The Eyes of Age

[John Reid]

At age 61 I have discovered a new phenomena I'd like to share with our younger readers. When you get my age and you see TV shows or movies that you enjoyed as a young man, you find that they suddenly take on totally new and often opposite meaning to you then when you first saw them.

The other day I had to opportunity to see an episode of the old 60's TV series "Lost in Space". This was a favorite show of mine when it first aired in 1966. I was 11 years old at the time, roughly the same age as the actor Billy Mummy who played Will Robinson on the series. Back then it was a fantasy/sci fi adventure story to me.

So I sat down to watch Lost in Space the other day on Antenna TV and hoped it would carry me back to my days of youth.

As I watched it I began to realize things about the show that never occurred to me as a boy.

First it occurred to me that John and Maureen Robinson had to be the cruelest parents of all time! They knew full well that they were taking their entire family to live on another planet with no other human beings. John had his wife Maureen and their co-pilot Mark was hitting on his oldest daughter Judy before they even lifted off, but...what were Will and Penny supposed to do for mates? They were bound to hit puberty sooner or later, then what?

I saw only two possibilities, celibacy or incest! Yikes! I mentioned this to my wife who said, well Penny could turn to Dr. Smith. I looked at her and said, "Personally I think Will had a better shot at Dr. Smith than Penny! I mean think about it. They were always together! This was a man who was so lazy that if you asked him to wash a dish he went into back spasms, but he could hike 6 to 8 hours a day following that little boy around everywhere he went!

One could imagine the conversations..
(John) Say where's Will?
(Maureen) Oh he out there somewhere with Dr. Smith.
(John) Again? Wait a minute...Didn't Dr. Smith try to murder us all last week?
(Maureen) Yeah but I'm not worried.
(John) You're not?
(Maureen) No, it's true he hates all of our guts, but for some reason...he really really likes William. I mean he follows him around everywhere he goes!

Like I said, I saw the whole show with news eyes. More to come.

[John Reid]

Now lets talk about James Bond. I remember vividly in 1963 when "Dr. No." first came out. I was 8 years old and thought that James Bond had to be the greatest spy on earth.

Now at age 61 I have come to the conclusion that James Bond is really the worst spy on earth!

To begin with a spy is supposed to be invisible. No one is supposed to know he is a spy! Not even his wife and kids. Nobody!

But this idiot always walks right up to the person he is supposed to be spying on and says, "My name is Bond, James Bond." I mean come on? Couldn't he at least have said John Smith? But no, he tells them his real name right off of the bat.

They always respond with, "007?" Not only do they know his real name but apparently everyone in the world knows his code number! What is the purpose of having a code number if everyone in the world knows it?

Then they say, "Why do you think he's here?" Duh! I don't know, to spy on you maybe?

Not only is he inept at keeping his identity and mission a secret, he seems to go out of his way to draw attention to himself.

Let's say he gets a call that an atomic bomb is about to go off in Hyde Park in London. What does he do? Call the bomb squad? Notify the police? Nope! The first thing he does is to steal some transportation like jumping in a police car while the officer is out writing someone a ticket. He steals the police car and drives it full speed with sirens blaring up the wrong side of the street causing cars to go careening into each other making a major pile up. After smashing his way through a dozen or so of those causing a bus to collide with a wrecking ball which takes down an apartment building he now finds he has every police officer in London in high pursuit after him.

They naturally set up a road block and when he sees it instead of stopping he floors it and this is where he earns his money because he has the mysterious ability to cause an automobile to launch itself into the air as though it hit a ramp with no ramp anywhere in sight!

We never really see how he does this? They always cut to the police officers on the other side of the barricade who suddenly and in slow motion watch his vehicle leap over their barricade and pass directly over their heads.

Now here is the kicker. One officer will turn to the other one and say, "Who is this guy?" Apparently law enforcement agencies are the only people on earth who never heard of James Bond!

Finally he gets to Hyde Park and manages to pull the right wire to disable the bomb causing the timer to stop naturally at 007. Then every police officer in town arrive, jump out of their cars and point their guns at him and he says...

"It's ok. I'm secret service." At which they all put their guns away and just let him go! I guess being a secret service agent is apparently a get out of jail free card.

I remember being amazed at how easily he seduced women as well growing up watching his films. Apparently when you want a woman all you need do is walk up to her and start unzipping her dress and she seems obliged to sleep with you. Who knew it was that easy? Just walk up to any stranger and start undressing them. That's all there is to it.

I couldn't wait to reach dating age to try that myself. Meanwhile scores of teenage boys all around the country suddenly woke up with paramedics reviving them I'm sure after attempting the Bond method of seduction on the first lovely stranger they saw.

Like I said, you see Bond movies with all new eyes when you get older.

