Stuff You Just Don't Get.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I'm sorry I'm really not sure what you are talking about. People of Tony Hancock's age, those who'd come through the war, either in the armed forces or as kids, created a world for themselves and their children that was far less restrictive than that which preceded it. In comparison the post-war opportunities were boundless. By the late forties there were county grants for post secondary education, irrespective of income or education. The post-war new towns offered better housing than the inhabitants had seen before war. Unfortunately they only planned for one car for every three families (a number that was woefully inadequate by 1955 due to increased purchasing power). People moved across the country for work in significant numbers for the first time since the beginning of the industrial revolution, as they were no longer tied to local economies like their grand-parents. By the end of the fifties British people were traveling abroad on holiday, something most of them had never done before. There was for the first time I suspect, and perhaps the only time, a general feeling that you could be whatever you wanted to be. I'm not saying that it was true, but the belief was widely held. I grew up then, and can vouch that there has never since been such a general feeling of optimism in the air as there was in the fifties and early to mid-sixties

[Aitch]

Surprised no-one has said it, but: Twin Peaks!

[Jah Womble]

I'll concede that Twin Peaks went off the boil rather too quickly for my liking.

(Might be worthy of a re-visit, mind.)

I've always thought that Friends was egging awful.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

ADeC, We're talking about different things. There's relative trajectory (Things are getting better than the interwar period) and there's absolute position (It's technically impossible to rape your wife, though she can keep half of the savings that she accumulates from the allowance her husband gives her after she's handed him her wages. Homosexuality is only partially decriminalized in 1967 in britain and wales, and the language used by the supporters of this limited bill, makes it really clear that they are all from another fucking planet. In Northern ireland Jim Crow isn't enough and the police are now going to start to ethnically cleanse Parts of belfast with fire. up until the mid sixties the UK is putting people in concentration camps and torturing and killing them in Kenya) And while there are many people who are starting to feel a little better about an improvement in their economic situation, there are also an enormous number of people fundamentally unhappy at the loss of the old order, and the old certainties, and the loss of Britains pre-eminence in the world.

yes things are starting to pick up, but there's such horrendous and vicious cruelty stitched into the fabric of everyday life that it's hard to look back at that period of time, because it seems to be a time of horror, ameliorated by the sense that things are less horrible than before, and starting to improve in certain aspects. It's the claustrophobia that makes Hancock such a difficult watch and listen. He's fucked in a way that is all too familiar to people today, but everyone and everything around him seems considerably worse in so many respects.

And I like tony hancock, and have nostalgic feelings about all these shows. Even if they are an extended cry of pain.

[Lang Spoon]

Definitely as BME or gay or in the Dreary Steeples, life wasn’t peachy. And not brilliant for women either to say the least, but you have the start of feminism in the consciousness from the 50s. Birth Control giving power to women over their bodies.

Was probably the Best of Times only for white straight males of the lower classes. But still women were beginning to graduate from more than Arts degrees/Home Ec/teaching colleges in greater numbers. Female doctors if not lawyers wouldn’t be a thing commented on as strange in Britain of the 70s. Female senior consultants, less so. Scottish fusty half Calvinist church also got its first Lady Minister in the 60s, after a Glasgow Divinity student realized there was nothing in the Articles of the True and Reformed Faith to stop her. And that church was also beginning its change from feared Establishment upholder of Morality, to the fucking Lib Dems at prayer outside the pockets of Calvin madness in the Western Isles.

By ‘75 my Mum turned down Uni for blissful marriage and a part time job (she’d be single in 3 years) but it wasn’t a thing if she wanted to go to uni or not. Whereas when my grandad turned down a full bursary to Embra in 1937 in favour of dancing and having money in his pocket as a phone engineer, he was effectively cutting himself off from the chance to join the top 2-3% of the Educated Classes.

[Lang Spoon]

And thank fuck says me, cos there’s no way he could have brought Gran round Morningside Society gatherings, not without her Od-ing on Valium and semi-educated culchie Fifeness shame.

[Lang Spoon]

Also, my grandad (unbeknownst to anyone before my Gran died and he told my Mum) had been Married Before, in the 40’s, which would have been almost unheard of in Darkest Fife. Divorced his first Missus after finding she was into Free Love and shit. Think it may have been a show rather than tell discovery as wells. Fife’s last flapper. Didn’t make the mistake of marrrying up in class the next time. The past can be a surprising place but.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

heh, I've no idea how my mam made it through the sixties without killing anyone. I know for sure that that if my sister had to live through the sixties, she'd have killed more people than the spanish flu.

