I was listening to a movie podcast the other day, and the hosts were discussing the 1982 cult classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's very much a movie of a time. If you are Gen-X, like me, it probably means something to you; if you aren't, it probably doesn't. One of the hosts was saying that the main reason this film resonates so much with people of my generation is because it's the perfect movie -- it has the right mix of pathos, humor, and sex* -- to implant itself in the psyche of a young teenager, and, in general, movies are at their best when you are a young teenager. I think he's mostly right about this -- I saw Fast Times at age 13 at an older kid's house, and it kinda blew my mind -- but I have a quibble in that I don't think movies, in general, are at their best as a young teenager.
*In terms of both timeline and content, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is almost exactly between the campy, raunchy comedies of the late-70s/early-80s like Animal House and Porkies and the more "realistic", sentimental John Hughes teen movies of the mid-80s.
When are movies at their best? Keep reading, and you will find out, as this question got me thinking not just about when movies are their best, but when all sorts of things are at their best. I break it all down in this post.
Movies: Late teens
Movies are excellent when you are a young teen, but I think they are even better when you are an older teen. At that age, you haven't yet become jaded by the realities of life -- you still have the capacity to fully ingest the magic and awe of film -- but you are old enough to appreciate more interesting concepts and themes that would go over your head (or terrify and traumatize you) as a younger person. My personal apex movie moment was seeing Pulp Fiction in the theater at age 17. I knew nothing about it or the director. I had no idea what I was sitting down for, but I was hooked from the get-go. In my memory, I watched the entire thing with my jaw on the floor and my eyes bulging out of my head like a cartoon character. I didn't blink for two and a half hours. I've never been more rapt in wonderment in my entire life.
Then I had almost the exact same experience two weeks later when I saw Trainspotting. Now, in actuality, Trainspotting did not come until 1996, so it was more like two years later, but in my mind's eye I saw these movies almost back-to-back. That's the hold they took on me -- they completely warped my sense of spacetime.
As an aside, allow me a moment to lament the current state of in-theater cinema. Going to the movies just isn't what it used to be, not only because I'm not 17 anymore, but also, and primarily, because the films that play in theaters just aren't that good now. I would say I'm superhero movied out, but that would imply I was ever in on superhero movies in the first place. I've heard Thunderbolts is really, actually -- no, seriously -- quite good, and I still have absolutely no desire to watch it. Since we moved back to DC in 2011, I can probably list the number of movies I truly enjoyed watching in the theater on one hand.*
*Off the top of my head: Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, The Shape of Water, Gravity, and I'll throw in a replay of Avatar in 3-D I-Max (but not Avatar: The Way of Water, which I didn't like that much). That's literally all I got -- three movies and a throw-in.
Music: Early teens
You could pick any age between 14 and 29, and I wouldn't argue with you. After that your tastes mostly calcify, and you find yourself mostly wanting to listen to the same thing over and over again, instead of exploring new music. But I went with early teens because that's when the nostalgia hits me the hardest. I heard Superman by REM the other day and damn near burst into tears. I don't even particularly like that song -- I mean, it's fine but nothing special -- but I did like it in junior high, and so it still really moves me thirty-five years later. This happens frequently -- if I chance upon a song I listened to between 1991 and 1994, I'm all in, regardless of how good or bad it is.
Also, early teens is when your music most defines you. When I was that age CDs were emerging as the dominant musical medium, and they came in those long cardboard boxes, so I would collect them and decorate my school binder with them. I would rotate the band on the front -- Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Inxs -- depending on my mood and tastes at that particular moment, and I had Jimi Hendrix permanently on the back. My message to the world: I love alternative rock, and I am not a racist.
TV: Late twenties
This one is largely a function of when TV was at its best, in general. In my opinion, this was in the mid-twenty-aughts, and in the mid-twenty-aughts, I was in my late twenties, so TV-watching was the best for me in my late twenties. There are undoubtedly more good TV shows available now than at any other time in TV history, but the experience of watching TV is notably worse now than it was twenty years ago.
In fact, part of the problem is that there is too much on TV now. There is paralysis by analysis -- The Last of Us, The Pit, The Bear, Poker Face, Landman, Running Point, The Studio, Your Friends and Neighbors, The Rehearsal, Severance, The Agency -- these are all shows with new(ish) seasons out that I've heard are worth watching. And then even when I pick a show, there is the "online dating problem", where if it's not bad but doesn't rock my world immediately, I become overwhelmed with the feeling that there is something better out there for me, and I'm wasting my valuable time and energy with this not-as-good-as-something-else show, and that sentiment can totally ruin the viewing experience. As a result, I usually end up just watching sports or doing something else entirely.
I miss the days when when I could mostly keep up with the great TV shows just by watching an episode or two a night. Early Netflix, when they sent you DVDs in the mail, represents the peak of TV-watching for me. I only had one service, and with that and all the stuff I already had on disc (my brother-in-law used to check stuff out from the library and copy it), I was able to rip through almost all the great TV shows of the day -- The Sopranos, Sex & the City, Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Arrested Development, Curb, etc. -- in short order.
And there was something ineffably wonderful about getting the physical discs in the mail. I would go into campus and teach all day or work on my dissertation, and then come home to a mailbox filled with the latest episodes of whatever great show I was engrossed in at the moment as my reward. With the two disc plan, the timing worked out perfectly too. I would watch one disc while the other was out, and by the time I was done, the other had arrived with the next batch of episodes. Well, the timing was almost perfect -- Sundays always threw off my rhythm. No mail that day.
Alright, I can see I have more to say on this topic than expected, so I'm taking this to a Part II. Why not? It's a holiday weekend. Let's go nuts.
Until next time...
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