Things you realize are much better than they used to be while watching older films

[Hot Pepsi]

The obvious one is smoking. Everyone smoked all the time in all places everywhere. Everything reeked of it. Fire hazards were in everyone's hand. People looked 70 when they were 35.

And the racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, etc. There's a lot that could and should be said about that.

But lately I'm struck by how much better life is now that I don't have a "land line" and, more to the point, I never have to hear a phone ringing. I just have my mobile and it sends everything to voice mail unless it's a known caller in which case it just quietly buzzes.

But for most of my life - along with most people in rich countries in the 20th century - the phone was a thing in the house that could just ring at any time and you were expected to answer it with no idea who was calling. Even if you just let it ring, it interrupted whatever you were doing. And the sound of the ring was so irritating. Not quite as annoying as some of the ringtones people use now - why does anyone need a ring tone? vibrate works well. And for most of the history of the phone, answering machines were rare. If you called, the only way to know they weren't there is to just let it ring. And busy signals. Useless.

Other than 2001, not much sci-fi predicted that the world might get quieter as tech advanced. I think we imagined it would just be more beeps and boops and whirring and buzzing noises. everywhere all the time.

[elguapo4]

I caught the start of Get Carter ( the original one) the other day. There are some grim housing areas now, but nothing like the real areas depicted in that film. As said above, everyone smoked, pollution was rampant and any -ism you like was ok.

[Amor de Cosmos]

But lately I'm struck by how much better life is now that I don't have a "land line" and, more to the point, I never have to hear a phone ringing. I just have my mobile and it sends everything to voice mail unless it's a known caller in which case it just quietly buzzes.

I'm quite the opposite. I have never liked phones, still don't. We didn't have one at home until I was sixteen. Didn't have one myself until I came to Canada at twenty-three. They were better then too. No dunning phone-calls, no one trying to con you out of cash. If you didn't want to pick-up you just took it off the hook. Way more relaxed. Phones just add unnecessary stress and tension to everyday life.

[ad hoc]

I'd never heard the word dunning before

[Benjm]

I caught the start of Get Carter ( the original one) the other day. There are some grim housing areas now, but nothing like the real areas depicted in that film. As said above, everyone smoked, pollution was rampant and any -ism you like was ok.

I never stop wondering at how blackened all the buildings in London look in films from the sixties, even the grand sites. They had been cleaned up by the time I moved here in the nineties.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I'd never heard the word dunning before

Yeah, I guess it's fallen out of favour. I kinda like it though, it has the right sound.

[diggedy derek]

Food in the UK, while watching The Ipcress File. Michael Caine impresses a girl by cooking her a dinner which included tinned mushrooms.

[slackster]

Interior decor and facilities in ordinary homes. They look downright drab, cold, and miserable up through the 70s in the majority of cases.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm quite the opposite. I have never liked phones, still don't. We didn't have one at home until I was sixteen. Didn't have one myself until I came to Canada at twenty-three. They were better then too. No dunning phone-calls, no one trying to con you out of cash. If you didn't want to pick-up you just took it off the hook. Way more relaxed. Phones just add unnecessary stress and tension to everyday life.

That's the ideal, indeed. I'd love to live like James Caan in Thief and just have the bartender at my local take my messages.

But just taking the phone off the hook never felt like a viable option for people who had kids away at school or elsewhere and/or elderly parents somewhere else. In his later years, my grandfather called my dad at least every day with some issue or another. It was an annoyance, but he needed to know if there was a real problem.

Same if you're trying to run a business. You just had to put up with the constant interruptions in between the occasional - rare - calls you really wanted to get, but you wouldn't know which was which until you took the call. And in an office, there'd be lots of phones ringing all the time.

Some friends of mine still rely mainly on their landline, but it has caller ID and that shows up on the bottom of the screen if they're watching TV. I guess that's an improvement.

But I much prefer the current model of "you have to communicate with me by text or email first to confirm I'm willing to take a call now."

[Amor de Cosmos]

But just taking the phone off the hook never felt like a viable option for people who had kids away at school or elsewhere and/or elderly parents somewhere else. In his later years, my grandfather called my dad at least every day with some issue or another. It was an annoyance, but he needed to know if there was a real problem.

That's become the expectation for sure. As a kid there were ten semi-detached council houses in our block. Only one family had a phone, the rest of us left their number with relatives who had instructions to call only if it was really, really important. I think we used it twice. Once when my grandfather died, and again when my Mother insisted my Father call Paris as she was convinced I'd been blown up by an OAS bomb.

[Hot Pepsi]

That's become the expectation for sure. As a kid there were ten semi-detached council houses in our block. Only one family had a phone, the rest of us left their number with relatives who had instructions to call only if it was really, really important. I think we used it twice. Once when my grandfather died, and again when my Mother insisted my Father call Paris as she was convinced I'd been blown up by an OAS bomb.

