Thursday, February 19, 2009

Ascending the Peaks of Fabulousness

Did you know that there was a television show that "defined a generation"? 

About "the school where America came of age"?

Apparently Beverly Hills 90210 was way more momentous than I ever thought. All those times I wasn't watching it seem kind of wasted now. No wonder I'm so out of touch with my generation.

This really doesn't have anything to do with anything except that despite many years' exposure to advertising, I am still occasionally startled by the grandiose language used to hype things (in this case, the new 90210 show, advising me of its hot new awesomeness by summoning up the generation-defining ghost of the original).

Seriously, "the school where America came of age"? The whole country? All in unison?

And what does it mean to "define a generation" with a TV show, anyway? I suppose by saying "this generation was a group of people who potentially watched this TV show," which might be true, but is not very informative. 

But I imagine they mean to suggest that this show, rather than setting the parameters of the generation, actually says something about the generation: perhaps, as TV.com reports, something about how its members dealt with "travails as they tried to maintain their friendship while dealing with romances, family and personal crises, tragedies and countless drug addictions."

This is about who we are as a generation! 

If only we had been watching TV at the time. Some of us were probably too busy struggling with our countless drug addictions. Others of us simply didn't have televisions. In any case, I'm going to define my cohort right now as the Left Out of 90210 Generation. Life has been hard for us in many ways, but we bear up as best we can.

I'm not actually trying to rag on the show, which I never saw but do not claim to be too good for, and which could have been great for all I know. (I could Netflix it!...nah.) 

I just want to quibble with clearly exaggerated descriptions, because I sometimes like to get nitpicky about language.

I would not go far in advertising. 

"Watch this show: it's based on another show of which you may have heard!" would be my kind of tag line. 

Now that's something that could define a generation.

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