THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406090186
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ford Reid
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Medium
You haven't gone mad. Maybe the world has gone mad, but you are all right.
{REST} The reasons for your confusion are many.
First there is the radio. How many stations are playing music from the 1960s and '70s, I can only guess. I do know that every time I turn it on, I hear something that makes me think, if only for an instant, that I am back on campus, plotting to occupy the parking lot.
Then there are the well-publicized plans for a second Woodstock, an endeavor that makes about as much sense as trying to restage your first date. The first Woodstock was much different than what was planned. This re-creation will go exactly as scheduled, which makes the whole idea dreadful.
The movies are a major part of this conspiracy, too.
For the past few years, Hollywood - never a center of great imagination - has lost what shreds of originality it ever had.
We have been treated to one after another bad movie based on old television shows. The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flintstones, The Fugitive, Car 54, Where Are You?, Maverick and others have moved from the wasteland of television to the wasteland of the cinemaplex. The only difference is that instead of watching this stuff for free at home as we did 30 years ago, now we go out, pay five bucks and eat over-priced popcorn while we watch it.
You see people wearing tie-dyed t-shirts and peace symbols. Men have ponytails again.
Thank goodness bell bottoms have not made a comeback, despite some misguided efforts to try.
There are a lot of theories about why all of this is going on.
For one thing, people who grew up in the 1960s and '70s are in charge of things now. They edit the big national magazines, they run the television networks, they make all of the decisions at the Hollywood movie studios.
Scary, isn't it?
Then there is the tendency of business to stick with what worked. The Flintstones made money before didn't it? Well, let's do it again.
The question is, whatever happened to creativity?
When I was a teenager, I didn't hear the music of my parent's youth every time I turned on the radio.
There were movies based on radio shows and even some based on early television shows. But those were made while the radio and television shows were still popular, not 30 years later.
And if someone had planned to restage a big band dance in a New York hotel in 1965, he would have been laughed out of town, not written about weekly in the Times.
Don't get me wrong. I liked the '60s and '70s as much as the next guy. A lot of the music was wonderful and even some of the bad TV was entertaining.
OK, I still watch the Beverly Hillbillies every chance I get. But I'm not going to see the movie.
The point is, I am ready for something new.
Perhaps, as the Old Testament says, ``There is no new thing under the sun.''
But there has to be something newer than The Flintstones, the Beach Boys and love beads.
by CNB