I sent an email to a friend last week, asking him whether he had seen “Atomic Blonde.”
“What is it? A beer?,” he asked.
I stifled a chuckle getting his reply. It reminded me of my dad. When asked who Oprah was about 25 years ago, he went, “Who’s Oprah?” Seriously. Dad was an engineer, a plant manager, followed sports, played some golf, volunteered at the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club of Topeka, but he didn’t watch daytime TV or read “People” magazine. He’d never heard of Oprah.
That’s not saying everyone should know what “Atomic Blonde” is. Most people probably haven’t heard of it. And for all I know, my friend might have been messing with me when he asked if it was a beer. It certainly sounds like one.
His email response though got me thinking about popular culture (“Atomic Blonde” is a movie, BTW, from 2017; it’s not too outdated). Some things we pay attention to, and some things we don’t. That feeds into our personal data bank.
The movie stars Charlize Theron. She’s an undercover agent sent to Berlin to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.
Set against the backdrop of the Berlin wall crashing, there’s a historical retrospective feel to the flick. It has great period music, intense fight scenes and lots of intrigue.
It made 100 million in U.S. dollars at the box office, so it had visibility, but if you asked 100 people today what they thought of it or whether they even remembered it coming out, I wonder if you’d get 25 who even knew it was a movie.
Movie buffs would remember it. The rest of us would either yawn, roll our eyes, get a quizzical look on our face or perhaps look you intently in the eye to get more information if asked about movie. Our personal cultural knowledge gets more and more segmented with each passing year. Finding commonality becomes more difficult.
That’s central to our times. We seem more predisposed in 2019 to find what we don’t have in common with each other rather than looking for shared experiences -- things we do together to build bonds of friendship.
This past weekend, I took a 25-mile bicycle trip around Lake Mills, WI. Two other friends joined me. For those of you who know me, I biked 3,800+ miles across North America in 1982, and bike commuted almost daily while living in the Washington, D.C. area for 13 years.
Ironically, the trip this past weekend is the longest I’ve biked in 25+ years, despite my long love of bicycling. Nine hundred people embarked on the trip. No one was on their cell phones. As riders caught up to you, they chatted, then rode on. Several had the Wisconsin Badgers football game on, and that generated conversation. If you’d asked about “Atomic Blonde,” you probably would have gotten a weird look.
People were there for the shared experience. I got to spend time with the two friends, catching up, learning more about their lives, grabbing a few beers and listening to some polka music afterwards.
We’ll remember the trip years from now. We won’t need to think about whether it was a beer or a movie. We’ll treasure the experience and shared memories.
“What is it? A beer?,” he asked.
I stifled a chuckle getting his reply. It reminded me of my dad. When asked who Oprah was about 25 years ago, he went, “Who’s Oprah?” Seriously. Dad was an engineer, a plant manager, followed sports, played some golf, volunteered at the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club of Topeka, but he didn’t watch daytime TV or read “People” magazine. He’d never heard of Oprah.
That’s not saying everyone should know what “Atomic Blonde” is. Most people probably haven’t heard of it. And for all I know, my friend might have been messing with me when he asked if it was a beer. It certainly sounds like one.
His email response though got me thinking about popular culture (“Atomic Blonde” is a movie, BTW, from 2017; it’s not too outdated). Some things we pay attention to, and some things we don’t. That feeds into our personal data bank.
The movie stars Charlize Theron. She’s an undercover agent sent to Berlin to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.
Set against the backdrop of the Berlin wall crashing, there’s a historical retrospective feel to the flick. It has great period music, intense fight scenes and lots of intrigue.
It made 100 million in U.S. dollars at the box office, so it had visibility, but if you asked 100 people today what they thought of it or whether they even remembered it coming out, I wonder if you’d get 25 who even knew it was a movie.
Movie buffs would remember it. The rest of us would either yawn, roll our eyes, get a quizzical look on our face or perhaps look you intently in the eye to get more information if asked about movie. Our personal cultural knowledge gets more and more segmented with each passing year. Finding commonality becomes more difficult.
That’s central to our times. We seem more predisposed in 2019 to find what we don’t have in common with each other rather than looking for shared experiences -- things we do together to build bonds of friendship.
This past weekend, I took a 25-mile bicycle trip around Lake Mills, WI. Two other friends joined me. For those of you who know me, I biked 3,800+ miles across North America in 1982, and bike commuted almost daily while living in the Washington, D.C. area for 13 years.
Ironically, the trip this past weekend is the longest I’ve biked in 25+ years, despite my long love of bicycling. Nine hundred people embarked on the trip. No one was on their cell phones. As riders caught up to you, they chatted, then rode on. Several had the Wisconsin Badgers football game on, and that generated conversation. If you’d asked about “Atomic Blonde,” you probably would have gotten a weird look.
People were there for the shared experience. I got to spend time with the two friends, catching up, learning more about their lives, grabbing a few beers and listening to some polka music afterwards.
We’ll remember the trip years from now. We won’t need to think about whether it was a beer or a movie. We’ll treasure the experience and shared memories.