Day 21 - January 24, 2008
Right now we’re living in one of the most interesting times of our current history: the downfall of our current state of civilization. Just like the Romans and the Greeks, our “civilized” empire is coming to it’s final stage: collapse. Though many would find this to be a frightening idea, or reality, the truth of the matter is that it had to happen sooner or later and we’re fortunate enough to be around for the driving elements that are causing it.
Nowadays the reasons are all around us; mass marketing, appealing to the lowest common denominator, and a hyperactive sense of consumerism. While we could go on and list all of these tragic catalysts, for now it’d be more interesting to look for the original perpetrators of this movement. For this we must travel back to the age before flavoured water and Reese’s Wafer Sticks to a somewhat simpler time: the late 1990’s.
Here we can find what I figure to be one of the earliest causes to the change we see in today’s society, a simple film that desensitized myself, including numerous children my age at the time. The movie I’m referring to is Austin Power’s: International Man of Mystery. Looking back on it today, the movie still stands to be a pivotal film in my childhood as I can remember how eager my friends and I were to see it at Harley Applebaum’s 7th birthday party. The twenty-something group of 7 year olds left the theatre changed from the way we entered, though it took me 11 years to realize this.
The movie was chockfull of sexual innuendoes, bathroom humour, and all the other greats that were lost in the 60’s. However, in doing so, it brought all those ideas back to my generation: the children of the baby boomers. Perhaps this was a subconscious fuel for the pseudo hippie movement that fell over my peers last year.
Back to the point, this film was one of the earliest violators of my childhood innocence, not to mention the animated Spawn series as well as South Park. And so it’s on stimulators like these that I attribute our civilization’s collapse on as oppose to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, all though I’m not too sure that the Rap movement helped much either. Am I sad? No. Am I upset? No. I’m excited and eager to see what follows, and only hope that I can live well into my children’s years so I can not only experience, but see what awaits us simple little things called humans.
