Posted on 03/13/2009 2:49:49 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Do you remember The Matrix? It was big a couple of years ago. I think I quoted it in this very space — something about red pills, blue pills, and how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. It was part of the lingo for a while. But the dogs bark and the pop-culture caravan moves on. Anyway, a while back an interview in the Guardian with the film’s composer happened to catch my eye. Usually, when an interview with a guy who’s big on the electronic “dance music” scene catches my eye, my eye promptly glazes over, but not on this occasion. Rob Dougan, an Aussie who lives in a cool loft on the south bank of the Thames in London, had been asked post-Matrix to remix some Sinatra tracks for today’s market — add some hip-hoppish electronica here and there. Unfortunately, he liked the records pretty much as they were. He took a crack at “That’s Life” and was told his remix was not “modern” enough. So it was back to the old drawing board. And then Mr. Dougan observed:
In Sinatra’s time it was really cool to be 50, to be a man. You put on a hat and a suit and you keep on going until you die. Now you get 50-year-old guys in sleeveless T-shirts, going to the gym and desperately trying to fix their hair, and you think: “Whatever happened to real men?” Well, maybe they had hormone treatments. Victor Davis Hanson recently concluded that “the generic American male accent” was dying out and had been replaced with something affectedly “metrosexual” with “a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago . . . a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female.” As for the old-school males, wrote Professor Hanson, “I watched the movie Twelve O’Clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet.” Diana West has written a whole book on this theme: The Death of the Grown-Up. But it rings more plaintive coming from Rob Dougan, a cutting-edge type with his own pop-cult cred on the line. I suspect he may be thinking of Sinatra circa 40 more than 50, but in a way that makes his point: If you look at almost any movie from what we might call the old days, the guys appear older than they are. Almost all the leading men — Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, William Powell — seem designed for eternal middle age: You put on a hat and suit and you keep going until you die.
Now we have youth culture: what’s young, what’s hip, what’s hot, what’s now. The folks who commissioned those Sinatra remixes won’t care if they sound squaresville two years from now, just as all the hep cats ABC demanded as “special guests” for Frank’s 80th-birthday salute in 1995 are now Trivial Pursuit answers. (Salt N Pepa? Hootie and the Blowfish?) Who cares if your hot young act cools off? Something even younger and hotter will be along in a moment.
But what if it’s not? I write a lot about the demographic decline of the Western world, and readers often respond, “So what? Tokyo’s pretty crowded. It’d be kinda nice to have 20 percent fewer people.” Maybe. But the 20 percent who aren’t around won’t be the coots and codgers; the missing folks will be the children who were never born, and the few who were but decided they didn’t want to spend their lives in a joint so tilted toward the geriatric. The eternal adolescence of contemporary pop culture is merely the most obvious example of how society’s self-image is invested in its youth. In star movie roles, everybody’s young. Not necessarily ridiculously young, like Dr. Christmas Jones, the nuclear physicist played by Denise Richards a couple of Bond films back. But young nevertheless. Because young people go to the movies and they don’t want to look at old people.
LLS
GOD bless him... GOD bless them all. I made that point here in another post!
LLS
WOW! That is going to be my desktop for awhile. Will make work easier.
Willis would do well. It would help if he did it 20 years ago!
LLS
I see Russel Crowe as somebody who could pull it off, but he is an Aussie, where it seems they still have men that are men, if you know what I mean
What? No picture of Dr. Christmas Jones?
Where have our standards gone?
"Doogie Howser Syndrome"
I can’t tell you who could play Rhett Butler but I would place bets Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise would be picked for the spot.
It’s even possible that kid from High School Musical who names I have no idea about. I just know he’s very “cool” and good looking (though I find him lacking and WAY too young).
Hollywood looks for a pretty face, real manhood non-withstanding.
bookmark
My husband is 45 and he is wearing Kevlar in Iraq today as well! There are real men in every generation! Too bad they seem to be a minority!
If I had a dollar for every immature, perpetually adolescent man in DC....say, starting with O....
Freep-a-leep-a-ding-dong. :-)
Aside from DeNiro redoing Cape Fear, who could do a remake of any film starring Robert Mitchum or Kirk Douglas:-)?
And Charleton Heston? No one on film these days could even come close.
Although a young Denise Richards in a bikini is easier on my eyes.
Name some of the music classics that have been created in the last ten years.
Bicycle helmets.
No boats with out approved life preservers,
No .22’s.
No working with guy guys in kitchens, garages, shops, factories unit you are 21.
Single mom families.
Government schools full of women, lesbians, gays and an odd real male.
Bowing down to clerks, forms, permits.
Safety this and safety that.
No smoking anywhere but condom pickle drills everywhere.
As their voices go up, other things go down so hence the need for all the male enhancement products. Though we have "the few and the brave", they are the few. Today, there are far too many girly men.
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.