Changing Times
Some of the veterans of this blog know I am a devoted fan and customer of XM Satellite Radio. From time to time I like to listen to the old-time radio channel, with the classic shows from the 40s and 50s.
It always strikes me what passed for popular entertainment then. I mean, I'm a little surprised at the good taste New York audiences had then, which was where many radio shows originated in front of live studio audiences.
New Yorkers generally think of themselves as very sophisticated, very urbane, so it is amusing to hear NY audiences from a half century ago chuckle over jokes like "Here's a job, steamfitter. What's a steamfitter? I don't know, someone who fits steam?" *guffaw chortle laugh*
Today it seems like New Yorkers are bored by anything that doesn't involve someone prancing on stage naked smearing themselves with chocolate.
Why do tastes change? Why do values change?
Of course, sometimes it's not clear whether we should praise the Greatest Generation for enduring the long hard fight of WWII, or condemn them for enjoying the music of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
It now seems like a quaint, fusty era when married couples on TV had separate beds, but was that all so bad, when today, as a recent report said:
What we value as entertainment, what we allow into our minds, speaks volumes about what kind of society we are. It says something that we view the entertainment of fifty years ago as old-fashioned, and belonging to a time gone by. Perhaps we should not have let that era slip by so easily.
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linked to the California Conservative open post
It always strikes me what passed for popular entertainment then. I mean, I'm a little surprised at the good taste New York audiences had then, which was where many radio shows originated in front of live studio audiences.
New Yorkers generally think of themselves as very sophisticated, very urbane, so it is amusing to hear NY audiences from a half century ago chuckle over jokes like "Here's a job, steamfitter. What's a steamfitter? I don't know, someone who fits steam?" *guffaw chortle laugh*
Today it seems like New Yorkers are bored by anything that doesn't involve someone prancing on stage naked smearing themselves with chocolate.
Why do tastes change? Why do values change?
Of course, sometimes it's not clear whether we should praise the Greatest Generation for enduring the long hard fight of WWII, or condemn them for enjoying the music of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
It now seems like a quaint, fusty era when married couples on TV had separate beds, but was that all so bad, when today, as a recent report said:
An examination of sex on TV released Wednesday finds 70 percent of programming includes some sexual content -- up from 56 percent in 2002.
In all, the number of scenes involving sex has nearly doubled since 1998, from 1,930 to 3,783.
What we value as entertainment, what we allow into our minds, speaks volumes about what kind of society we are. It says something that we view the entertainment of fifty years ago as old-fashioned, and belonging to a time gone by. Perhaps we should not have let that era slip by so easily.
-----
linked to the California Conservative open post
1 Comments:
At Tue Nov 15, 11:33:00 PM, Leo Pusateri said…
...amen to that..
I always listened to CBS's Radio Mystery Theater while growing up in Chicago during the 60s and 70s.
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