I have always liked Invader Zim.
I
watched the premiere on Nickelodeon when I was 11, and the show clicked for me.
Something about the bizarre humor and their mockery of the school environment
spoke to me. The nonsensical jokes, the intricate plots, and the incredible
detail of animation all led it to be one of my favorite shows. The show has a
cult status that still lives in local Hot Topics, brimming with Gir ephemera.
At 19 I re-watched the series with my then roommate’s girlfriend, and we bonded
over our mutual love of the show. It was the same. The jokes all worked, but
now on a more coherent level. I reveled in the in debasement of our stupid,
base-line consumer culture and the postmodern random gibberish. The show’s
comedy had molded my own sense of humor, and when I returned to this ancestral
home I founded it as pristine as ever.
The majority of the time, however, This Is Not True.
Somehow
all of us of in the 18-25ish range, we the “Generation Y”, have taken our first
step to becoming our parents without even seeming to realize it. Don’t believe
me? If you ever want to start an engrossing conversation among complete
strangers of this age bracket that will last a guaranteed hour, perhaps to give
you enough time to bury a decaying corpse stashed in the oven so you can make
Christmas dinner, mention a children’s television show from 1992-2002. Don’t
bring up anything more recent or an onslaught of pretension will befall you.
1992-2002. That will buy you enough time to come down, check out, or re-up. We
have all seen it happen before.
This
is nothing to be too embarrassed about. People connect over their memories of
childhood and unite through a common culture. I hold no pretension of
television as some lower art form, because there is no lower art. In all art
exists both the crap and the sublime. No, the problem lies elsewhere: people
hold onto these television shows as sacred artifacts, and then decry what
passes for children’s television today.
Yes,
I started this whole rant with my love of Invader
Zim. But, at a full 21 years of age, I have re-watched Invader Zim. If you own your favorite childhood
television show on a box set and have re-watched
it, congratulations that is a classic. However, the vast majority of the
shows we praise we have not seen in ten to twenty years.
Re-watch
these shows. They are on Netflix, they are on YouTube, and they are on
countless pirating sites where you can see every episode with virus-free contentment
(occasionally). Some of them will be great; some of them will be Invader Zim. Shows like this exist from
each generation. People still watch The
Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy, The Smurfs, and The Flintstones. This is
sublime television, or at least television that speaks across the generational
divide. Yet more often than not there is only crap.
We
can’t crystalize our childhood shows into perfection because they can never
live up to our memories. Those shows were great when we were eight, but we
aren’t eight any more. When we re-watch these shows, few have anything that
will satisfy the cynical and disaffected adult
So here is where we
turn into our parents: we have already passed our scorn onto the next
generation. We already hate them and misunderstand them just like our parents
did to us. Go onto the Internet (brave traveler), and go to any forum talking
about any piece of pop culture made for people 7-14 in their lifetimes. Do you
know what you will find? Black, unmitigated hatred from people 16-25 about Justin
Bieber, Twilight, One Direction, and
whatever else the kids like. All of that is TOTAL CRAP and STUPID. Well, guess
what? There is an equally terrible 90’s equivalent. This rings true for all
generations. The 80’s had toy commercials for cartoons. The 70’s had the patently
bizarre H. R. Pufnstuff and similar
stoner nightmares. Anything before that only registers to me as Leave it to Beaver-esqe baloney. And
yes, many of our 90’s shows are terrible.
All this stuff is the
same, only separated by a decade. And to be honest, yes, a lot of it is crap. But
not to whom it is meant for.
As much as it seems to,
our entire society doesn’t revolve around our generation. There are entire
markets selling things to five year olds, seven year old, and twelve year olds
because they can consume. And if you don’t like what is sold to them, fine. But
if you are going to lament on how our culture’s standards have fallen, on what
crap this generation likes, and on how this next generation are all idiots, than
you have become your parents. You have crossed the divide; you now stand with a
teenager yelling at you how you don’t understand. And you don’t. Even if you
could coherently explain to the teenager why their cultural artifacts are
terrible, that teenager won’t listen to you. Why should they? You stand in a
completely different rung in your life now, and you will continue to climb up
the ladder on a predicted path until you die.
Art
is art. Crap is crap. Do you research. See the past without the tint. People in
the 90’s where just as unhappy as they are now. Yes, there wasn’t a recession
but they had other problems. Rampant, unchecked homophobia. Genocide in Darfur
and the Bosnian Genocide. There was no
Internet. Every period of time has its positives and negatives, even those
beloved 50’s. Sure, more people ate around a dinner table, but more women were beaten,
abused, and marginalized. More African Americans were lynched. Do you really
want to go back there? Our problems are
eternal; hope lies in the future, where it isn’t the present yet.
