Have you ever found yourself doing an impersonation and then have the person you’re doing it for ask who you’re trying to be? Then, when you tell them, they ask, “Who’s that?” There’s no greater defeat than that. In one fell swoop they’ve informed you that you’re not funny, that your impersonations are terrible, that you’re old and no one gets your references anymore. Napoleon wasn’t defeated so thoroughly.
It doesn’t matter who you’re trying to be or how popular that person was, eventually no one is going to get the joke. Take Bill Cosby, for instance: everyone knows Bill Cosby, or at least everyone who was born last millennium. That means you should be able to go up to anyone and make a wacky face while saying “Pudding Pops!” and they should automatically know who you are. No blackface, ugly sweaters or saxophone solos are required. Yet: this is 2012. No one knows what a Pudding Pop, Kodak film or the New Coke are anymore, and those are the three things you have to reference when you do your Cosby impersonation. In five or ten years, people might not even remember what film is, let alone Kodak.
Another one is the Fonz. All you have to do to be the Fonz is give the double-thumbs up and say, “Heeeeyyyy.” Happy Days was filmed in front of a live studio audience in the 70’s and referenced 1950’s culture. That’s a show that’s 40 years old and was about an era 60 years in the past. Ron Howard is now a respected director. Also: he is old. At some point, you’re going to go up to a kid and give him the, “Fonz,” and they’re going to call protection services.
It’s getting weird too for shows that are basically 100% references like Family Guy and Robot Chicken. Family Guy’s been on the air for ten years. They’re still referencing the sitcoms and cartoons we watched in the 80’s. Their core audience is probably teenagers. They weren’t alive then. The only way they can recognize these references is to ask an adult. When Robot Chicken talks about Transformers, most of the kids watching will only have known Transformers from the Michael Bay movies, which is a travesty.
It’s a problem for everyone. There’s an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd walks by a long row of A-list Oscar winning celebrities that were universally known in the era the cartoon came out. I don’t think anyone today could name 100% of them without wikipedia and imdb.com. It never occurred to the creators of the series that people today wouldn’t know, “The Jazz Singer?” Sketch comedy is also hampered by this effect. Look at topical shows like SNL as reruns. You lived through it all, but can you remember or care about the 2008 Republican convention candidates that weren’t Sarah Palin? That was just four years ago. Four YEARS. SNL has been on forever. How could a person born today hope to understand Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford impersonation, particularly because it wasn’t that good except for the falling down parts? That’s going back years, thought.
So what do we do about this? Do we give up our Cosby impersonations? No! We stop reproducing. Japan has already started with their declining birth-rates, and Chine with their one child rule. We need to jump on the bandwagon. The only other alternative is to stop all pop-culture and raise our children Truman-style in a time capsule where they’ll only watch recycled programming. The younger generations are out to replace us. They can sense our weakness and know that with every passing day we become less, while they grow stronger. It’s either them or us.
No comments:
Post a Comment