Analog Dreams

A low-tech childhood was good for stoking the imagination

I was a young child in the late 70s and early 80s, so my entertainment experiences were vastly different from those of kids today. Modern children have the internet and its countless features; portable digital music with incredible sound; handheld electronic devices that carry a year's worth of reading material; video games with complex storylines and lifelike graphics; and huge 3D digital televisions with crystal-clear picture. So, with all that, today's youth will certainly grow up well equipped for the technology-dependent future, but I wonder how creative these generations will be, since they really have everything handed to them and no need to use their imaginations for anything.

As a kid, I played with toys--the solid, handheld variety that didn't have minds of their own; spent a great deal of time outside with friends; and watched a lot of children's shows--especially cartoons--on my family's one modest-sized TV. I soaked up everything from the 60s live-action series Batman and Ultraman to the animated breakfast-cereal companions Super Friends and the other Hanna-Barbera offerings. There was even the occasional comic book: my most frequent reads were the Amazing Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (who also had cartoons). This all sparked loads of creativity in me, leading to hours of writing and (badly) drawing my own adventure stories.

Then Star Wars hit theaters in 1977, and things were ramped up big time. My imagination went wild, and there were tools for venting what was in my little head: I was introduced to 3-3/4" action figures, which were the greatest things I'd ever encountered and cost my parents a lot of dough over the next few years. I was so attached to them that I took a figure carrying case with me on trips; my Darth Vader case still bears an Eastern Airlines baggage sticker from our trip to Toronto in '81. And I roped my neighborhood friends into acting out fantasy scenarios with sticks (or whatever) for props. There was no cosplay back them--costumes were strictly for Halloween--so we had to imagine our regular clothes were space outfits and superhero uniforms.

The early 80s brought video games, first arcade stand-up units and then the Atari home system. These were incredibly crude compared to what kids have now, with pixelated graphics and simple sound effects; suspension of disbelief was important for accepting that the little moving blob on the screen was Superman or E.T. Yet I was totally hooked on those things and would play all day if my parents didn't physically pull me away. This stoked my imagination not only by inspiring plots of my own but also by forcing me to see in the rudimentary visuals things that were not there--fill in the gaps, so to speak.

These days, when I encounter people of my generation who have become professional writers, artists, filmmakers and such, we make references to and use shorthand from our childhood pop-culture experiences, either consciously or by instinct. And I know that, like mine, their own creative output is heavily influenced by the fun we had growing up. These are the kinds of imaginative products the kids of the 21st century couldn't dream of making.

#imagination #creativity #movies #animation #multimedia