How many classic characters are forgotten
My first post of the year was going to be about the TV I'm looking forward to and I will do a post about that later this week however I just had to get this post out of my system first.
Today someone referenced a quote which someone stated came from 50 shades of grey. Now having never watched or read the phenomenon that it is I couldn't be sure if that was true however what I was sure of was that it was used by shows/films before that so did a quick Google and found it was referenced in Popeye at one point. Now the quote isn't all that important what is important and worrying is that so few people knew who Popeye was.
If somehow you don't know who Popeye the sailor man is and don't know that spinach makes you strong enough to do anything I worry for you. The playground legend that he lived in a garbage can and ate worms...probably true and quite sad.
What's sadder however is that classic characters like this are being forgotten by the large majority of society.
There's a lot of things that cause this erosion of cultural icons but I think the main cause of it in society today is that there's so many new characters, stories etc. created and introduced to us daily. Our collective society cannot deal with this explosion fascinating characters that each deserve their own chance to shine. With work and life commitments to handle as well as the shows, films, theatre and books we already try to consume en-masse we are already at the tipping point of how much we can handle and remember.
In that respect it shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did that to make room for all of the new information people had forgotten Popeye however it makes me wonder what else exactly people had forgotten in this need to consume.
For me every show, film and experience in general is special. My memory for things is quite interesting as I often struggle to find the words related to particular things which takes me on a search journey to find out what exactly it is I want to say (Google is my best friend), but the point is that I remember them. Names trigger a face most of the time, faces trigger a name or a memory of a show, scenes take me back in time to when I first watched it, music takes me through the various shows and films it's been used in.
Memory is a special thing and I weep for people who once deeply connected to characters and have now forgotten that connection as when they forgot that, in my mind they lost a bit of their past.
So remember Popeye and all the other classic characters of your childhood. At some point a film studio might remake them into something new but you'll remember what it was and what it used to be to you.
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