Viewing nostalgia

One of the recent drivers of Twitter discourse was this post:

https://x.com/upstatefederlst/status/2047910544611430889 

People out here acting like 80s and 90s kids regularly watched movies from the 50s and 60s. 

He was responding to a post about the lack of film literacy -- and literacy of any kind is always going to bring lots of responses -- but in this case it became its own thing because, yes, we did.

Disney would periodically release classic films. I definitely saw Snow White and Alice in Wonderland in theaters, even though their original releases were long before my time. 

There were some films that were broadcast every year, like The Wizard of Oz and The Ten Commandments, where it was a big deal. This was before home video so you had to watch it then or you would miss it.

There were only three networks and usually one or two local channels; they played a lot of old movies on weekends.

(The three networks also meant that a lot of us watched the same current shows, even though there were choices.) 

My father did not always consider the appropriateness of the movies, so I remember being deeply disturbed by scenes from The Green Berets, Hang 'Em High, The Dirty Dozen, and A Fistful of Dollars. (Clint Eastwood is overly represented, it is true.)

To be fair, I often did not understand what was gong on in the films, but I saw them.

Even as the situations and availability started to change, it led to more watching of old movies, not less.

Once everyone had VCRs, in addition to finding random old tapes and checking them out, there was also a weekend ritual of going to the video store and seeing what looked interesting. Sure, sometimes it was a popular, recent title, but sometimes you discovered gems you could have easily missed.

Cable played a lot of old movies, but also a lot of old television series.

I was reluctant to go back to school after one summer when I had really started to enjoy watching The Addams Family. On a sick day I learned that it changed with the fall and they were showing The Munsters instead. Not that I haven't enjoyed episodes of both. 

Before cable we had somehow managed to watch a lot of I Love Lucy, but it was after cable that my family started watching a lot of The Jack Benny Show and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. (That was on a Christian channel, which was very obvious from the commercials.)

Even with the Disney Channel, which had plenty of Disney content, I remember being introduced to Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees and Ball of Fire and Dana Andrews in Ball of Fire and The Best Years of Our Lives.

(And of course, Danny Kaye: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/04/three-lives-of-walter-mitty.html) 

There are other topics that come up with this, like how that forms collective thought and whether that is necessary. That may connect to the posts from Tuesday and Wednesday as well.

Today, though, I just wanted to enjoy the memories of good times, and also marvel in what a ridiculous assertion it was in the first place. 

You could potentially argue that kids in the 80s and 90s watched more films from the 40s and 70s than the 50s and 60s, but the idea upstatefederalist was trying to convey with disdainful certainty was just laughable.

Maybe it's because of Stranger Things showing kids roaming outside until dark, periodically stopping to drink from the garden hose. That happened too. I remember once arguing that it wasn't actually dark yet; it only looked dark because there were some clouds (the logic wasn't flawless). 

My youth did involve a lot of tag and hide and seek and swimming and biking, but it also involved a lot of watching television. Much of it was media made before I was born. That apparent dichotomy is just fact. 

I admit I have not seen anything from the French New Wave.