It was a different time

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

There are a lot of things that we need to look back on through “the lens of history” (as it was explained to me in college) to understand how some things from the past could make sense or be accepted or be popular at the time.

I mean, let’s not forget, women have only been able to vote here in the United States for about 100 years. There was a whole centuies-long period of time where a person could own another person. People used to die by the thousands from measles, polio and a whole slew of other diseases.

We definitely have seen some changes over even the course of our lifetimes. Democrats used to be the conservatives, Republicans used to be the liberals, TV was in black-and-white, youused to have to talk on the phone by standing next to a box on the wall that had a cord connected to it.

Crazy, right? When you look at old photos you can make fun of the fashion of the day. There’s a great picture of 2-year-old me with a bushy head of Partridge Family hair and rocking a baby blue leisure suit. My parents dressed like they were just back from Woodstock. Ever see any pictures from the 1980s? So much hairspray and shoulder pads! On the guys and girls!

See VIEWPOINT, page A6 VIEWPOINT

From page A4

So, yeah, a lot of the time, all you can really do to explain somthing from back in the day is just shrug and say, “It was a different time.”

Now, somewhere between heavy stuff like slavery being a thing and silly stuff like pet rocks being a million-dollar fad and inexplicable stuff like “Kung Fu Fighting” actually being a #1 hit song, there’s a lot of culture and history to consider and contemplate.

Take television… thanks to straming services, you can now pretty much watch any TV show, like ever, just with the push of a few buttons. It’s very interesting to see which shows hold up “through the lens of history” and which ones cause you to scratch your head an wonder not only why did I watch this show, why did anyone watch this show, and how did it even get on the air? …especially back when there were only like five channels, and that was if you had a goot antenna.

Shows like “M*A*S*H” and “Gunsmoke” and “The Twilight Zone” are still perflectly watchable and entertaining, often touching on issues that are still relevant today.

But man, hits like “The ATeam” and “Miami Vice” and “The Cosby Show” are just full of bad acting, bad stereotypes and all kinds of things problematic to a modern audience. “The Cosby Show” is problematic for a different reason, as is an otherwise wholesome show like “Seventh Heaven,” and if you don’t know why, Google it.

Even shows that might have been consider groundbreaking and progressive at the time like “All in the Family,” and “Good Times” and “Chico and the Man” have enough sexism, racism and “try-hard” dialogue to cause you to die of cringe…

Of course, all of this is just my personal opinion. Maybe you’re going to finish reading this than then binge-watch a whole season of “Alf” or “Falcon Crest” or whatever, so you do you, but even cartoons that loved back in the day are, well, almost embarrasing now. “Super Friends” was one of my very favorites.

I mean, it’s Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and their buddies battling the Legion of Doom or the baddie of the week. What’s not to love?

When Netflix first became a thing and I saw that it was on there, I gathered my kids around me to relive my childhoon. It… was… terrible.

Like, my kids now probably think less of me because I enjoyed it 40-plus years ago. Of course, when they added new heroes like Apache Chief, the Samurai and Black Vulcan (guess what race he was), it was probably done with good intentions, but man it that hard to get Gen-Z to see that…