of the GOP.  It saddens her to see us fighting things we HOPED we'd overcome 50 years ago.

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On ‎12‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 10:24 PM, drawkcabi said:

I thought this was going to be about older generations being horrified by new entertainment because the can't access it, they can't figure out how to work a Roku or stream anything, even a DVD player, let alone a pc. So they're stuck with cable TV. Cause that I've seen. ::shudders::

I am with you, this topic made me think of older people and electronics not the rambling mess of a Halo game description it turned out to be.

On ‎12‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 4:34 PM, Dr. Pepper said:

I'm horrified by the entertainment of older generations.  Baby Burlesk, anyone??

100% spot on. They used to do some pretty messed up things for entertainment!

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On 12/01/2018 at 11:14 AM, Bronn Stone said:

My mother loved Upstairs, Downstairs back in the day.  But she readily agrees that Downton Abbey is a vastly superior execution of a similar concept.

The only TV to horrify her these days is the news and the acts of the GOP.  It saddens her to see us fighting things we HOPED we'd overcome 50 years ago.

Maybe it's my old lady perspective, but I thought Downton Abbey benefited from modern production values (and Maggie Smith) but the scripting and acting were generally much better in the original Upstairs Downstairs (creaky with age as it might be now). Just as one example, DA turned the aftermath of WW1 into a ridiculous soap opera, (will Matthew miraculously walk again, will his annoying fiancee die conveniently and prettily) while UD characters dealt with shellshock and ongoing long-term trauma from the war.

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On 06/12/2017 at 11:53 AM, Martini Sigil said:

I don't think the "older generation" is horrified, as much as some of our seniors simply don;t "get it".... before the Sopranos ushered in this era of TV... shows in my dad's generation always wrapped up in an hour, and things always worked out in the end.... when i was a kid we watched happy days and welcome Back Kotter every Tuesday night... shows like Bonanza, and Adam 12 were the only types of drama available... Some older folks simply don't have the patience to sit through these longer arcs.... let alone the nudity...

I think Hill Street Blues was the first American primetime show to introduce ongoing story arcs and that was back in the 80's. In Australia, we had hugely popular primetime adult soaps like Number 96 in the 70's, with sex, nudity and an openly gay main character. The US TV mainstream was much more conservative back then, though.

I love a lot of the current generation of TV, even if I'm a bit over the anti-hero, but it might be a tiny bit condescending to think of it as inventing the wheel.

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2 hours ago, dbunting said:

I am with you, this topic made me think of older people and electronics not the rambling mess of a Halo game description it turned out to be.

It's a strange phenomenon, at least from what I've observed, it's like people past a certain age really prefer to complain how there's so many channels but nothing on rather than find something. I've even argued "Well, you can watch 'this', or 'this', or 'this' all you have to do is use Amazon Fire or Echo..." and many times it's "No, no, no, I don't want to do that." My own anecdotal evidence makes me think maybe there's a generation that's just had their TV given to them like "Here's you choose the channels to watch, but we decide the programs and how you watch them." To plan their own programs to watch, picking and choosing from streaming services, having to make the decisions, not just flip around or tune into one channel for their line up, knowing they are watching personalized selections on their own time, that millions of other people are not tuning in on a channel at the exact same time to watch something, seems too much a foreign concept.

I remember growing up, it was ok to watch TV, even on school nights, but never could the VCR be used during the hours of 8pm - 11pm (you could record, yet, just not watch) because prime time was the best TV and you shouldn't miss it.

It took brodadcast television to get really dreary, I'm talking only in the last ten years, for my mom to dare to start checking out channels beyond what was on 2 - 13 during prime time.

 

1 hour ago, Wall Flower said:

I think Hill Street Blues was the first American primetime show to introduce ongoing story arcs and that was back in the 80's. In Australia, we had hugely popular primetime adult soaps like Number 96 in the 70's, with sex, nudity and an openly gay main character. The US TV mainstream was much more conservative back then, though.

I love a lot of the current generation of TV, even if I'm a bit over the anti-hero, but it might be a tiny bit condescending to think of it as inventing the wheel.

Nope. I think The Fugitive qualifies and has Hill Street beat by a decade and a half. There is the story that water pressure noticeably went down after the show because so many people flushed after holding it in not wanting to miss how the show ended. Then when it was rebroadcast in reruns it wasn't as popular because everyone knew how it turned out.

