By: Richard J. Van Dyke
Introduction to Mass Media
Kitty King; Instructor
Pikes Peak Community College
Abstract
The
day I was born, the movie “Beach Blanket Bingo” opened in theaters across the
country. If you’re not familiar, it’s a
beach party movie that’s thin on plot, and big on the teen-age heart throbs of
the day (Annett Funicello, and Frankie Avalon) doing the twist on the beach. Comedy, and music collide in a setting that
is more reminiscent of the 1950’s than the 1960’s. The movie tries to be 1960’s hip, but never
quite succeeds. Of course, what we think
of as the 1960’s counter culture, didn’t really take off until the 1970’s. As someone who was born at the tail end of
the Baby Boom, and at the beginning of Generation X, I feel like this film, and
what it represents, has an interesting correlation to my experience with mass
media. It seems I have always been
chasing just behind the next big thing.
Sound Recording & Radio
My
earliest memories of music are of my father listening to his collection of Jazz
records on our old floor model RCA Hi-Fi system. Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington,
and Ella Fitzgerald were staples, and usually piled three or four records deep
on the spindle. On Saturday, and Sunday
afternoons. our house was always filled with the sounds of my father’s musical
obsession. You could hear the music
blaring out of the house, and out into our suburban Kalamazoo, Michigan
neighborhood. Much to the chagrin of the
neighbors, and my mother. It wasn’t
always jazz playing out of that Hi-Fi.
My parents would frequently listen to “Arthur Fidler, and The Boston
Pops” on our local NBC radio affiliate “WOOD FM”, as well as classical music
programs on our local Public Radio station.
My
parents never cared much for Rock-N-Roll music, and so it did not enter my
lexicon until grade school. Programs
such as “The Electric Company”, and “School House Rock” which were marketed
towards my demographic, quickly changed that.
The first record that I owned was “The Carpenters, This One’s For You”,
followed by several “K-Tel” compilations, and of course, in 6th
grade, Shawn Cassidy’s self-titled, pop extravaganza.
Hard
Rock was just the noise that our high school age neighbors played, and my
parents hated. When I was thirteen, one
of those neighborhood delinquents (as my parents often referred to them) informed
me that the records I was listening to by “Gloria Gaynor”, “The Bee Gees”, and
“The Bay City Rollers” were garbage, and I should be listening to music that
was, in his words, “More artistically relevant.”. I didn’t know what this meant, but he loaned
me some of his records by bands including “Boston”, “Foreigner”, and “Blue
Öyster Cult”. They blew my mind, and
freaked my parents out. My teenage years
were defined by that clash of cultures.
Things
only got worse when, in 1979, a good friend came back from a summer spent with
family in New York City with albums by the likes of “The Ramones”, “The Talking
Heads”, “Blondie”, and “The Sex Pistols”, in tow. This started a love affair with Punk Rock
that lasted well into my twenties.
Needless to say, music from hardcore Punk bands like “The Dead
Kennedys”, “The Circle Jerks”, and “Millions of Dead Cops” did not go over well
with my Dutch Reformed parents. Neither
did the type of clothing the music inspired.
As
I got into my late twenties and early thirties I held on to my affinity for
edgier music, but also branched out into others genres as well. I was introduced to music from Patsy Cline,
and other Country Music artists from the 1950’s, and 1960’s (I have never had
much use for newer Country music). When
the Air Force chose to assign me to Howard Air Force Base in Panama, I began to
listen to some of the local “Tipico” bands there, as well as
“Rock-En-Español”. My forties have been
defined by the eclectic mix of musical influences from my youth, as well as
from my children. My oldest daughter is
twenty-four, and our musical tastes are nearly identical. As of late, she has me listening to a
performance artist called “Bass Nectar” who plays a type of music called
“Dub-Step”. I like it.
Books
& Periodicals
I
am an avid reader, and always have been.
I don’t remember a time that I didn’t have a book that I was in the
middle of reading. I spent countless
hours at the local library, the book store, and the used book store in our
town. I started out reading paperback
compilations of “Peanuts” cartoons by Charles Schultz. This led to “Mad” magazine, and anything else
that seemed funny, or controversial.
“Encyclopedia Brown”, and “The Hardy Boys” series were some of my
favorites in grade school. In junior
high school, I discovered Science Fiction, and my love of reading shot to a
whole new level! Silverberg, Asimov,
Heinlein, and Clarke were among my favorite authors at the time. I devoured anything that concerned space
travel, mutants, or time travel. In high
school I discovered Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, and Jack Kerouac, and
read everything they had written. As an
adult in my thirties, I became interested in historical novels, and political
non-fiction by Victor David Hanson, and others.