Yeah, that raises interesting questions about how much communication we really need and how much we only think we need because we can.

To me, its unconscionable that big chunks of central Pennsylvania have no cell service to speak of. It just feels unsafe. What if one needs to call 911? But of course, that was how it was in all rural areas until the late 90s.

You left a cliffhanger. Were you blown up by an OAS bomb?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Nah! I was on a school trip and supposed to send my parents a postcard to say I was safe. I never did (duh!) My Mum freaked and they called the hotel in Paris. I got a right bollocking from our headmistress, who was a real gorgon. I was just thirteen and didn't realise how touchy the political situation was. I thought my parents were just overreacting.

[Jah Womble]

Interior decor and facilities in ordinary homes. They look downright drab, cold, and miserable up through the 70s in the majority of cases.

Urban architecture in general, perhaps.

[Snake Plissken]

Just starting a watch of the 1981 Smiley's People and there is an opening scene set behind the Iron Curtain which is grim as hell, kids playing in rubble on a brown, overgrown housing estate. It really looked like proper 40 years of post-WWII decay.

Turns out that that bit was shot in Glasgow.

[G-Man]

I watched Across 110th Street again last week. The police brutality against African-American by white officers and the racism; it's all so much better... oh, what?

[blameless]

Just starting a watch of the 1981 Smiley's People and there is an opening scene set behind the Iron Curtain which is grim as hell, kids playing in rubble on a brown, overgrown housing estate. It really looked like proper 40 years of post-WWII decay.

Turns out that that bit was shot in Glasgow.

I've been watching a lot of old episodes of Taggart recently. The episodes shot in the first half of the 80s look very tatty and 1970s - it's impossible to overstate how much the works done for the 1988 Garden Festival and 1990 City of Culture helped fix up and modernise the city.

[Hot Pepsi]

I watched Across 110th Street again last week. The police brutality against African-American by white officers and the racism; it's all so much better... oh, what?

It used to be even more common and not at all discussed outside those communities. So that’s progress.


Women’s hair - men’s too but especially women’s - was ridiculous in the 80s.

Check out Sigourney Weaver’s enormous perm in Aliens. The time and effort it took to maintain that rivaled what it took to create the aliens.

[Sits]

I never stop wondering at how blackened all the buildings in London look in films from the sixties, even the grand sites. They had been cleaned up by the time I moved here in the nineties.

Having grown up quite close to London, I vividly remember a trip in at some point in the eighties, after a significant time had elapsed. The Natural History Museum was a completely different colour. It looked brand new.

[Benjm]

Having grown up quite close to London

I'm off to Maidenhead today, Sits, to watch the Magpies. I haven't been there for at least eighteen months so hoping that the effects of the pandemic won't be too pronounced in the town centre, which was already looking a bit sorry for itself beforehand.

[hobbes]

Having grown up quite close to London, I vividly remember a trip in at some point in the eighties, after a significant time had elapsed. The Natural History Museum was a completely different colour. It looked brand new.

Likewise St Paul's before and after the cleaning and restoration a decade or so ago.

[Sits]

I'm off to Maidenhead today, Sits, to watch the Magpies. I haven't been there for at least eighteen months so hoping that the effects of the pandemic won't be too pronounced in the town centre, which was already looking a bit sorry for itself beforehand.

I don’t fancy your chances. I was last there in late 2018 and the decline felt pretty terminal. At least you can do some trainspotting from the ground if the game’s dull.

[Fussbudget]

Interior decor and facilities in ordinary homes. They look downright drab, cold, and miserable up through the 70s in the majority of cases.

Ooh man I don't know that I agree with that. A lot of 70s interior decor is cosier and more welcoming than the drab white or grey boxes many people live in now - the use of colour, texture, natural wood, also houses were often full of books and records which is becoming rarer and rarer. Now of course that wasn't true of every house in the 70s, but equally loads of people still live in very crap conditions now, we just don't tend to see inside the houses of poor people on the telly.

[Belhaven]

Some friends of mine still rely mainly on their landline, but it has caller ID and that shows up on the bottom of the screen if they're watching TV. I guess that's an improvement.

I had no idea that there had been any progess in landline phone technology. I don't think you even can buy one in Norway anymore.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I had no idea that there had been any progess in landline phone technology. I don't think you even can buy one in Norway anymore.

Not sure there there's much in the way of technological advancement (it is easier to block calls than it used to be.) There's a financial benefit for us in that our carrier gives us no-charge calls to up to five different countries of our choice. We have family living in the UK, France, US and Spain, so it's a big incentive. Plus, emergency services say it's good to have a landline as back-up, we live in an earthquake zone so there's that too.

[Eggchaser]

I've said it before, and it is probably just linked to the way people dressed and the quality of film, but all footage of people going about their daily business in the 70s makes it look like it was freezing, even in the height of summer.