GAAH AGE SHOCK

[arethinn]

I just saw a Beauty and the Beast gif on the tumblr of someone who says she is 15 years old.

That means the film in question came out 5-6 years before she was born.

I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Does it occupy the same kind of space in her head that, I dunno, Robin Hood (the Disney version) does for me? Not that one can't appreciate a film made before one was born, but -- Beauty and the Beast? I find myself wondering "how can she grok?" even though it's hardly a deep drama film for the ages! I wonder if this is how everyone older than me feels about films that were out when they were X years old but I was a mere bairn or not yet born...

Comments

[enotsola]

Kapow!

[feyandstrange]

I watched the creepy black and white French "Beauty and the Beast" with my dad when I was a kid, and have fond childhood memories of that, and it's older than Dad is. I never cared how old stuff was. But I think kids these get marketed to more? Dunno.

[jarandhel]

I'm not sure I understand what there would be in that film that she wouldn't be able to grok. It's a pretty timeless story, isn't it? There wasn't a bunch of slang used or anything that would really date it except some of the voice actors, and those really only have significance for us because we know them from other contexts. They definitely don't affect the story itself.

[jarandhel]

Now if we were talking about this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092319/ I could see a problem with grokking.

[arethinn]

Not plot points.. obviously it's an old story. Just how that particular film, in its Disney incarnation, fits into the zeitgeist, if you will. Similarly, neither you nor I can probably really understand what certain other films older than we are may have meant to people who saw them at the time, you know? (Star Wars, even, for example, although I was thinking of older things when I said that.)

[kllara]

Ah, thanks for that clarification. :) Obviously, I haven't had the experience of being someone who was older by that time, but I don't feel like Beauty and the Beast is truly "before my time", either (even if it technically is by just a few years). FWIW, a lot of my fellow '90s kids, and especially those that belong to the Uranus/Neptune in Capricorn, Pluto in Scorpio set that began in the later '80s, consider this stuff "our generation". I guess it is a bit more unusual for a current 15yo to really identify with that, but not quite sure what they meant, if it was only a gif...

[arethinn]

a lot of my fellow '90s kids, and especially those that belong to the Uranus/Neptune in Capricorn, Pluto in Scorpio set that began in the later '80s, consider this stuff "our generation".

Well, this Uranus in Scorpio, Pluto in Libra sez yer wrong. Now get off my lawn.

(kidding. well, mostly. ;) *is a grump in Changeling terms by now for sure*)

[kllara]

Well, you'd be the coolest grump I ever met! *hugs*

[kllara]

If it's the 1991 animated Disney version, then I don't get what there isn't to grok, either. That came out a year-and-a-half before *I* was born, but I watched it on VHS back in the day. It's a kids movie, aimed at that demographic. :)

[arethinn]

See http://arethinn.dreamwidth.org/1708096.html?thread=2621504#cmt2621504 - I don't mean plot points or the like, more the feeling of how it fits into culture and experiencing it "new".

[erulisse]

....Is it because of the effects? I remember that kind of being a big deal, CG being fairly new at the time, and how that might be hard to grok now.

[arethinn]

Sort of that. See http://arethinn.dreamwidth.org/1708096.html?thread=2621504#cmt2621504. I just can't see how someone seeing it for the first time now would have the same feeling about it that I did at the time. Similarly for other films made before I was born, for people who were contemporary with them: I doubt if I can really get it.

[tristissima.livejournal.com]

Robin Hood is my favorite Disney movie! It's the only one with an actual fucking second act! No one else even remembers that movie! Yay! What kind of space does it hold in your head?

[arethinn]

Honestly, I'm not sure what I meant when I said that. It was just a quick example of something I like that was made before I was born.

[valkyriur.livejournal.com]

I get the age shock, but I don't understand what you're saying about "how can she grok?" on a Disney film...there are so many versions of "Beauty and the Beast" and they are pretty much all the same thing. Though the Disney version does tend to be a bit softer than many other versions.

[arethinn]

(sorry, wrong login)

See http://arethinn.dreamwidth.org/1708096.html?thread=2621504#cmt2621504 ... I don't mean understanding the plot, more like how it fits into culture and mindset and the evolution of cinema (and Disney films) at a certain place in time. I feel like at 15 I must have understood or experienced it differently, like she can only get it secondhand or something. And the same would apply to anything that happened before I was born, of course (as mentioned in the post).