Classics

I'm not one to try and tell people how to think or what to enjoy. Everyone has their own preferences, and that's something I'm particularly aware of, because it seems like I don't enjoy a lot of things that everyone else just assumes that you will enjoy. That's kind of a long story to get it into, so for the time being, suffice to say that I understand how people can not enjoy something that seems obvious to like. Other than breathing and eating, of course. There's something wrong with you if you don't enjoy that.

But that makes the concept of "classics" an interesting one. Now, I may be mistaken to some degree, but my understanding of a classic has always been that it is something that is simply good. Or at least considered by many to be good. Things that everyone should know or have seen and that are inherent parts of culture that can't simply be ignored. They help to structure the way that we think and act and talk, even if we're not aware of it.

And if that's the case, why is it that I don't enjoy so many of them? Even among the things that I do enjoy, many of the classics, to me, are simply of poor quality. I'm sure they were fantastic at the time, but I can't move back to that time. In many cases, I wasn't even alive at that time. I can't comprehend what was going on in that period in history, and perhaps that is detracting from my enjoyment of the so called classics.

But I'm not the only one. I know I'm not. Especially in video games, people try to go back to the classics all the time, try to recover and re-experience what they felt when they played it the first time. And when they do that, they realize that that classic isn't good. And in many cases, it never was good. No one wants to accept or believe that, but it's hard to deny facts when we experience them with our own senses.

But what's really interesting is how less that happens in other medias. There are some cases in movies and books and tv shows where that happens, but there are significantly fewer. We look back at the same things as they grow farther and farther away from the world as it is now, and we expect them to hold as true today as they were then. And in some cases, that may be true. The grandfather of video games as some call it, Super Mario Bros on the NES, still stands today not only as a classic, but as a solid game. Perhaps not the easiest, but its mechanics are sound and it is satisfying to play, even if you don't beat it.

All I'm saying is that I find it interesting that in so many cases, we try to pass what we perceive as classics to our children, and we are surprised when they don't enjoy them. But we keep telling them they are good until they believe it, and then they pass it on to their children, and are yet again surprised when they don't like it. At least, that's how I see it.