Nostalgia

Reading back my post from yesterday got me thinking about how much nostalgia from our younger days influences our thinking.It's not just a comics thing where people seem to be reluctant to move away from the old guard.How many times do you hear about a singer/band's first album being their best one?How often do you see a list of movies grouped together under whatever premise and see that the bulk of the movies on the list are 20,30,40 years old or even older than that?The same thing goes with television and (especially) literature.Newer stuff just doesn't get the same respect.

Does everything really suck so bad right now?With all of our advances in technology,with more source material available to draw inspiration from, is the best we can do really something from many decades past?Personally,I think that's crap.I think things are getting better or, at the very worst, staying the same.It's our sense of nostalgia that taints our view.

Being first does not mean being best.The Simpsons is something of an homage to The Flintstones, which in turn is paying tribute to The Honeymooners.Does that make The Honeymooners the funniest and best of the three shows?No.Comedy has evolved.The formula set forth by The Honeymooners has been tweaked and improved.Watching that show seems quaint and more amusing than funny compared to the wild directions The Simpsons have taken the formula of the disfunctional,bickering family."But Jackie Gleason was a genius."Maybe he was, but now his comedy is dated.We need to move on.

Black Sabbath was arguably the first heavy metal band.I know that's a point of contention amongst music buffs,but in terms of just nailing the sound and the mood of heavy metal Black Sabbath was the first.I love Black Sabbath.Everyone knows Black Sabbath through either their songs or at least by association through Ozzy Osbourne.But they're not the best metal band.Music has moved forward.Metal has taken huge leaps and bounds from the days of Sabbath's simple power chord riffs.And I don't have to crap all over their legacy to point that out."Paranoid" can still be a great album.It's just not the best anymore.At some point we have to let go.

I think it comes down to the fact that we often look back to our childhoods to find the happiest moments in our lives.(unless your childhood was totally fucked up)I think it's a bad thing to live in the past too much.Children are easily entertained, or at least easier to entertain than adults.They don't have the baggage that comes with growing up.That's why the cartoons we watched as a kid are better than the cartoons now.We still see them through the eyes of a ten-year old.Maybe the cartoons,music,movies,etc of today are of the same or even better quality than those of yesterday.We're just trying to look at them from a mindset we don't have anymore. It's too easy to let our biases influence our thinking.There are gems in every genre waiting to be discovered and cherished if we can just let go of our security blankets.