Also, Dallas was before Hill Street Blues and made prime time soaps a big thing, but even before that in the 60's there was Peyton Place the series, but with that show I think even with the big name guest stars it was more daytime soap that aired in prime time than prime time soap. 

On American Broadcast TV it is still silly conservative with sex and language if not so much with violence, pay tv networks are better to varying degrees.

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The trajectory is probably the other way around:

The entertainment of older generations seems obscene and morally corrupt to younger generations. Sexism, racism, xenophobia, utter lack of empathy with the Other, — if you’re a millennial, try to watch an old Bond movie and not get offended.

Try to watch sitcoms from just 20 years ago, with laissez-fair attitudes to teacher-pupil sex, sexual predation, etc. 

In a few years, we will be horrified by people eating meat on TV.

Culture goes towards an ever more sanitised and pure depiction of accepted social relations between good people. New generations are horrified of old entertainment.

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6 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

It's a strange phenomenon, at least from what I've observed, it's like people past a certain age really prefer to complain how there's so many channels but nothing on rather than find something. I've even argued "Well, you can watch 'this', or 'this', or 'this' all you have to do is use Amazon Fire or Echo..." and many times it's "No, no, no, I don't want to do that." My own anecdotal evidence makes me think maybe there's a generation that's just had their TV given to them like "Here's you choose the channels to watch, but we decide the programs and how you watch them." To plan their own programs to watch, picking and choosing from streaming services, having to make the decisions, not just flip around or tune into one channel for their line up, knowing they are watching personalized selections on their own time, that millions of other people are not tuning in on a channel at the exact same time to watch something, seems too much a foreign concept.

I remember growing up, it was ok to watch TV, even on school nights, but never could the VCR be used during the hours of 8pm - 11pm (you could record, yet, just not watch) because prime time was the best TV and you shouldn't miss it.

It took brodadcast television to get really dreary, I'm talking only in the last ten years, for my mom to dare to start checking out channels beyond what was on 2 - 13 during prime time.

 

Nope. I think The Fugitive qualifies and has Hill Street beat by a decade and a half. There is the story that water pressure noticeably went down after the show because so many people flushed after holding it in not wanting to miss how the show ended. Then when it was rebroadcast in reruns it wasn't as popular because everyone knew how it turned out.

Also, Dallas was before Hill Street Blues and made prime time soaps a big thing, but even before that in the 60's there was Peyton Place the series, but with that show I think even with the big name guest stars it was more daytime soap that aired in prime time than prime time soap. 

On American Broadcast TV it is still silly conservative with sex and language if not so much with violence, pay tv networks are better to varying degrees.

Thanks. Even I'm not old enough to remember the Fugitive or Peyton Place, or at least I wasn't old enough to be allowed to watch them. I think Peyton Place was considered pretty scandalous in its day. I did love Dallas though - I'd forgotten that it started in the 70's.

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2 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

The trajectory is probably the other way around:

The entertainment of older generations seems obscene and morally corrupt to younger generations. Sexism, racism, xenophobia, utter lack of empathy with the Other, — if you’re a millennial, try to watch an old Bond movie and not get offended.

Try to watch sitcoms from just 20 years ago, with laissez-fair attitudes to teacher-pupil sex, sexual predation, etc. 

In a few years, we will be horrified by people eating meat on TV.

Culture goes towards an ever more sanitised and pure depiction of accepted social relations between good people. New generations are horrified of old entertainment.

There is a work around...kind of.

Shows set in different time periods have always been popular, in television's early days it was a lot of westerns, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Wagon Train, etc. and for non-westerns, here and there a show like The Untouchables.

Then come shows like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, MASH, Little House on the Prairie.

Then, The Wonder Years, China Beach, Brooklyn Bridge, a little later, That 70's Show.

But now, and I don't think it's just the glut of shows television landscape, it's also what's popular or been popular recently. Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Stranger Things, The Americans, Red Oaks, Marvelous Mrs, Maisel, The Last Tycoon, Halt and Catch Fire, Mindhunter, Fargo, Damnation, There's Johnny..., The Goldbergs, Fresh Off the Boat, Young Sheldon, and more I know I'm missing.

Nostalgia is playing a huge factor in popular TV programs now. There are depictions and reprimands of "look how bad we were" sometimes earnest, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. But sometimes with things like with smoking, it seems it's more glorification that's going on. Period programs are going to continue being popular and in the future for everyone horrified by people eating meat on television there will be people who watch drawn by what's become taboo.

 

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