Going Retro

So my recent nativity celebration notwithstanding, I feel old these days. Not because of joint aches. Or gray hair. Or even hearing loss. I feel old because 3 days a week I spend an hour in a room of 40+ 19 and 20 year olds. The worst part of being in a college town and working on a college campus is the omnipresence of all the little ones. Not only is there the whole “don’t look at the cute girls so as to not be a creepy old guy”, there is just the universal energy and busy-ness level. I’ve often said that the town gets better in the summer and that’s because once they’re gone (and it’s warm), the pace slows to a living speed.

But back to my (1st world) problem of my young students. When I started teaching, I assumed that I could pass myself off as one of the students in my class. With my boyish good looks and energetic attitude, it seems like I should have no problem blending in. Apparently this was not true. At all. Even as I stand outside of class on the first day, they know exactly that I am the instructor. There is no hiding from their frightened little eyes.

For those of you not doing the math, current (traditional path) college students were born in the 1989-1993. 1993. They are now 10 years younger than me. Most of my friends and the people I talk to have similar cultural experiences. We grew up with the same shows, the same music, the same movies. Aside from the friends that just eschew cultural consumption, all of us can talk about these touchstones.

That’s not the case with my students.

The bastards.

This semester in particular has driven home how real this age difference is. A week ago I was putting in a late night at the office to finish up some conference submissions. Across the street, a party was raging with all of the customary gusto and exuberance of a Keystone Light-fueled mix-up. What I heard that night really highlighted how little our formative cultures overlapped.

That night (multiple times), the whole crowd started singing along to songs from the Lion King. The Lion King. They were 2 when that came out. I remember going to see that with some of my friends from the 5th grade (or thereabouts). What memories do they really have of the original release? To them, it’s the VHS or the DVD or the new 3D version.

I’ve made Lord of the Rings references that have gone over their heads.

I’ve discussed The Wire in rooms where only 2 of my students have seen or even heard of it.

They don’t know who Mega Man is. Or which was the best of the original Pokemon (BULBASAUR FTW). Or that once upon a time you had to enter a code to get your saved game back.

The things we do have in common are those cultural elements that continue to be recycled. They know about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because that franchise keeps renewing itself. They know about Transformers, thanks to the film wizardry of Michael Bay. They know about G.I. Joe because those damn things have been made for the last 60 or 70 years. That’s what we have in common-those cultural experiences that are continually reinvented.

And (I apologize in advance for using the most obvious wrap-up ploy ever) that’s what got me to thinking. Each generation creates its own cultural artifacts, but while they aspire to novelty, they inevitably engage in recreation of what has come before. It’s weird, but I’m getting old enough that I’m starting to see the cultural appropriation and reclamation of the things that had meaning to me when I was younger. I was surprised when I found out that the Care Bears was actually being remade. That was something I remember that had meaning to me when I was younger. And here it’s going to be something totally different to a whole new crop of new people. Up until now, retro has always been about making our own times that we had not experienced. But now, I get to experience retro from the other side, as the one whose childhood and adolescence are getting re-used. And it sucks.

This post was written as a response to “Back to the Future” a part of the Creative Collective . Read them, they’re better.