[John Reid]

Let's talk about "All in the Family". I loved this show when it first came out. It was clearly about how stupid and ignorant the older generation was and how cool and hip the younger generation is who are obliged to always set them straight on any topic whatsoever.

That was back then, today I see it through all new eyes. The first thing that struck me was that Archie was the only one in the family who had a job! This poor old guy had to break his back everyday on the loading docks so he could come home and listen to his freeloading son in law tell him how stupid he was all the while gobbling down his food!

Never get married unless you can afford to support your wife! This clown marries Archie's daughter and then moves in. He claims he can't get a job because he wants to finish his college education? Say what now? He can't work and go to college? I did!

No he decides to get free room and board and free meals and spend his evenings ranking out the guy who supports him.

Now as for Archie's ignorance and bigotry. I found his brand of bigotry refreshingly honest compared to Mike's. Mike only hung around Lionel his black friend for no other reason than because he was black. I know this because that was all he ever talked about with Lionel. Not a single conversation did not include Mike getting Lionel's black man's opinion.

Archie pretty much hated everybody, except for a very small circle of friends from work, but he was totally honest about it. He never said to Lionel get out of my house. They even ate dinner together occasionally. He didn't like George Jefferson at all but that was mutual and they had an honest hatred that still never stopped them from talking together and even socializing on occasion.

So once again as a youth I saw Mike as the good guy and Archie as the ignorant old fart and rooted for him to put Archie in his place, now that I am past Archie's age I wish he had kicked Mike to the curb right after the wedding!

[John Reid]

"Billy Jack" was one of my favorite films when I was young. It came out in 1971 when I was 16 and then I saw it as a movie about a Native American hero named Billy Jack who was the protector of the cool kids at a liberal school from the violent ignorant older townspeople.

That was back then...I saw it last week on TV and it was like a different film to me.

Early in the film the Sheriff brings home a 16 year old run a way girl to her father who was also his deputy. Back then I was actually rooting for her and saw him as the villain. Now I couldn't believe what a chip she had on her shoulder and the horrible way she was talking to her father. He keeps trying to be good to her and offer her food and all she can do is mouth off. Then she tells him she's pregnant! He merely asks who the father is, which I now see is a reasonable question. She replies, "What I mean "concerned father" is I was passed around by so many guys I don't know if it's white, Mexican or black!" At which point he loses it and slaps her across the face.

Now back then I was horrified and angry at him. How dare that brute back hand this poor defenseless child. Nowadays I realize that if I had dared to speak that way to my parents I would still be in a coma to this day. So my sympathies have totally reversed themselves.

She runs away and is found by Billy Jack who takes her to the local hospital and that is the first and last sensible thing he does in the whole film! At the hospital the doctor conspires with the Sheriff to hide the girl out at the Freedom School.

Now I'm saying "Wait a minute...Her father is her legal guardian! It's completely illegal to take his daughter anyplace without his permission and the Sheriff, the deputies best friend goes along with this scheme.

Later her father gets wind that she is there and goes there to look for her. He tries to appeal to the students to tell him where she is and they treat him like he is a Nazi looking for Anne Frank! They respond by starting to sing protest songs to him. The Indians who are mostly white kids playing Native Americans sing, "My mother was a princess, my father was a chief, now thanks to our white neighbors, my folks are on relief." Catchy and mostly true but what on earth does that have to do with this father looking for his little girl?

Next the black kids chimed in singing about having to bow down to the man. They sang so beautifully I turned to the wife and said, "I think everybody else needs to shut up and just let the black kids sing."

Billy Jack takes the run a way girl to the reservation where they watch him perform a ritual called the Brother of the Snake in which Billy Jack dances around a rattlesnake which he allows to bite him six times! Excuse me? One bite is nearly always fatal, so give me a break.

The other villain in the show is a young punk kid named Bernard Posner whose dad owns most of the town. Billy Jack just keeps having one run in after another with him. In town he poured flour on some Indian kids and so Billy Jack comes in and uses his Green Beret martial arts training on him to beat him up and knock his big friend through the store window. Back then I was cheering him on and now I realize that he is an trained soldier in his late 30's beating up two teenagers!! He then has to fight his way out of town and they hit him from behind and would have killed him if the sheriff had not interfered.

No charges were filed on anybody by the way. Where is this town? I want to move there.

Next the runaway pregnant girl decides to go horseback riding falls off and loses the child. This is the place they thought would be safe for her naturally.

The head of the Freedom school is Jean Roberts played by Tom Laughlin's (Billy Jack)real life wife Delores Taylor who totally ruined the film because she simply cannot act and I don't mean to be harsh but was one of the homeliest female leads in movie history. She looks 60 if she's a day and if that weren't bad enough she's always angry or crying throughout the whole film!

