By Alex Ness
11/12/2022
HUBRIS & RECENTISM
As an instructor in community college, a student said, 'The Spartans seem to be just like the Nazis." Later, one of their friends in a small group said, "The movie Andromeda Strain sure was a lot like Outbreak."(The Spartans weren't kind to others, but for their era it would be false to say evil. The proper way to have said it would the Nazis were like the Spartans, if anything were to be said. And since Andromeda Strain preceded Outbreak 30+ years before, Outbreak attempted to be like Andromeda Strain.)
I view youtube offerings close to daily, and I am always darkly amused when someone will post a video, calling it, "The greatest NFL plays ever" or something similar. Only for me to view the video, and see that according to this particular video's poster and many others, the greatest plays, greatest battles, greatest mistake, or greatest election victory, happened in color and within the last 20 years. (Sports of the era are found on media across the internet. But the existence of the video of the event doesn't mean a play or event or trait is better because it is caught on tape.)
In a course in university, a group project I was made to join asked what role does media have in societal values? The other five people in the group thought All in the Family or The Cosby Show each had a role in creating opinions in America. I said bullshit, they reflect, they are meant to be a mirror, and nothing either show might have promoted as a point of view was new, different, or shocking. I got a perfect grade for my portion of the presentation, and the others were pissed off, and pissed at me to have received mediocre grades. (Think on this, Reality TV has been dominating ratings for 20+ years. They aren't creating, we are watching them so closely that it feels like we are watching Voyeur TV.)
In about 2010, I read when someone on Twitter said, "Pornography really began upon the rise of the internet." They never claimed to be an expert, and the internet surely aided the porn seeking audience in the search efforts, it is now so easy to find, that you have to model your search terms to not get porn in your search. Polaroid cameras are said to have truly expanded porn and how commonly acquired it was. (Someone asked me to do some reviews on porn, but I told them, if you watch porn for a reason and it worked, that's all the reason one needs. Reviews on videotaped intimate moments as a concept is idiocy.)
The idea that anything you are viewing now is without any DNA roots in the past, is more than laughable, it is arrogant swill. The present day society is no different than those previously, so I am not saying anything, at all, about Boomers or X, Millennials or any specific group either. But the arrogance of youth, whether in the individual or the group, absolutely exists and absolutely creates the concept of Recentism. It refers to how an individual or group perceives their world, as being the best version of existence, of the actions of the past being inevitable, and the present is the one true time when greatness can be expressed. Also, what is being expressed is pure Hubris, as the youthful belief that one's time is the greatest time, full of glory and no need for grace, often leads people to a crash and disaster.
Media reflects what is going on. The creative works that reflect the Vietnam war could not be created, without the event it reflects.
The killing spree of Charles Starkweather and girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate was the subject of news articles, radio newsbreaks and the early era of television focused on the tragedy. Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska isn't solely about the shootings, but it does look at it, from different perspectives. Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers is a consideration of what happens when media considers the despicable killers as heroes, or deserving popularity. It was inspired by the Starkweather rampage, but also, how media allows spectacle to inflate importance, and how media portrays a person affects what the person will do.
Mass shootings, of civilians or students in the news media doesn't successfully state the emptiness and pain from such events, and few creative works address them, but even when they do, it is rarely done well enough. But the media about it, using it as a theme never once created it.
When natural disasters or the end of the world come, we can expect the news media to present it, with all of the related and tangentially related subjects. Some have argued that people don't perceive the creative media's interpretation or presentation as non fiction or a form of morality play. The audience taking a narrative as being fiction and meaningless, when based upon real or future events is a danger.
The Andromeda Strain might have some flaws or has aged only as well as it might in an era of amazing effects, but it is still better than the movies that followed it. When we view it as the original it becomes rather depressing when the works that follow can't tell a story without bad acting, bad effects, or ill informed writing and conceptualizing.
You've perhaps heard of Holden Caulfield and the work Catcher in the Rye. Two days of his dark life are shown in stark detail, about a 16 year old boy viewing his world, his disastrous choices and results, his desires and failures. Upon a backdrop of tilting at windmills, it tells a story that is symbolically and is psychologically based rather than event based, utilizing themes of children and innocence, the field of play and how often people are "phonies". Killers, attempted killers, and other sorts of offenders have said that they were greatly moved by reading the book, and thus perhaps seem to have been motivated by the concepts of the book. Both John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan, claimed to be influenced by the power of the narrative. However, I'd still argue, they used the book to justify their aberrant thought, rather than start from a blank slate.
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