Recently, in one of those moments that divides the internet like nothing else in the past 27 seconds, a video in which a young woman confessed that she didn’t know who Madonna is went viral. There seemed to be two typical responses to this: Older people bemoaning the fact that today’s youth is so uncultured, and other young people doubling down on the fact that they, too, do not know who Madonna is. One responder said he’d always thought Madonna was a “concept.” Another thought she was dead. And my favorite reply came from the young person who thought Madonna was – and I quote – “Lady Gaga’s Alter Ego.”
Now as one of those aforementioned older people, it would be easy for me to point and laugh at this uncultured lass and her foolish ways… but the truth is, that would be pretty disingenuous. After all, why should we expect any member of the younger generations to be aware of Madonna? When’s the last time she had a hit song? The last time she was in a movie? And let’s be honest here, although she did write that one bestselling book, the rest of her literary output hasn’t made the same sort of waves, which of course is just one of the many things she has in common with J.D. Salinger.
The whole thing does, however, point to a larger issue that I, as a teacher, run into on a very regular basis. By and large, I find that the young people of today have very little awareness of any culture – not just pop culture, but culture in general – that precedes their own.
I – a child of the late 70’s who did most of his growing up in the 80’s – always remember having an awareness of older culture. Sure, a lot of the cartoons I grew up with were the 30-minute toy commercials of the era like Transformers and Masters of the Universe, but those were mixed with stuff like Looney Tunes and The Flintstones, cartoons that our parents and even grandparents watched, but were repackaged for our generation. Live action TV worked much the same way. Of course we had new shows, but not enough of them to fill an entire broadcast day, so we were fed those alongside a diet of shows that went off the air years or even decades before we were born like The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, or The Honeymooners. And of course, we grew up on genre shows like the original Star Trek, the Adam West Batman and George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman.
A lot of this, of course, is because we were most likely exposed to what our parents liked. Once kids my age were old enough to choose our own music we drifted towards hair metal and those 80s pop stars that gave birth to the modern diva, but we still sure as hell knew who Elvis and the Beatles were because our parents played them in the car before the invention of the Sony Walkman allowed children to erect musical barriers on road trips. And although it may surprise some people to learn that I did not grow up as a fan of horror movies, that’s because my parents didn’t watch them. Thanks to my mom, though, I have a not-insubstantial knowledge of live-action Disney movies of the 1960s, and I suppose I may as well admit that one of my earliest crushes was Hayley Mills circa the original Parent Trap movie from 1961.
Hayley is 80 now, but if you saw her in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2024 thriller Trap, you will admit she’s still got it.
Now you may be wondering what difference any of this makes. After all, trends have always come and gone, some culture fades and is replaced. And yes, that has always been the case…for some culture. But not all. There’s an old axiom that 90% of all art — and that includes music, writing, and any other art form you can name – is crap. And that’s true. We remember Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Beethoven. We remember them because they were masters of their craft. But there are thousands of others who lived and worked and created and died at the same time as them whose work has been utterly forgotten, and much of it because it just wasn’t as good.
Not to say nothing good has ever been lost. There have been – and always will be — creators kept down due to class or politics or a million other reasons that have doomed them to obscurity. But while it’s true that many a deserving work has been lost, it’s also true that the things that stand the test of time largely do so because they’re worth preserving, and new generations have always recognized that.
Until now.
Technology has reached a point where everyone has the ability to create their own little bubble, their own personalized feed, where they never have to be exposed to anything except what they teach the algorithm they like already. That’s horrifying to me. And I don’t mean that in a gatekeeping way. Like whatever you like, I don’t care. But if all you ever see is stuff you already like, how will you ever grow?
As an English teacher, it bothers me when someone wants to replace a classic with whatever the Flavor of the Week YA series is in the name of “Engagement,” and not because I don’t think the new stuff can be good. I’ve got no problem teaching, for instance, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels, because they’re well-written and even help with teaching the classics via their many links to Greek Mythology. But reading The Lightning Thief should be a supplement to things like The Odyssey, not an effort to take its place.
I want culture to be additive. I want people to be able to enjoy anything and everything and not dismiss it because it’s old. My favorite part of the school year is when I can tell an 18-year-old is furious at Hamlet for how he mistreats poor Ophelia, because that means I got them to care about a 400-year-old play. How easy is it to get a modern kid to even care about a cartoon from 1987? And sure, it thrills me when a student says, “I scored a 28 on the ACT,” but it thrills me just a liiiiiittle more when that same kid says, “Man, Hamlet did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dirty.”
I try my best. I encourage the kids in my class to seek out classics. I share my own favorites with my family. I am proudly the only parent among my son’s third-grade class with a child who can sing multiple variants of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song. And I could not wait until my niece was of an age where I could give her a copy of Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon for Christmas.
It is possible, you just need to help someone find the value. One of my favorite TikTok feeds is by a young film student who wants to go back and watch all the classics she’s never seen before. Once a week, she randomly chooses a movie from a box full of suggestions and makes a video of herself reacting to it. It’s fun to watch this kid unravel the mystery of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, raid that lost ark with Indiana Jones, or follow the Hobbits as they leave the Shire for the first time. My favorite video of hers is the one where she sobs at the end of The Shawshank Redemption and asks, “Why do the movies my dad tells me to watch always make me cry?”
If I ever meet her dad, I owe him a high-five.
I don’t oppose kids having their own stuff.
They should. They’re entitled to it.
I just want them to remember that Shakespeare wrote some damn good stuff. too.
And Mark Twain. Mary Shelley. Edgar Allan Poe. Charles Dickens. I’d like it for them to know when they’re humming a little Brahms, or that the Scream Ghostface mask is based on a painting by Edvard Munch.
I don’t even want them to forget Madonna.
So don’t shame people for not knowing the stuff from our youth. Share it. Give them a reason to engage. And above all, show them what it means to endure.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Could you imagine a world that forgot Jan Brady? Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t be all bad.
Blake M. Petit 