2D or 3D?

My mother was about the same age as the characters in the movie Gidget when it was filmed in 1959.  Gidget takes place (I assume, but I don’t think they ever say) in California.  Was Mom like Gidget?  I mean she grew up in NY.  The only beach she knew was a lake beach.  But were she and her friends like Gidget, Moondoggie, Stinky and Kahuna?  Having met her friends after decades of growing up, I can’t really imagine it.

I can’t see Mom walking up to her friends and saying, “Wow, Bonnie, that’s the ultimate!” or “Golly, Donnie, don’t be so square!”  Nope, even trying hard, I can’t see it!

Of course, I can’t see me doing or saying anything like the characters in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Breakfast Club or Dirty Dancing either.  Are movies really a reflection of the way people are?  I know they are just entertainment, but would they still be that way if they depicted people more the way they might really be?  Oh, please don’t tell me that the reality shows of the 21^st century are the way real people are and act.  I do not think that, if the cameras were not there, the Jersey Kids would really act like that, or that the Kardashians are THAT way and that The Real Housewives of are real (when do they clean?...before the cameras come, hello!).  If it is, if this is the way teens and adolescents really are, then I am truly afraid.

Let’s not grow to be like the characters they are banging us upside the head with.  Let’s be more like real people and what real people used to be like before media influences, before nobody wanted to be themselves, when people wanted to be a person and not a caricature. And leave the artificial life forms as entertainment. Remember, unless real people manipulate technology, TV and movies are 2-dimensional.