So later on Jean decides for some reason to ride out and go bathing in a creek. I'm thinking, "They don't have any showers at the Freedom School?" So she is observed by Bernard Posner who ties her nude spread eagle, which thankfully they spared us seeing, and decides to rape her. All I could think of was why?

So she hides the truth from Billy Jack fearing he will kill Bernard and of course he finds out and immediately sets out to do just that. She tries to stop him and get this, he starts going into a speech about gun control and the assassinations of the Kennedy's and King? I'm thinking "What on earth has that to do with him going to commit murder and who is he to get preachy about gun control when he shoots everything in sight!

Billy catches Bernard in bed with a 13 year old girl and he karate chops him in the throat killing him. He is now wanted by the police for murder of course so he decides to run off. The runaway girl wants to go with him and he says, "sure".

Let's recap. They placed her secretly in this school because he father slapped her and she fell off a horse and lost the child and now wants to run off with a man wanted for murder.

Her father sees them leaving and tries to shoot Billy Jack who shoots him right between the eyes killing him!

I remember saying "Yay!" as a teenager watching this but now realize he was just a father trying to protect his daughter and gets murdered for it! The capper is the girl who just saw Billy Jack murder her father does not so much as bat an eyelid when he gets killed!

So Billy Jack and the girl hole up in an old church while the national guard fires hundreds of rounds into the church and of course the girl gets wounded and when Billy realizes she is shot he comments "Oh you crazy nut." Say what now?

So they allow the girl to leave via stretcher and Jean talks Billy into surrendering to the authorities. They take him away as all the kids raise their fist to the tune of "One Tin Soldier", which is actually a song about the foolishness of war and I am not quite clear on what that had to do with him.

The whole film preached pacifism and non violence and the hero of the film is the most violent person in the whole area.

Like I said, you see things with whole new eyes when you get older.

[John Reid]

Ok let's talk about Dark Shadows. On the air from 1966-1971 this show had every school kid in America rushing to get home from school which ended at 3pm and DS came on at 4pm. It was a 30 minute soap opera horror show whose star was the 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins played to perfection by Shakespearean actor Jonathan Frid.

We all loved Barnabas Collins. Guys wanted to be him and girls wanted to marry him. No show in my life affected me like that one did and even today I confess that I have my own FB page where I write my own DS fan fiction.

But truthfully at age 61 I see the show through entirely new eyes than I did at age 11 when it came on.

The fact of the matter is all of us kids were rooting for an inhuman serial killer. I doubt if one single fan ever shed a tear for any of his helpless victims. The prostitutes for example that he would drain dry and toss off the docks like empty beer cans. We really could not care less what happened to them. All we were afraid of is that Barnabas would be caught or destroyed!

On the series was his partner Dr. Julia Hoffman who was not so secretly madly in love with him. She would have destroyed the world to protect him and somehow the writers of the show turned every single one of us into Dr. Julia Hoffman's.

He was a vampire, who was dead in his coffin by day and roamed the earth by night feeding on the blood of the innocent. This was our hero?

Full credit has to be given to Frid for plucking our heartstrings and making us all feel sorry for the monster he was playing. That really took some acting but he pulled it off. Back then I never gave it a single thought.

But now I see it with new eyes.
(More to come)

[Omen]

OMG!!!!! This was an EXCELLENT stream of posts!!!

I find myself doing the SAME thing! I love looking at old shows and cartoons I grew up with to see how they translate to my current age. Everything you stated pulled a grin from my resistant face. Not only have I come to love and accept my change in perspective... I have also found myself, strangely, attracted to movies that were far before my time.

The concept of finding and watching the first zombie movie (White Zombie) excited me.
Bela Lugosi as Dracula, the introduction of the Wolfman, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon... CLASSICS!

The atomic age science fictions like, 'THEM', the spooky and wondrous anthologies, such as, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Tales from the Darkside... CLASSICS!!

From the brutish to the noir, This Gun for Hire, Shane, The Magnificent Seven, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, the African Queen...CLASSICS!

Cabin in the Sky, the Blood of Jesus, Hallelujah, Emperor Jones... CLASSICS!

Star Trek (original), Space 1999, Battlestar Galactica (original), Land of the Lost, Six Million Dollar Man, the Bionic Woman, Planet of the Apes... CLASSICS!

He-Man, GI Joe, G-Force, Transformers, COPS, Inspector Gadget, Robotech... and, uhm... uh... smurfs...

uh... enough of that...

I'm a warrior! I'm a man! I'm tough! If you disagree, I will smurf you up!!


I gotta go.

bye.

[The Muse]

lol...

"I will smurf you up..."

OH, my goodness...flashback to the age of 10.......