The 16 Effect

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When you're thinking critically about something reasonably long-running - the pop charts, TV sitcoms, a football club, Buffy, etc. - to what extent does your assessment of a 'golden age' (doesnt have to be THE golden age) correlate with the time you started watching/paying attention/supporting etc.? Or do you, like me, tend to romanticise the period just BEFORE that, when you didn't have any - or barely any - direct experience?

If you're thinking/writing about these things, how do you get round that? Acknowledge it? Reject it? Or do you even bother?

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 15:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Or do you, like me, tend to romanticise the period just BEFORE that, when you didn't have any - or barely any - direct experience?

I can and do do this quite a bit. Early eighties 'New Pop' that I would never have heard in the States, underground bands I wasn't listening to in 1985 or so, early nineties proto-jungle songs I was never aware of...the list goes on. I don't know if I full on romanticize such a period or periods, mind you, but I always wonder, 'Gee, what would it have been like to be in the thick of it?'

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 15:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't say I ever think about golden ages, I mean if I thought "Gee, what would it have been like to be in the thick of it?", I know that my answer would be that I wouldn't have felt part of it, or would have had some sort of knee-jerk reaction to the cool (note: the the now).

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 16:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I think I do this, some. I remember the 1970 World Cup, and Brazil in particular, as peerless. I think of the early '70s pop charts, including the last great days of Motown, some wonderful soul (Al Green now and then), the last of some great rock acts like the Stones, the Who and the Faces, and glam like T. Rex, Slade, Sweet, Bowie, Mott, Roxy and all that, as the best it's ever been in the charts. I don't think I do it with TV, though. Nor music generally - but a lot of my favourites these days don't get near the charts, which was less true in 1972 when I barely knew there was music beyond the charts.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 19:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I guess 1995/6 for me considering I was born October 1980 - But I romanticise everything that came before that era (Grunge, Rave etc).

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

How is it possible to romanticise Grunge?

― Matt (Matt), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 00:39 (twenty-two years ago)

"WAAGHH! LIFE IS A VOID!
I HAVE BOUGHT YOU A KITTEN!"

― Matt (Matt), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 00:40 (twenty-two years ago)

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