When the past was the future

Tim Carmody looks back on the joyously remembered "Happy Days" era, particularly when set in opposition to the chaos and uncertainty of the Facebook generation:

It’s memory as ideology, created (whether consciously or unconsciously) to surreptitiously win arguments about the present, especially about social morés and generational change.
And the Happy Days era — the real one, which was reflected in the TV show like a funhouse mirror — was driven by technological and social change, too! Kids had access to cars, telephones, TV, records and the radio, and disposable cash. Cruising, malt shops, high school dances, drive-in movies, everything you see in American Graffiti — it might feel like part of the timeless social ritual now, but then, it was a revolution, a set of truly radical acts. Add the pill, civil rights, and a swelling in the ranks of college students, and you’ve got feminism, counter-culture, the sexual revolution.

Comments

whether you are reading words inscribed on goatskin, images in petroglyphs, poems written in crushed minerals on illuminated manuscripts,or written with a crow~quill pen and sealed with wax, or typed on an old remington typewriter and dropped in a mailbox, or sent with one's fingertip in an email, or texted on a streetcorner....the medium may change, but the messages are always the same.
social conditions may change, but nothing in the human heart has changed, and i suspect that if the planet survives another hundred years, someone will write the same laments as david brooks did.
instead of love poems being written about the moon, they will be written, in some form, on the moon.

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Posted by: jkaren | November 5, 2009 1:34 PM | Report abuse

The '50s weren't nearly as good as the '90s, when everyone drove their retro Mustang convertibles to the Peach Pit.

Posted by: dpurp | November 5, 2009 8:40 PM | Report abuse