Rambling, Jumbled Thoughts on Age Perspective

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I've found that watching classic movies/television shows and listening to old-school music messes with my head a bit. The temptation is to associate them with those who grew up watching or listening to them as they were released, and the result is to imagine the creators and players as the age they are now, rather than the age they were when they created the work. So I end up picturing men and women in their 60s and 70s, for example, releasing the music played at Woodstock. The reality, something that rather jars my senses when I do fully realize it, is that most of the players were, in fact, my own age or younger. In fact, many of them, such as Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, never lived as long as I have, and I certainly see myself as still a young adult*. Now that my mind is mature enough to fully grasp this, I'm no longer seeing these artists as "other," but rather as kindred spirits placed in a different decade (or not-so-kindred spirits, when the songs are sexist or racist). We're far more alike than we are different.

In the Parent Trap (1961 version), Vicky (played by Joanna Barnes) is given grief for being young--practically a child. However, until recently--and I don't know if it's because her hairstyle is akin to what I saw my grandparents wearing but not young parents wearing when I was growing up, or because she always wore suits with blazers--I didn't really see her as very young... 40, maybe. Not to say that 40 is old, but at the same time, it's not an age that invites lines like, "But she's just a child!" Now, looking back, it occurs to me that she's probably meant to be in her early-to-mid-20s. Essentially, Mitch (Brian Keith) is meant to be old enough to be her father.

Mind. Blown.

Look, too, at the golden era of Hollywood. That stereotype of actors and actresses ageing beyond their prime comes from somewhere specific, and even if you think of black and white movies as "old," especially when you watch the original actors today accepting their lifetime achievement awards, realize that they weren't old then. Mickey Rooney, who died just this week at the age of 93, was a well-known name before he was even old enough to drive (legally, today). These films were new then. These films were taking risks, breaking new ground, and, especially in the 1930s, the actors were treading new ground with talking cinema. People don't change that much, either. Back then, premarital sex and adultery was just as common. The difference is, without a ratings system, movies had to fit the Hays Code. But if you know what to look for, you'll notice a lot of symbolic winking at the audience about things like sex and drugs. This idea I hear a lot about how, supposedly, people were more moral then... nonsense. Different things were out in the open, but morality and debauchery were no different then than they are now. Just read some of the actors' and musicians' biographies...

I'm not sure where else I'm going with this right now, as I know it's a bit disjointed, so I may rewrite this and post it as a new entry later on down the line. For now, though, I just leave you to ponder the fact that our parents and grandparents were, essentially, us at our age at one time, and chances are, except for personality variation, they were just the same, even if they don't remember it that way (y'know, the art of nostalgia and all...).

*I see myself as a young adult until I work with fresh-out-of-high-school students, many of whom were born when I was in junior high; then I feel old and decrepit. That, however, is only part of my life. :)