For the last few years I have become more interested in non-fiction
books concerning scientific discovery, and theology. The authors I currently follow are
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Ray Kurzweil, and Laurence Kraus, to
name just a few.
Periodicals,
newspapers, and magazines have been a big part of my life as long as I can
remember. My parents had subscriptions
to our local paper “The Grand Haven Tribune”, the “Grand Rapids Press”, and
“The Wall Street Journal”. Monthly we
received “The Readers Digest”, “The National Review”, “The Ladies Home Journal”
and “The National Geographic” among others, at one time or another. My brother, and I had subscriptions to “Boys
Life”, “Highlights”, and “Ranger Rick”. Currently
I am subscribed to “Bicycling Magazine” and “The Atlantic Monthly”. On-line I follow “Salon”, “Slate” and more
daily blogs that I could list here.
Television/Cable
Television
was limited during my childhood. Not
only by my parents (they thought of it as the “Boob Tube” that was rotting
kids’ minds) who limited me to one half hour of television time after school,
and three hours on the weekends, but by design as well. There were only four stations that we could
receive from our rooftop antenna, NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS. Cable television, and the viewing choices it
would bring was still years away. When I
was growing up in the late 1960’s, and 1970’s television viewing was more
“event driven” than it is today. The
summers were a re-run wasteland, and my brother, and I would look forward to
the fall every year, because that was when the new season of all our favorite
shows would start. The “Wonderful World
of Disney” was a big deal, and the annual airing of “The Wizard of Oz” on CBS
could not be missed!
The
television extravaganza of them all however, (for the bubblegum set anyway) was
Saturday morning cartoons. We would get
up at the crack of dawn every Saturday, and sneak down to the family room,
where at 7:00 AM the fun would start.
“H.R. Puff-N-Stuff”, “Scooby Do”, and “The Banana Splits” would melt our
brains for as many hours as our parents would let us sit in front of the
screen. Like the network prime time line
up, the Saturday morning cartoons were refreshed in the fall as well.
As
I entered my teen years I became more interested in science fiction and
comedy. Shows like “Buck Rogers”, ‘The
Incredible Hulk” and “Saturday Night Live” captured my imagination. Around the time I graduated from high school,
music videos were gaining in popularity.
We never had cable, so on Friday nights we would stay up late to watch
“Friday Night Videos”, and “Liquid Television” on NBC.
As
an adult I don’t have much use for broadcast television, other than for local,
and national news. Occasionally when I’m
up late, I enjoy a little David Letterman.
I’ve never had cable and never will.
If there is a particular show I want to watch, I can usually catch it on
Netflix, and before that, the video store would usually have something worth
watching for rent.
Movies
When
I was a child going to the movies was a big deal. The only way you could see the big hit films
of the day was in the theater. It could
be years until they made it to television.
They still had a cartoon, or two before the movie when I first started
going in the late 1960’s, and early 1970’s.
The first movie my parents took me to at the theater was Disney’s “The
Jungle Book”. The first “PG” rated movie
I saw was “Star Wars” with my grandmother in 1976. She didn’t care for it, and fell asleep
halfway through. The first “R” rated
movie that my parents thought I saw
was “Private Benjamin” with my mother, who was a big Goldie Hawn fan. The first ‘R” rated movie I actually saw was “Ceech and Chong’s
“Nice Dreams” after my friends and I snuck into the theater through the
emergency exit.
My
taste in movies has changed radically over the years. Of course, as a kid I was into the fare that
Disney studios was pushing. As a teen my
interest in science fiction carried over into the theater as well. In my twenties I became somewhat of an art
film snob seeking out little known films at small theaters in Chicago, and
Detroit. In my thirties I was stationed with
the Air Force overseas, and went to see (pretty much) whatever was playing at
the theater on base. Today I am (mostly)
interested in documentaries, or films that have some social relevance, but I am
often coerced by my teenage son to go attend the latest action blockbuster, or
by my daughters to see a sappy romantic comedy.
Perspective
This has been a difficult paper for me
to write. Not for lack of content, just
the opposite, there is too much to cover (I didn’t even mention my obsession
with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in my early twenties). Over my 48 years, I
have read more books, and magazines, listened to more albums, tapes, CD’s, and
MP3’s, watched more television, and seen more movies than I could ever
recollect. I was actually a little
envious of my classmates in their twenties who have less to recount. If I had followed the outline I created while
preparing to write this paper it could have easily stretched to 15 pages. Reaching
back to remember what my interests were during childhood, and other times of my
life has been illuminating. They say
that physically, “We are what we eat.” I
think that mentally, we are what we read, watch, and listen to.
No comments:
Post a Comment