When my mam was in college, during the summers she worked in my Granny's B&B cooking breakfasts until it was time to work teaching in the local Irish College, before home to work in the B&B. (Lot of laundry to be done apparently) Anyway, we were watching Irish Television, and there was a particular female tv person on, and I was marvelling that she was still able to find work in TV given her horrendous reputation for workplace bullying. And my mother gave a hollow laugh, and said, "she's a pig, but what can you expect when her father was nothing but a pig." She then related a story that kind of scarred me. This Lad was in his mid thirties and teaching in the irish college and was giving her a lift home. Mam had just finished second year so was coming up on nineteen, anyway, on the drive home, this guy that she hasn't really spoken very much to pulls over the car and asks her to marry him, and while she's still wondering what's going on, he lays out a glorious vista for her. She can give up College (and her Gaeltacht Scholarship) abandon her two degree courses (you could do a BA and a B.Comm in UCG. West of Ireland people on the make were not short of motivation) , and could settle down to the tasks of traditional homemaking, at which point my mam was left with a difficult choice. Would she laugh in his face, or would she get out of the car and laugh to herself as she walked the rest of the way home. Just who the fuck did he think he was?

I was fascinated that this guy thought that this would work. It obviously did at some point, but it was utterly eye opening.

[Lang Spoon]

What gets me is that I’m the first of my family to go to uni and I’ve more or less got to where my grandad rose but in a different less secure structure. I might climb a bit higher (I do still have 25+ years of work) or fall into the dole, but the requirement to have a degree is more a barrier for entry for so many jobs than a necessary competence.

But also the last ten or so years of his career seemed to be done to the tacit proposal that where you got to in your mid-fifties was that. Tbh I think that might even be magnified now. No One would promote someone they can’t get decent time from.

[WOM]

No One would promote someone they can’t get decent time from.

Here's hoping...

[3 Colours Red]

Surprised no-one has said it, but: Twin Peaks!

All of Lynch for me... it's just weird for the sake of weird to fool pseuds into thinking it's deep and intellectual and profound and shit. No, it's just shit.

[Lang Spoon]

I do love me some Mullholland Drive. The rest barring Elephant Man though... yeah.

[Jah Womble]

Nah - especially to the 'pseudo/weird' slur. It's mostly way too funny for that.

[Disco Child Ballads]

I agree with those who said Blade Runner. I only saw it for the first time about a month ago and my reaction was "Really? That's it?". It was the original theatrical release with the voice-over though. Will the Director's Cut be a further waste of time?

[Gangster Octopus]

Horror films. Just watch the news, that's horrific enough.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I agree with those who said Blade Runner. I only saw it for the first time about a month ago and my reaction was "Really? That's it?". It was the original theatrical release with the voice-over though. Will the Director's Cut be a further waste of time?

Trust me. Stay up for three days straight, and then watch it. Once you're bordering on psychosis, then you're in the same frame of mind as the director.. I was getting a huge dose of hydrocortisone every six hours which meant that by the time I was falling asleep, I'd get another huge shot, and be awake for another 5 and a half hours. So after about three days of this, I watched Blade runner, the directors cut, and it made sense.

[Lang Spoon]

Ridley Scott. <shudders>

I do like Alien, and I like to look at Blade Runner (the plot, not so much). But Ridley Scott, psychosis is making him sound interesting. An ad man who is good with a budget. More reliable than Alan Fuckin Parker. But how many terrible films must we pretend are good that fucker has churned out? gladiator is fuckin laughable man, laughable.

[Snake Plissken]

Ah, more for my "Blade Runner - Is That It?" support group. Like the Nolans work, I respect it. I just don't like it.

[Patrick Thistle]

My wife said 'Is that it?' at the end of the Italian Job.

The fucking Italian fucking job!!

I could have wept

[Snake Plissken]

Presumably the 2003 version? 'Cos if not, y'know, grounds for divorce and all that.

[Squarewheelbike]

Re: The Goons, always loved them, my Dad got me into them in the early '70's and a school mates parents had loads of the recordings. If you want the finest comedy sketch ever (IMHO), then go to YouTube and put in "What time is it Eccles?"

[Ray de Galles]

Is everyone else sniggering every time they see a reference to “the Nolans” in this thread?

I’m a fan of both - the filmmakers and the Irish signing troupe.

[Levin]

The Duelists is good. Though it's a series of vignettes really isn't it?

[Jah Womble]

The Goons - despite the undeniable talent on show, that always rather left me cold, I'm afraid.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The goons seem to have sowed the seeds of their own future demise. They only really make sense if you remember that everything you see is a reaction to the incredibly stultifying culture of the time, much like Monty Python. Where silliness, or absurdity is seen as an act of rebellion. That's certainly how people saw it at the time, but that's not entirely clear to us today, because this sort of thing really caught on, changed the culture and made itself a bit redundant, and a good chunk of it comes across as childish silliness for silliness's sake.