I went to see the movie ET with my son the other
day. My thought was, well this will be interesting as I saw the
movie twenty years ago. It really wasn't. I think the term classic
has come to mean anything that is at least ten years old. When
we watch Casa Blanca or Citizen Kane or even Gone With The Wind,
there is an epic quality about the story 
that
transcends time. But today we have conveniently done away with
any sense of the epic and given over to, can we make money on
this again?
Certainly the most hilarious version of this repackaging is our
rock bands. We now have fifty, sixty year old men jumping around
the stage in spandex and singing anthems that are what, twenty,
thirty, forty years old. They are termed classic rock bands.
The term classic used to mean something would last, would stand
the test of time when other ideas, fads, groups had been long
forgotten but our current culture defines classic as simply "can
we get these old guys back on stage and can we make some money?"
One would hope that the rockers might rebel and say, now wait
a minute, I'm not sure about this, but of course they like everyone
else need the cash.
I recall seeing an old interview with the woman who wrote the
novel, Peyton Place. The interviewer asked her, do you think
your novel will be read fifty years from now? The woman replied,
"Oh God no." She knew the difference between literature
and entertainment. Ask that same question of someone in the rock
band Stix or Kiss or Fleetwood Mac. The reply would surely be,
of course they will be listening to us. Again, one merely has
to age and then be brought back to be given the definition of
a classic.
Well, back to ET. So I watched the movie. There were the usual
Spielberg tricks. Glowing lights and seventies families in flux
with the overwhelmed Mom and precocious children. There was ET.
There were the mysterious
bad guys. All this was pervaded with a Capra quality that while
somewhat refreshing when it came out was simply warmed over milk
twenty years later. But here was the thing. The story was simply
not that good. The movie was a B movie at best. That is what
came to the front twenty years later. It was a classic I suppose,
but only in that it was classically mediocre.
