Today’s meme – unmet expectations.
1. What, in your experience, was the most overrated movie of all time?
I may get shunned by my arty friends, but Eight 1/2 by Fellini left me totally cold.
2. What was the most overrated album?
That would have to be Sweet Baby James by James Taylor. I never quite figured out what the attraction was supposed to be with Taylor.
3. What is the most overrated book?
Catcher In The Rye. Yeah, I know, Salinger, important, seminal, blah blah blah. Left me very cold both times I read it. Gank.
4. What is the most overrated blog?
Left-wing: Why does anyone pay attention to Pandagon or Jesus General at all?
Right-wing: Gotta say that the Rottweiler wore thin on me very, very fast.
5. What was the most overrated television show?
Bet you thought I was going to say West Wing, right?
Probably I Love Lucy. “Gee – do you suppose Lucy will try to get a job with the band? Five bucks Ricky doesn’t react with blustery machismo…DOH! Lost again!”
6. What would you call the most overrated magazine?
“George” was desperately awful.
7. Who was the most overrated classical composer?
Stravinsky. Genius, yes, but everything he ever wrote gave me a headache.
8. Who is the most overrated pop songwriter?
John Lennon. Without McCartney to round off the edges of his boundless cynicism and self-absorption, he was just unbearable.
My commenters were right. I was wrong. The Doors – Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore, singularly and as a group – have this coveted title all to themselves, in a league of their own. I’m no Lennon fan, but let’s deny credit where no credit is truly due.
9. What is the most overrated genre in any form of art?
Xtreem pantomime.
Catcher in the Rye is the most over rated book, ever. I can’t believe you read it twice!
Most over-rated (or over-hyped?) movie: Titanic. What utter crap.
Have to agree with you on John Lennon and “Catcher in the Rye”.
Album: Eagles “Hotel California” (don’t like the Eagles, so naturally….I think it’s overrated!). Or how about “Thriller”? Or how about “Born in the USA”? Ha-just said that to get your goat….!
Actually, I think this all come down to a matter of personal taste. I don’t like Baroque Classical, so I’d say Bach was overrated…but I know that’s silly. I would say Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Chopin are fantastic (well, and even Stravinsky!) and others say overrated….
“Eight 1/2. . .James Taylor . . Catcher In The Rye. . . I Love Lucy. . .John Lennon”
Nope no Baby Boomers here, nothing to see, move along.
Of all the things for someone to obsess over….
Can I add an additional category?
Most over-rated actor or actress?
Robert Redford. Has Redford ever acted in a movie where he didn’t play the character as “Robert Redford”?
Rick:
Have you ever heard of old movies shown on TV or available to rent? Eight 1/2
Or oldies stations? James Taylor…John Lennon
Or required reading in high school and college? Catcher In The Rye
Or syndication? I Love Lucy
The point of the exercise is “all-time.” A definition of “all-time” would include more than “since 1987.”
Lighten up Paul:
Hell I agree with Mitch’s list. Thinking Boomer cultural archtypes overrated even helps establish Mitch’s anti-boomer cred with the younger generation.
I just thought it funny that after so vigorously asserting his non-boomerness, Mitch immediately produces a totally boomer centric list.
Well, Rick, while I agree that boomer archetypes’ importance has been overrated, let’s remember that I grew up working for the Boomer Man. I worked in TONS of oldies radio, and grew up in a society that was run by baby boomers, for baby boomers. My first radio job (I was 16) involved playing ALL the usual stuff – Beatles, Stones, Taylor, yadda yadda. And all the boomer icons were still on TV, because they were a key market segment!
So if this helps to curb your unseemly obsession with the subject, I was surrounded by boomerisms as a child. But I never felt part of that culture.
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Xtreem pantomime???
Is this pantomime loose in the wild or still sequestered in a lab somewhere? When can we start hunting them – is there a bag limit?
What is the most overrated genre in any form of art?
I would say Performance art starting with Laurie Anderson
I’m not sure if what you rate as “overated” is truly overated. I think it just that we as a society have been repetively force fed the same old movies, song, artists of the boomer generation because they are such a large market segment so that the people selling this stuff always want the easiest and largest market segment. Some of what’s listed is good, it’s the taste in my mouth being forced fed the same stuff all the time and then telling me that I like it.
Titanic is one of my favorite movies because of the story. It’s the extent that they took and the details in the big boat. All the way from the boiler room scences to the lower class cabins to the upper class cabins. THe special effects were great.
3. What is the most overrated book? Great Expectations. Painfully uninteresting. If the St. Louis Park schools wanted to ban that instead of Huck Finn, I might back them up.
5. What was the most overrated television show? 90210.
8. Who is the most overrated pop songwriter? Jim Morrison
9. What is the most overrated genre in any form of art? So many too choose from…Free form jazz, mime, 80% of what’s in the Walker Museum, musicals, but I pick rap.
Bogus Gold: The “troglodyte strain of conservatism”? My, aren’t you something….artsy AND some other “strain” of conservatism-the liberal strain, perhaps? I’m guessing you’d be surprised at what “troglodyte conservatives” know and appreciate….
I’ll do a few of these:
4. What is the most overrated book?
Ulysses by James Joyce. When it was first published, book editors had to defend it vigorously from critics that claimed it was too hard to read; Joyce focused more on highbrow writing technique than simply telling a story. This book has ruined novelwriting because too many writers are more concerned with showing off than gripping the reader’s attention.
