Nostalgia

I was talking with a friend this past weekend, and the subject of children's television came up.

"It all sucks," he lamented.  "There's nothing around any more that's the quality of what we had when we were growing up."

I certainly see what he was talking about.  In my opinion, the adventures of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are up there in the top ten funniest comedy writing ever (not to mention brilliant animation, incredible voice-overs, and impeccable comic timing).

Classic episodes like "Duck Amuck" and "The Rabbit of Seville" and "Bully for Bugs" still make me howl with laughter even though I've seen them dozens of times.

Another winner was Bullwinkle, which combined completely offbeat, goofy humor with sharp political satire.

The problem is, this kind of nostalgia only works if you've got a really selective memory.  There were some truly horrid children's shows when I was growing up.  One that sticks in my memory, because it not only was terrible but was, to put it bluntly, really fucking weird, was H. R. Pufnstuf.

If you've never seen this show, it's the adventures of an odious little twerp named Jimmy who has a magic talking flute, and somehow ends up in a land where the mayor is a green dinosaur with a Tennessee accent, and most of the characters are wearing full-body costumes supposed to be people, animals, or... pieces of furniture.  Oh, yeah, and the villain -- I shit you not -- is named "Witchiepoo," and is played by an actress named Billie Hayes who evidently was told by the director to pretend someone had made the Wicked Witch of the West drink six cups of espresso.  It also had a really creepy fake laugh-track, so you knew when something funny had happened, because heaven knows there was no other way to tell.  To get a sense of the overall effect, imagine what would have happened if J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a script for Barney and Friends while tripping on acid.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this little excerpt:

The whole thing was dreamed up by Sid and Marty Krofft (the latter, sadly, died just a couple of weeks ago), who also came up with The Banana Splits, which was similar not only in its frenetic, seizure-inducing pacing, but in its psychedelic content:

So I'm not quite buying the "things were so much better back then" argument.  We naturally tend to look at our own past in a sentimental fashion, so a lot of our memories are colored by that.  (Although I do wonder how much of my own sense that the world is a weird and chaotic place was generated by watching shows like H. R. Pufnstuf when I was eight years old.)

On a more serious note, isn't this the same thing that drives the whole MAGA phenomenon?  "Make America Great Again," by returning to... when, exactly?  When was America so great that we'd jump in a time machine and head back there?  The prosperous Fifties -- when minorities could be legally denied their rights as citizens, and queer people couldn't be out without risking their lives?  The Roaring Twenties -- with its viciously-enforced class stratification and reckless economic policy that led directly to the Great Depression?

Even earlier?  No matter where you look, it was all a mixed bag -- as it is now.  There has never been a time that was unalloyed good, and there have been plenty of times in the past when it has been significantly worse than it is now.  Consider, for example, what it was like for your typical feudal peasant.  When we think of medieval times, we tend to picture lords and ladies in fancy dress dancing the galliard, but fail to consider that this represented maybe two percent of the population -- and the other ninety-eight percent spent their lives in backbreaking labor and lived in squalor.

So if I was offered a one-way trip in a time machine, I'd stay put, thank you very much.  If I were forced to choose, my criteria would be practical ones -- some time after the invention of indoor plumbing and general anesthesia.  Call me a stick in the mud, but I'm just fine right here.

And now, I need to take advantage of another wonderful modern invention, which is recorded music. Because if I don't do something to get that stupid fucking "Oranges Poranges" song out of my head, I'm going to lose my marbles.

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Nostalgia

I was talking with a friend this past weekend, and the subject of children's television came up.

"It all sucks," he lamented.  "There's nothing around any more that's the quality of what we had when we were growing up."

I certainly see what he was talking about.  In my opinion, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are up there in the top ten funniest comedy writing ever (not to mention brilliant animation, incredible voice-overs, and impeccable comic timing).

Classic episodes like "Duck Amuck" and "The Rabbit of Seville" and "Bully for Bugs" still make me howl with laughter even though I've seen them dozens of times.

Another winner was Bullwinkle, which combined completely offbeat, goofy humor with sharp political satire. 

The problem is, this kind of nostalgia only works if you've got a really selective memory.  There were some truly horrid children's shows when I was growing up.  One that sticks in my memory, because it not only was terrible but was, to put it bluntly, really fucking weird, was H. R. Pufnstuf.

If you've never seen this show, it's the adventures of an odious little twerp named Jimmy who has a magic talking flute, and somehow ends up in a land where the mayor is a green dinosaur with a Tennessee accent, and most of the characters are wearing full-body costumes supposed to be people, animals, or... pieces of furniture.  Oh, yeah, and the villain -- I shit you not -- is named "Witchiepoo."  It also had a really creepy fake laugh-track, so you knew when something funny had happened, because heaven knows there was no other way to tell.  To get a sense of the overall effect, imagine what would have happened if J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a script for Barney and Friends while tripping on acid.

Don't believe me?  Take a look at this little excerpt:

The whole thing was dreamed up by Sid and Marty Kroft, who also came up with The Banana Splits, which was similar not only in its frenetic, seizure-inducing pacing, but in its psychedelic content:

So I'm not quite buying the "things were so much better back then" argument.  We naturally tend to look at our own past in a sentimental fashion, so a lot of our memories are colored by that.  (Although I do wonder how much of my own sense that the world is a weird and chaotic place was generated by watching shows like H. R. Pufnstuf when I was eight years old.)

