I have noticed that my kindle is full of books that I simply don’t have the patience to read. Oh, I keep buying books with the complete purpose of reading every last page, but somehow can’t seem to get past the opening chapters. Every book tells the same story. Murders, family sagas, historical melees, even worldbuilding seems redundant. Everything is dystopian, humanity is destroyed, and only the righteous will survive. Open a freaking Bible, you get the same story from 3500 years ago.
Movies, offer much the same experience. They seem like something I would enjoy, but in the end I am bored. Annoyed actually, at the nonsensical choices that the protagonists make and the stupidity that seems to abound. I have no patience for romcoms, preening messaging movies (these especially), and remakes of films that are classics.
I always wonder why in the arts, things need to be reinterpreted? They really don’t. I think it’s the lazy way out, for someone who can’t come up with anything new.
It’s like saying a painter today can reinterpret the “Last Supper,” “The Mona Lisa,” resculpt “David” and make it better. No you cannot. No one can.
You can’t do Jackson Pollock better than Jackson Pollack, or Klimt better than Klimt, or Erte better than Erte, or Chagall better than Chagall, or Picasso better than Picasso.
You want to wow the world? Discover a new school of art. (But throwing dog shit at a canvass is not art.)
And please, for God’s sake, stop trying to reinterpret Shakespeare.
And don’t get me started on fashion…most of which no actual human being (beyond the model) can wear…well the average person can wear it, but they look ridiculous. What is wrong with a beautiful dress, fantastic material, and a beautiful heel on a shoe? (I just finished The New Look on Apple TV, so I have Christian Dior on my mind) What is wrong with dressing the average person so they look and feel good? Why is there a need to make fashion idiotic?
I am tired of listening to politicians, educators, philosophers, and the rantings of those who think they, being geniuses, have developed a new way of approaching the world. I am tired of those with half the life experiences trying to tell me how to live my life. I am tired of those who think they are our betters explain to the rest of us how awful we are because we are not them. (Yes, I know it is the failing of the young to think they know everything, but the older I get the more insufferable the young seem to get.)
Now that is not to say that innovation is not real. Science and the march toward a better world is at an exponential pace. I actually love every time we hear of a new discovery, the opening of the world, space and ocean. Understanding the universe and the Earth we inhabit is a noble venture and an honorable profession. One that will save lives.
(I do wish though, we would stop needing to think of new and better ways to kill each other. No, I am not a hippie peacenik. But, I have been around long enough to know there was, and will always be, evil in human form. I just wish we didn’t have to live with this reality. That’s all.)
So the issue I think I am having, in my older age, is that no drama, no art, no story, no philosophical perception of life is new to me. I have reached the cranky old age where human foibles or desires simply elicit a ,”what the fuck?” response, along with a shake of the head, or a facepalm.
The life evocative questions being asked are not new. They are as old as human civilization. These thoughts were probably around from the time humanity could reason and interpret. We always wanted answers to the existential questions. We always wanted to find the right way to live and to have a good life.
They like to say what is old is new again.
Not for an old, cranky lady.
Of course, this complaint doesn’t include comedians. Being able to not take yourself seriously is a wonderful art.
Just a note to anyone starting out in comedy, if you are witty enough to get the elders, who have heard everything, to laugh, you are definitely golden.