Commentary

Fast Forward: Baby Loomer

This is a big year for me. I turn 50. At one time, that would have seemed really old to me. Now it just seems older. Like many of my generation, I'm constantly redefining what age means to me. And because my generation is so big and culturally influential, we're also constantly redefining the way the world of media thinks about age.

It's not that we're not still a youth-obsessed culture. We are. It's just that Boomers have worked incredibly hard - harder than any preceding generation, I would argue - at preserving our sense of youth, or at least, our image of it. Instead of simply aging gracefully as earlier generations had, we work hard to stop the clock, or even turn it back. Partly, we are more informed about health, nutrition and exercise. Partly we've learned to cheat Father Time artificially (plastic surgery, knee surgery, Botox, Viagra, Rogaine, etc.).

But the most significant impact we've had on the aging process is the way we depict it in the media. It's not that we don't revere the young, hunky Adonises who grace the covers of magazines like Men's Health - or the articles contained therein that we think will preserve us that way. It's that we're really good at perpetuating our own youthful propaganda, like the incredibly vital images of Harrison Ford, Katie Couric and Goldie Hawn gracing the covers of AARP: The Magazine. Commercials for various prescription drug remedies depict the oldest members of my generation riding curls on surfboards, white water kayaking or running marathons.

I'm nearing AARP eligibility, but I sometimes find myself slip-sliding across my own mental space-time continuum until reality sets in again. On the occasions when I make random eye contact with a young woman in public, my first response is always the basic primal one, until I realize the look in her eye has nothing to do with procreation, but is actually a look of mistaken recognition. She thinks I might be a distant uncle or a former college professor. Or perhaps she just reads Media magazine.

In the end, we Boomers cannot turn back time. But we can certainly influence the way succeeding generations will think of it, and think of us. The most surprising thing I've observed about that influence is how our culture suddenly is being embraced by today's genuine youth culture. So much so, that I find myself raiding my son's iTunes library to restock my own old favorites.

And then there's the running joke about some old guy explaining who Paul McCartney is to a younger woman. The punch line used to be that he was in a band before Wings. Then it was that he was fashion designer Stella McCartney's father. The reality is, most young people today know McCartney for what he really is: The Walrus, of course. Or was that actually John? Please forgive my senior moment, but I can tell you my 15-year-old son knows the answer to that question. The oddest part about this cross-generational media mash-up, is how my generation's world of mass, is converging with his generation's reality of micro. Goo goo g'joob.

Old school media still wag the long tail, but they are, in turn, shaped and reshaped in an endless array of micro conversations, posts and pokes that increasingly are becoming the basis of our pop culture.

So forgive me for redirecting this month's column from "Fast Forward" to "Rewind" mode, but the reality is media has gone into continuous time-shifting mode. And it's not the result of DVRs, VCRs or even computer hard drives or online servers. It's because of the people who use it.

JOE MANDESE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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