(Image taken/edited from the National Film And Sound Archive of Australia)
This was written for the university subject, BCM241.
Some of my earliest memories of childhood are of watching old television programs from the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s, and old polygonal video games with their charming simplicity, at least graphically speaking. Being born at the turn of the millennium, I arrived near the cusp of the analogue and digital switchover, to put it in an overly dramatic way. Soon, the DVDs of tomorrow would take over the VHS tapes of yesterday…which would then be taken over by the Blu-Ray, but that’s perhaps a discussion for another time. What I do remember quite clearly, however, are those earlier, more primitive days before thin, shiny discs and digital distribution dominated the landscape. When dial-up modems with tiny connections were king, where rows of old CD cases with software and music lined burgundy wood shelves, and where you had to put up with a clunky VCR with big, beefy buttons that made a satisfying ‘ka-chunk’ sound which you’d hear by pressing any of the manifold buttons on its surface or by slotting a VHS tape into the open flap and hearing the tape whirr around. There was a certain magic to it that hasn't gone exactly, but has just changed somewhat. Maybe that magic is now what access to the ‘modern’ Internet is or it’s the smooth gliding of fingers and thumbs across clean capacitive touch screens.
Whatever the case may be, I still look back with fondness on those early days as anyone does when looking back at their past through rose-tinted spectacles, where the much discussed and much maligned phenomena of nostalgia rears its ugly head. But it’s nonetheless true that “both nostalgia and television are [both firmly] attached to the idea of the home…” (Holdsworth 2011, p. 97) more than anything else and that’s certainly the case for me. Rarely do I remember only the media or the shows I was watching. Instead, I also recall the environment I was in. The white floor tiles, the old play-mats, the silver bezel of the television monitor, it’s just as memorable as those old kids shows like Blue’s Clues, Madeline, Rolie Polie Olie, Arthur or Bear In The Big Blue House. And then, of course, there’s my formative years as a ‘gamer' which started with the very same television, watching my brother play through the original Crash Bandicoot games or my dad completing the Tony Hawk’s series, all on the original PlayStation (which has a nostalgic power all its own, for anyone who remembers the startup sequence’s powerful, booming tones).
These shows, games and consoles all of which generally came through the same TV in the same room influenced me greatly in no small measure, as does anything in the early stages of life. As although I might not be able to remember specific episodes or characters, I can still recall morals, lessons and enjoyable memories with those shows’ and games’ universes, valuable ideas that I’ve consciously and subconsciously taken with me into my adult life. Although, that being said, I still have a hell of a lot more left to learn.
References:
CorneliusJRR 2010, Sony Playstation Logo Intro (PAL) Europe.avi, online video, 8 April, CorneliusJRR, viewed 25th August 2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgcP8fBlo4>.
Holdsworth, A 2011, Television, Memory, and Nostalgia, Macmillan Publishers Limited, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom.
Whatever the case may be, I still look back with fondness on those early days as anyone does when looking back at their past through rose-tinted spectacles, where the much discussed and much maligned phenomena of nostalgia rears its ugly head. But it’s nonetheless true that “both nostalgia and television are [both firmly] attached to the idea of the home…” (Holdsworth 2011, p. 97) more than anything else and that’s certainly the case for me. Rarely do I remember only the media or the shows I was watching. Instead, I also recall the environment I was in. The white floor tiles, the old play-mats, the silver bezel of the television monitor, it’s just as memorable as those old kids shows like Blue’s Clues, Madeline, Rolie Polie Olie, Arthur or Bear In The Big Blue House. And then, of course, there’s my formative years as a ‘gamer' which started with the very same television, watching my brother play through the original Crash Bandicoot games or my dad completing the Tony Hawk’s series, all on the original PlayStation (which has a nostalgic power all its own, for anyone who remembers the startup sequence’s powerful, booming tones).
These shows, games and consoles all of which generally came through the same TV in the same room influenced me greatly in no small measure, as does anything in the early stages of life. As although I might not be able to remember specific episodes or characters, I can still recall morals, lessons and enjoyable memories with those shows’ and games’ universes, valuable ideas that I’ve consciously and subconsciously taken with me into my adult life. Although, that being said, I still have a hell of a lot more left to learn.
References:
CorneliusJRR 2010, Sony Playstation Logo Intro (PAL) Europe.avi, online video, 8 April, CorneliusJRR, viewed 25th August 2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgcP8fBlo4>.
Holdsworth, A 2011, Television, Memory, and Nostalgia, Macmillan Publishers Limited, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom.
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