5. What was the most overrated television show?
I could pick practically any sitcom except for The Cosby Show as overrated. They all bore me.
I agree with Mitch about I Love Lucy’s predictable script. The only show that was more predictable was Bewitched: Esmerelda casts a spell on Darren that causes misery until Samantha figures out what’s going on.
6. What would you call the most overrated magazine?
Rosie. It takes some kind of person to kill a magazine with a 134-year history (McCall’s) inside of six months. Rosie O’Donnell is some kind of person.
One more:
9. What is the most overrated genre in any form of art?
Anything endorsed by the elitist art community and christened with an McKnight Fellowship that inspires me to think “Madman with a brush/stage/chisel/welder/camera.”
“Who is the most overrated pop songwriter? Jim Morrison”
He would qualify if he wrote complete songs. He didn’t–he wrote the lyrics. Ray Manzarek, Robbie Keiger and John Densmore wrote The Doors’ music.
What is the most overrated book? Great Expectations. Painfully uninteresting. If the St. Louis Park schools wanted to ban that instead of Huck Finn, I might back them up.
I dunno know about that, the scene where she sicced the robot monkeys on Pip was pretty cool.
Colleen has the most intriguing comment above.
Bogus Gold: The “troglodyte strain of conservatism”? My, aren’t you something….artsy (snip) I’m guessing you’d be surprised at what “troglodyte conservatives” know and appreciate….
I confess it never even crossed my mind that someone would intentionally self-identify as a “troglodyte conservative.” It’s too big a word for J. B. Doubtless to know, and I wasn’t really thinking of anyone else.
Are there others who think of themselves as troglodytes out there similarly offended? Let me just offer, “Snort, Grunt, Fart!” I understand these words soothe you people. No harm done then.
Paul, good point on Morrison.
Staying with the dead rock star theme, I’ll change my vote to Kurt Cobain.
tw. robot monkeys– the monitor almost got an iced tea watch.
Overated movie – Apocalypse Now
Colleen-
I think the “troglodyte strain of conservatism” enjoys metrical poetry and ‘free verse’ poetry that actually works (cf Ginsberg and Ted Hughes).
Here’s a bit of Hughes, now deceased, once the Poet Laureate of England, now known in the US, unfortunately, as “Mr. Sylvia Plathe”.
Doggone it Mitch I think you’d better remove comment
http://www.shotinthedark.info/wp/index.php/index.php/2007/03/23/overpowered-by-meme/#comment-9322
I think I’ve violated copyright. Sorry.
Paul-
You and I could have an interesting conversation.
Re The Doors. Morrison’s lyrics were the kind of tripe undergrads think are profound. Somehow for all his hip detachment he never sang about what it would be like to die in a bathtub in a Paris hotel when he was 27 years old.
You and I could have an interesting conversation.
I think we could, Terry.
Somehow for all his hip detachment he never sang about what it would be like to die in a bathtub in a Paris hotel when he was 27 years old.
Maybe he did, but burned the manuscript while on acid. See page 114 of No One Gets Out of Here Alive.
Morrison’s lyrics were the kind of tripe undergrads think are profound.
If we’re talking Overated Profound Undergrad Tripe, my vote would be for not song lyrics, but a short story; A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor. 50 years of college classroom debate generated by a simple writing exercise: Creating a group a characters, then trading the main attributes of those characters amongst themselves. I hated the story when I read it in college, and reading it again 25 years later didn’t change my opinion.
You are all right, of course; the Doors were the most loathsome, overrated thing in the history of pop culture; a Holiday Inn lounge act with a batspittle-crazy “leader” whose dozey drug-induced drivel got lapped up by a generation of people who couldn’t discriminate between tripe and BAD tripe.
I sit corrected.
Camille Paglia thinks Jim Morrison was a great rock poet. I telya’ the woman is the most overrated critic of the 20th (&21st) century.
Paul-
Flannery O’Connor’s trick is to reveal the profundity that lies so very close to the surface in otherwise ordinary lives. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” has some excellent examples of foreshadowing as well.
The only authors I was introduced to in eng lit that I have stuck with are Hemingway & Cheever. Hemingway is out of style these days (too macho I guess) but at his best he imbued his plain, terse narratives with deep meaning. Some people say, though, that a mark of a good writer is that he or she is difficult to parody. Hemingway definitely loses on that count.
Cheever is magnificent. If the New Yorker is remembered for one thing, it should be for publishing Cheever’s short stories. I’m sure that he influenced Night Shyalaman’s scriptwriting.
Flannery O’Connor’s trick is to reveal the profundity that lies so very close to the surface in otherwise ordinary lives. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” has some excellent examples of foreshadowing as well.
I know that, Terry; but I still think that story is overated and annoying. My opinion.
You are all right, of course; the Doors were the most loathsome, overrated thing in the history of pop culture; a Holiday Inn lounge act with a batspittle-crazy “leader” whose dozey drug-induced drivel got lapped up by a generation of people who couldn’t discriminate between tripe and BAD tripe.
Mitch, tell us how you really feel. Don’t hold it in.
Hey, I loved George magazine – and it would only have improved if JFKJr had stuck around longer…
Suggestion for Nordeaster re Great Expectations – read it again. (Seriously.) I loathed it the first time i read it, but 5 years later read it again & found it brilliant. It could happen.
And Mitch, thanks for admitting you don’t completely hate West Wing 😉