Something I remember very vividly about growing up is that I'd sometimes find evidence of a popular culture I'd never encountered. Take, for example, Judge Dredd.
Until I started reading White Dwarf, I don't think I had any real understanding of who Judge Dredd was. I certainly had never read any comic book in which he appeared and, even if I had, I'm not sure if I'd have understood and appreciated the cultural context out of which the character arose. Consequently, whenever I did brush up against Dredd, I was left feeling both baffled and intrigued – baffled, because what little I had gleaned about him made little sense to me and intrigued, for precisely the same reason. I wanted to know more, if only to make sense of all the fleeting references to him on this side of the Atlantic, but it wasn't easy.
Perhaps it's just a consequence of getting older, but I miss the days when I would feel baffled and intrigued by an artifact of some far-off sub-culture. That almost never happens anymore, thanks to the Internet. Assuming I even find something weird from a foreign land – an increasing rarity in the global village in which we're all now imprisoned – it doesn't take much time to find an explanation online. Long gone are the days when I'd be forced to puzzle out who some comic book character I'd never heard of was. Enlightenment is almost instantaneously within reach.
You'd think I'd be happy about that. My younger self would probably have loved to have had access to the Internet. Back then, I didn't enjoy being in the dark. I wanted to know everything about everything, especially when it came to nerdy matters, like science fiction or fantasy. Now, though, I find myself looking back wistfully at the days of my youth, before the emergence of the pop cultural beige slurry seeping into every nook and cranny of our wired world. I miss the days when not everywhere felt the same and I could luxuriate – and occasionally be frustrated by – the differences wrought by distance.
I know this feeling in spades. I greatly miss the days when a trek to a dedicated game (not toy!) store was an opportunity to be cherished, a rare and special thing. If you didn't live in just the right place you'd have to get someone to take you - maybe hours of travel - to a mecca like Game Towne or Things for Thinkers that was lined with so many RPG and miniature games that it must have rivaled looking upon Smaug's horde.
ReplyDeleteThen to increase that wonder exponentially, the thrill of walking into an exhibitor hall at a major convention. Massive sensory overload of the best kind.
Now, just a couple quick clicks and anything for sale anywhere is on its way to you, no adventure in the getting, no feeling of wonder as you looked upon the visual cacophony that was the dedicated Game Store of the 70s and 80s.
The adventure of learning has been lost in the same fashion. Sad, but glorious, days of now.
The polar opposite of my experience. I grew up (in the UK) reading Judge Dredd in 2000AD. I knew about Batman from TV and Superman from movies but I was barely aware of the comics. I and most of my peers didn't read American comics. Occasionally I found one discarded somewhere and they never seemed to make any sense to me. I was fascinated by the completely bizarre ads (for things like X-ray specs and sea-monkeys) and was intrigued by the frequent use of the strange foreign symbol '#' (as we used "no." in the UK).
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