Daryl Hannah in ‘At Play in the Fields of the Lord’ (1991)
This film is now 30 years old.
On the relativity of time:
When I was completing my set of 1959 baseball cards, The Jazz Singer was 30 years old, and those thirty years seemed like they must have belonged to ancient times. In contrast, 1991 does not seem to me to be very different from today or very far in the past.
For reference, consult Hegel’s famous essay, “On the relativity of time,” and Kant’s famous rebuttal, delivered while grabbing his crotch, “I got yer relativity right here, douchebag.”
I came up about a dozen cards short along with a few bubblegum cavities in ’59. That is a long time ago.
Now ’91. What with the “End of History” optimism , the most efficient American war ever, and the general optimism that we would never again have anything worse than a mild recession, that also does seem to me forever in the past.
And now for something completely .., it seems to me that the Browns’ obliteration of the Bengals in Cincy and their personnel move of last week might not be entirely unrelated.
I think my point may have been worded poorly, as I meant to comment on films rather than society in general.
The Jazz Singer seemed ancient and horribly outdated in thirty years, as if it came from a time that seemed as if it never could have happened at all. The technology had changed as rapidly and as dramatically as the attitudes behind it. Compare that to 1959 movies like Ben Hur or North by Northwest.
In contrast, many films from the 80s and early 90s still seem contemporary.
On that subject, I also recommend Robert Benchley’s “My Ten Years in a Quandary.”