On a more serious note, isn't this the same thing that drives the whole MAGA phenomenon?  "Make America Great Again," by returning to... when?  When was America so great that we'd jump in a time machine and head back there?  The prosperous Fifties -- when minorities could be legally denied their rights as citizens?  The Roaring Twenties -- with its class stratification and reckless economic policy that led directly to the Great Depression?

Even earlier?  No matter where you look, it was all a mixed bag -- as it is now.  There has never been a time that was unalloyed good, and there have been plenty of times in the past when it has been significantly worse than it is now.  Consider, for example, what it was like for your typical feudal peasant.  When we think of medieval times, we tend to picture lords and ladies in fancy dress dancing the galliard, but fail to consider that this represented maybe five percent of the population -- and the other ninety-five percent spent their lives in backbreaking labor and lived in squalor.

So if I was offered a one-way trip in a time machine, I'd stay put, thank you very much.  If I were forced to choose, my criteria would be practical ones -- some time after the invention of indoor plumbing and general anesthesia.  Call me a stick in the mud, but I'm just fine right here.

And now, I need to take advantage of another wonderful modern invention, which is recorded music. Because if I don't do something to get that stupid damn "Oranges Poranges" song out of my head, I'm going to lose my marbles.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a fun one -- Hugh Ross Williamson's Historical Enigmas.  Williamson takes some of the most baffling unsolved mysteries from British history -- the Princes in the Tower, the identity of Perkin Warbeck, the Man in the Iron Mask, the murder of Amy Robsart -- and applies the tools of logic and scholarship to an analysis of the primary documents, without descending into empty speculation.  The result is an engaging read about some of the most perplexing events that England ever saw.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Misplaced nostalgia

I've never really understood people who pine for "the good old days."  I'm not saying that the time we live in is perfect, mind you; but I find that real nostalgia requires a very selective memory.

This comes up because of Donald Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again."  Someone finally thought to ask him when he thought America was great the last time -- in an interview in the New York Times, Trump was asked what era he'd like to return us to.  His answer is as myopic as it is enlightening:

I'd say that the first time would be the time of military and industrial expansion at the start of the 20th century.  If you look back, it really was, there was a period of time when we were developing at the turn of the century which was a pretty wild time for this country and pretty wild in terms of building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship...  And the late '40s and '50s, it was a time when we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do.

It's no real wonder that Trump looks back with fondness at the first part of the 20th century.  It was the era of the Robber Barons -- people like John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, James Buchanan Duke, Leland Stanford, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who became rich on the backs of the working poor.  The actions of the Robber Barons represent the beginning of corporate control over the government.  It was an era of unbridled free enterprise, which sounds good until you see the outcome -- a veritable plutocracy that continues up to this day.

Poor children working in a glass factory at midnight (1920s) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Similar things could be said about the post-World War II United States, a time in which we became a nuclear power, had our fingers in the governments of other countries (either by their invitation or not), and were setting ourselves up for the debacles in Southeast Asia and the Middle East of which we are still dealing with the consequences.  It was the last time the white patriarchy would go unchallenged, and was immediately followed by the civil unrest of the 1960s, in which so many institutions, social mores, and political edifices would be shaken to their roots.

So of course those are where Trump would like to return us -- to a time when there was unprecedented opportunity, as long as you were a rich, white, well-connected man.  If you were female, if you were a minority, if you were from the lower classes, well, pretty much sucks to be you.

I'm too young to remember the 50s, but I certainly remember the 60s and 70s well enough.  I grew up during the decades when we as a society were still struggling with throwing off enculturated rules of a social structure that prior to that time had been accepted without question.  When I was in high school, in the mid-70s, minorities were beginning to see more acknowledgement of their fundamental human rights -- but the powers-that-be were so terrified of the outcome that on Prom Night, they decided to crown a black Prom King and Queen and a white Prom King and Queen, because what if they had only one vote, and there was (gasp of horror!) a black King and a white Queen?  Can't have that.  There were several classmates of mine who were LGBT, but 100% of them were still in the closet -- some until years after graduation.

Boys couldn't have long hair, or they'd be brought into the principal's office and have it cut off.  Girls were tracked into home ec, boys into shop.  One female friend told me, years after, that she was told not to take physics by her counselor, because "why would a girl need physics?"  Fortunately for her, she basically told him "the hell you say," and took it anyway.

So the "good old days" turn out to have been good only for the select few.  To claim otherwise requires ignoring not only our own history, but the day-to-day reality of the vast majority of American citizens.  But it's not surprising that Trump turns a blind eye to the inequities of the 20th century; he, and people like him, are the ones who profited from them.

Despite the problems we face, I'll stay right here in the 21st century.  I'll take the growing pains and risks and uncertainties of 2016 over the unquestioned white male privilege of the Gilded Age and the post-World War II eras.  I have no particular desire to don the rose-colored glasses that would be necessary to look back in sentimental nostalgia at a period when things were not nearly as good for everyone as people like Trump like to claim.