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The Generation Gap!

Discussion in 'Cheeniya's Senile Ramblings' started by Cheeniya, Mar 6, 2007.

  1. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    The generation gap hits me with a gale force of 10 whenever I sit in front of the idiot box with my whole family. My grandchildren clamour for the Cartoon Network. My daughters have a yen for MTV while my wife can not take her eyes off the soaps. I am not much of a contender for my slot as I seldom watch TV unless there is a cricket match in which India is winning. That, of course, is very rare since we do not meet Bangladesh every day. My mother prefers Discovery and National Geographic as she feels that animals are more decent to watch than our modern stars.

    What amazes me is that the scenes that used to move us to the very core in our younger days do not have any impact on the youth of today. Take, for example, the hapless father of the heroine who preferred coughing horribly to uttering dialogues. How we clutched our chest when he coughed! He just used to walk away with the acting honours merely for the wide variety of his coughing. Just before the intermission, his passing away would be signified by an oil lamp suddenly going off. On resumption after the intermission, there would be a garlanded portrait of the old man under which the heroine would be sitting, sobbing uncontrollably. There was an actor called Appa Duraisamy who revelled in coughing and passing away before interval. He did that in film after film but moved us to tears every time. He used to be responsible for many a lump in my throat.

    Another great directorial touch used to be a daily calendar with fluttering sheets that signified efflux of time. The changing seasons also signified the same thing but people always preferred the calendar. A cat licking the milk spilt on the floor would indicate that the villain had beaten it to the heroine before the hero.

    Whenever such poignant scenes from vintage films are shown in TV these days, people laugh heartily and make some jovial remarks while I continue to feel that lump in my throat. I become painfully aware that times have changed drastically. The simple things that moved us or made us happy in our days are not even noticed by the modern youth. They don’t want to see a helpless, coughing father of a heroine just waiting for the interval to get into a garlanded portrait. They prefer someone very rich who could match the hero muscle for muscle. They prefer someone who could beat the hero to pulp before condescending to accept him as a son-in-law. We squirm uncomfortably when witnessing such scenes. After all, we belong to the old school who would not even sit before the son-in-law until we were permitted to do so. This generation gap can never be filled.

    I have heard some people saying that the generation gap is more marked between successive generations but far less between a grandfather and grandchildren. I wanted to check this out. I, therefore, asked my grandson to watch an old Tamil movie with me in which Appa Duraisamy scaled new heights in coughing. He sat through for few minutes and walked out shouting. “ Why can’t this old man go and see a Doctor or take some good cough syrup?”
     
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  2. Lavanya

    Lavanya Bronze IL'ite

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    Generation can be within the same generation too... Between my friends, hubby & I we all have different things that we look for in movies. My hubby loves any black & white movie with a weepy story line or stories about kingdoms. But that's true because his interests are politics n' history. But I prefer not to watch movies & waste time... if I do watch tele then they are more close to nature (discovery) or laughter (CN). My concept of watching a movie is be entertained if you are going to spend that much time watching it... not worth being sad or down by it.

    But then again people like sobering, sappy movies 'coz humans can relate to & remember sorrow better than happiness. Tagore cites this as a reason for the touch of sorrow in his works... Also another concept is that people like to watch sorrow as long as they are not directly affected by it, though they may or may not still be moved by it.
     
  3. cheer

    cheer Silver IL'ite

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    Dear Cheeiya,

    This is not abt this post, i didn't read it yet:mrgreen: , but half an hour before i was reading ur another post regarding "family fitness" something like that abt how important to be fit & now i'm trying to find it i can't what happened???:idontgetit:
     
  4. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Dear Lavanya
    I feel indeed honoured by your serious analysis of what I intended to be a light observation! I totally agree with the reasoning that sorrow creates a greater impact than lighter subjects. I even remember that a couple of old Tamil movies, which were a tear jerker right through, ended with a happy note. As there was resistence in Kerala for it, the ending scene was edited and made tragic for the Kerala audience!
    I have also noticed that only sorrowful movies get to be known as art films but not comedies! That was a good analysis, Lavanya!
    Sri
     
  5. Lavanya

    Lavanya Bronze IL'ite

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    I just saw the title & then couple mins later it was missing...
    Did you take it down to edit??
     
  6. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Dear Cheer
    I reread my new post'To hell with physical fitness' and felt that it may not appeal much to the members of IL, that being purely a man's point of view! So I quietly withdrew it :)
    Thanks for the interest shown by you in that post or the sudden disappearance of it!
    Sri
     
  7. cheer

    cheer Silver IL'ite

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    No cheeiya, i only read half of it & due to i'm in office i can't read whole, plz post it again.

     
  8. cheer

    cheer Silver IL'ite

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    Okey Cheeiya,

    I finished reading it, u're 100% right. But this happen just like that. I remembered when we were used to listen the songs loudly my dad says what a disgusting songs & we used to say our dad is like that, he is not mordern, blah blah & whenever we were tried to listen music in the car, he turned it off.

    But now my hubby use to complain, i don't like today's music, himesh reshammiya songs etc, & i teased him what gonna happen after we have kids & they gonna listen it loudly. Thing is we always love our generation, our time & we're rigid too, we don't want a change. What we used to say to our dad, our kids also going to say it, unless we change according to generation.

    Bottom line is change urself, instead of pressuring to young generation:wave
     
  9. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Dear Cheer
    Everything is in cyclic motion be it individual life or a generation. It is perhaps this aspect of our lives that help us hold on tenaciously to our values through generations.
    Sri
     
  10. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Dear Abha
    I selected cinema as an example to point out how things keep changing but if you apply this to any facet of our life, you will see that the same law applies to everything.
    Sri
     
    satchitananda likes this.

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