Nothing is the same anymore. When I was growing up, way back in the early 90s, we didn't listen to the music of a pallid, adrogenous "singer" named Marilyn Manson. Pardon me for not praising masterpieces like "Angel with Scabbed Wings" and "Antichrist Superstar." Back then, all we needed was a good dose of Vanilla Ice to take us to cloud nine and back. He may not be an answer to The Beatles, but at least he doesn't have a surgically implanted breast and release albums like "Smells Like Children." Had Marilyn reared his/her ugly head back then, we would've made some highly offensive and politically incorrect comments about him and gone back to memorizing the words to "Ice, Ice Baby." Meanwhile, Manson is being hailed a prophet of our generation. Not of my generation, he isn't.
The times, they are a changin'. It was true when Bob Dylan first crooned those memorable lyrics, and the verity of the phrase remains. "Fun" is currently defined as sitting in front of your computer and playing mindnumbing games like Doom. Although I confess to having played the game once or twice, sitting in front of a computer for hours and soaking up radiation while I kill hordes of monsters has never been my forte. If one of those things attacked me in real life I'd soil my pants. I guess it's a power trip for some people to imagine that they are using gigantic machine guns to save the whole universe. But games like that have never made me feel macho because I remember that after all, I can barely bench press some of my textbooks. Back in the day, when you wanted to prove your masculinity, you did it on the basketball court, the football field, etc. This was where real strength came out, not the kind you get from pushing button all day. And the respect earned was real, too. But I guess sitting in your room is much more fun than actually enjoying sunlight or engaging in physical activity.
There was a time, when "Natural Born Killers" would not be hailed as a masterpiece, though that was long ago. What happened to the days when the Neverending Story was as violent as a movie got? I do believe there was a time when a movie without explosions in every scene could make a respectable profit at the box office. But I guess this is the Arnold Schwarzenegger era, when even the ability to speak English coherently is not prerequisite for cinema, although being able to single-handedly kill the population of a small country is.
My discourse on "kickin' it old school" may seem quite capricious. But the recent tragedy at Columbine School is a sad example of how the times have changed. How many school killings were there from 1990-1995? Now what about the last two years? Our society has become increasingly accepting of violent expressions, while civility has become antiquated. Influenced by the likes of Marilyn Manson and Doom, the two murderers saw no way to deal with their emotions but to kill 13 of their peers. Sadly, this has become a common way to deal with emotions in our society.
In my time, "school violence" didn't extend beyond your two fists. Period. Getting beat up was a fact of life for many children, including myself, but this was the natural pecking order. For whatever reason, I got into many fights in school, and lost most of them in rather embarrassing fashion. Though I got mad as hell, the only thing that occurred to me was that I had to fight back. So I did. I still lost, but eventually we simply grew out of it and resorted to more mature forms of interaction. And all was well.
In Tomas Gutierezz Alea's classic (at least my film studies professor says it is) "Memories of Underdevelopment" a character visits Ernest Hemingway's hideout in Cuba. During the visit, he comment on Hemingway's love of hunting, since killing animals was Hemingway's method of preventing him from suicide. However, the speaker comments, the world eventually got "too big" for Hemingway, and killing himself became the only solution. Although I disagree with Hemingway's solution (suicide), I identify the same problem. Is the world that I inhabited only five years ago already antiquated? If so, what will it be like in another five?
