More than Nostalgia

First of all I think that the website hulu.com has a GREAT name for what it represents, and I am the teacher of naming things! 

Nostalgia? No. Symbiotic — yes!

With the great success that hulu.com has had, it is not surprising that they have an "older" demographic watching them. By that I mean I watch things on television these days and I am sounding like my grandfather: "...there's nothing but crap on tv!" Give me the days of Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, I Dream of Jeanie, Bewitched, Adams Family and The Beverly Hillbillies.  Yes, they were all quite sophomoric, but they were also funny and more informed than the stuff that is on tv nowadays (and there's a word you haven't seen in a while — Nostalgic, yes!)

And while I am here saying that — I might as well keep going. I remember Saturday mornings as a child going either to The Strand or Victory Theaters to see a double feature and some "shorts" that inevitably had something to do with the Three Stooges. And what would childhood have been like without Walt Disney's prolific pool of movies like: Toby Tyler, The Absent-Minded Professor, Flubber, The Parent Trap, Mary Poppins, The Song of the South  and Pollyanna.

I suppose whatever way we look at it Walt Disney was a big part of our lives, and I am not talking about theme parks. He became the form and function on how we saw the world and that lent to a fabric that we seem to be missing these days. We tended to think about things through the prism of Mary Poppins, Toby Tyler, Uncle Remus and Pollyanna — which wasn't really bad company to be in.

The setup inevitably was the same — over and over again — heart-warming, heart-wrenching and happily-ever-after. And it is not like we were all sheep following the shlockiness of it.  We know it was make-believe, but it was also a respite from the woes of our everyday troubles with school work, bullies and puberty.

When Toby Tyler got to ride under the Big Top jumping through a fire hoop; well, that was something for a ten year old to watch! There wasn't a moment to breathe, and somehow we all knew he'd do it, though we were nervous for him just the same.

And when Pollyana fell from the tree next to her bedroom window and became paralyzed — the whole town clambered to her front yard to turn out to pray for her.  Watching that we somehow knew that if something similar befell us we'd have our own set of neighbors doing the same thing. That was a time when you knew everyone's name on your street, and you could count on them for support.

Unfortunately, we have journeyed a long way since then — to where I am not sure? We no longer know our neighbor's name nor do we trust them much. We don't sit down as families to have dinner every night, and even when we do it has to be a special occasion. We all seem to have different schedules and different priorities, even within the same household. We've all become disconnected unless something terrible — like an earthquake in Haiti happens or two large buildings in New York fall down. As neighbors, we've become unfamiliar with each other. And this disjointed feeling starts at the local level and goes all the way up to the pinnacle, our respected leaders, in Congress.

I have heard that there are Democrats and Republicans who share the same hallway within the Capitol and they do not even say hello to each other.  Imagine if they were forced to have dinner with each other every night? How different a Congress and how different this country would be? 

Do you think by returning to a simpler form of living that we may  find life less divisive? I don't know.

We've come a long, long way since Mary Poppins, Toby Tyler and Uncle Remus — and for a brief moment sites like hulu.com can return us to that time. But I can't help but think how a little girl like Pollyanna is needed right now to wander around the halls of Congress to try to bring people to the point just to say "hello."

Do I wax nostalgic? You bet I do.