You’re correct, but we have lost a lot of quality people this year, right to the end, and some at relatively young ages. You’d also be surprised how many people in their teens and twenties are bummed out by the loss of Gene Wilder (still Willy Wonka), Alan Rickman (Snape) and Muhammad Ali (a towering figure during his lifetime) along with Carrie Fisher. Artists like Prince, Bowie and Leonard Cohen also have their followings amongst younger people.
Add to all those deaths the major body blows that liberal democracy has been taking around the world this year and the triumphs of certified grade-A evil arseholes, and it’s not surprising a lot of people see 2016 as a rubbish year.
Of course. I actually saw that one in a theater. Granted it was at college and free (part of a pre-release focus group).
I felt so bad for Rik Mayall and Carrie Fisher. Not so much for Phoebe Cates.
Since none of her “younger friends” here are stepping up, I guess it falls on me to grant her this wish:
"Actress and author Carrie Fisher, best known for her iconic role as Princess Leia in the George Lucas ‘Star Wars’ films, died Tuesday in a Los Angeles hospital at the age of 60.
When asked for a cause of death, medical staff reported that Fisher drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra."
“Researchers calculated that 43 percent of older Americans believed it was illegitimate for the military to take over if the government were incompetent or failing to do its job, but only 19 percent of millennials agreed. The same generational divide showed up in Europe, where 53 percent of older people thought a military takeover would be illegitimate, while only 36 percent of millennials agreed.”
If this article is to be believed, younger people are pretty much “meh.”
I don’t read that as “meh” so much as “don’t know any better thanks to crappy civics educations.” But six of one, half a dozen of the other. The people who don’t like what happened this year tend to be better educated and more liberal.
If someone is a poorly educated Know-Nothing of any age, chances are he doesn’t think this was a crap year at all in regard to celebrity deaths (“Bowie? Fg." "Prince? Fg ngger." "Ali? Traitorous ngger.” “Fisher? Hollywood Jew,” etc. ad nauseam) or the rise of right-wing populism.
I was six when Star Wars (Sorry, A New Hope will always be Star Wars for me.) came out. Princess Leia was a role model for me. She was smart and funny and ready to grab the blaster to defend herself. In Empire, she even gets to go on the rescue mission and kills the Big Bad. She was awesome in a way that we didn’t often get to see in movies appropriate for kids.
