LPTs for the generations to live up to their archetypal role

[sbarrera]

(06-22-2021, 04:14 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Is today's Fourth Turning team fulfilling their roles? Here's a great reminder of what the roles are, played out perfectly on Where In Time is Carmen San Diego (produced 1996-1997), an award-winning children's history quiz show with elaborate staging and tight production and scripts, with challenging questions for everyone:





Carmen Sandiego (played by Janine LaManna born June 14, 1966, Xer), villain, steals something from the past that changes history forever. A real Crisis!
The Chief, ultra-typical charismatic, prophet guide defines the mission to save history and offers the rewards Lynne Thigpen Boomer, lived 1948-2003
Squadron Leader, ultra-typical slacker (as shown in Season 2)--turned-super energetic nomad manager/commander and brave tactician Kevin Shinick Xer born March 19, 1969
time pilots, who navigate history by supplying fact fuel for the time skimmer through achieving data boosts, and who capture the loot and the villains, Millennials born about 1984
Engine Crew, very-competent and stylish Xer technicians, includes
Alaine Kashian, born October 27, 1971 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1293256/
John Lathan https://www.abouttheartists.com/artists/...ohn-lathan
Owen Taylor, performer in Cats and Candide https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff...ylor-71333

with great music!

I watched this episode; I can totally see your point, Eric. Though I don't think I could get into this show, it's just too noisy and annoying. It's interesting the way the generations line up to their roles in the 4T constellation, even though they are all one life phase behind. Meaning the Heroes are children, the Nomads are young adults and the Prophet is in mid-life. It's like a dress rehearsal for the 4T. If only we could get to this state in the real world, not just in a TV show.

I also noticed how stressed the kid looks at the very end; Millennials are pressured and it showed on his face.

[sbarrera]

(06-25-2021, 06:37 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-25-2021, 02:08 PM)sbarrera Wrote: Eric, I wish I had time to watch these videos. It sounds intriguing.

Depending on the time, generations in a film may be opposite in generational archetype from the  characters that they portray. As an example, the original Star Wars has no prominent Lost (then mostly too old) or X actors (then too young) to play Adaptive/Artist roles. 

Obi Wan Kenobi is clearly an Idealist as an austere figure from a rapidly-fading time. He has the moral authority of the Grey Champion. Alec Guinness, a British GI,  who had already had a long and distinguished career in movies, portrayed this character. But note well that Ian Cushing (1913-1994) plays an imperial overlord as Grand Muff Tarkin, the sort of person who lusts for power for its own sake and exercises it brutally. For this I see Axis war criminals Koki Hirota (Prime Minister of Japan during the butchery of Shanghai), Wilhelm Frick (Nazi Minister of the Interior before Himmler, who formulated Nazi legal codes including the Nuremberg Laws), Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (who turned the Wehrmacht into accomplices of the Nazi New Order of mass murder), and Rodolfo Graziani, butcher of the Italian Empire in Africa. Three of those four died dangling with ropes around their necks, and I am astonished that Graziani did not end up much the same way. 

Idealists can do great harm, too.   

Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is a pecuniary mercenary who ends up on the right side to save his skin. He has burned the Empire a few times too many to avoid being a fugitive. He's good at what he does, and he is the perfect mentor for a pair of still-wet-behind-the-ears Heroes. Harrison Ford in real life is a late-wave Silent, but he plays a rogue who had to go onto the straight-and-narrow just to be useful enough to survive. 

Darth Vader is really two actors: David Prowse (1935-2020) on the screen as the physical actor and James Earl Jones as the voice of the character. Both are Silent, and they play a character arguably the worst possible Nomad/Reactive type: someone whose morals are largely to take revenge on those who have hurt him or get in his way.   

 Luke and Leia are both Boomers (Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher), but they are clearly Hero-like figures in the saga. They may stand for broad principles from the distant past but have no obvious stake in the preservation of a decrepit, moribund pre-Crisis world. 

....OK, just consider two of the most frequent performers in Western movies. John Wayne is a GI who mostly plays Gilded characters; in Western movies, Clint Eastwood is a real-life Silent who mostly plays Gilded figures in any Western movies. Both were fine actors, and most fine actors can portray people very dissimilar to themselves. OK, the Gilded are a strange composite of a generation that started as undeniably Reactive/Nomad but that took on many Civic/Hero traits if on the winning side of the American Civil War. The Lost were never that, and X will never be that.

There's no doubt that Star Wars fits into the generational archetypes very neatly, and the whole Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey. 

[Eric the Green]

Yes, Star Wars was deliberately patterned after the Hero's journey story, and many other epics follow the pattern unintentionally too.

The Harrison Ford character is like Gen X, and Obi Wan Konobi is an elder prophet, and the hero is like a Millennial. Of course, Star Wars being made in 1977, the actors were actually not of those generations, whereas in Where in Time is Carmen San Diego they were, and it was like a preview of how the 4T constellation would play their roles once the 4T began. Many heroic stories naturally put themselves in a 4T-like situation, so those generational roles will be portrayed. Whether we are playing the roles out now as we should is another question. Lots of folks have given up on the Boomers to do so, but it's a big society, and many Boomers still are. Thanks for watching the video, Steve. I think all 4T fans should.

[pbrower2a]

(06-27-2021, 01:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Yes, Star Wars was deliberately patterned after the Hero's journey story, and many other epics follow the pattern unintentionally too.

The Harrison Ford character is like Gen X, and Obi Wan Konobi is an elder prophet, and the hero is like a Millennial. Of course, Star Wars being made in 1977, the actors were actually not of those generations, whereas in Where in Time is Carmen San Diego they were, and it was like a preview of how the 4T constellation would play their roles once the 4T began. Many heroic stories naturally put themselves in a 4T-like situation, so those generational roles will be portrayed. Whether we are playing the roles out now as we should is another question. Lots of folks have given up on the Boomers to do so, but it's a big society, and many Boomers still are. Thanks for watching the video, Steve. I think all 4T fans should.

It's hardly surprising that relatively few movies are made about 80 years after the event takes place. With few exceptions people don't want to see what was gone in the last corresponding generational area to the one in which they live because they are likely to see it again. OK, Gone with the Wind was as successful as any movie in its year of release even if there was a war potentially as calamitous for many nations as the American Civil War was for the American South. Western movies about the  1T of the late 1860's through the early 1880's largely went into hiatus during the High, with The Searchers (1956) nearly in line. To be sure, Westerns did well in the American High -- on television, with Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and The Virginian. Bonanza was about as close to cinematic quality as series  television until pay-TV blurred the line between cinema and television. Between these, half-hour series such as The Rifleman and Have Gun Will Travel,  there was no shortage of Western drama available. OK, the Wild West was far from the reality of suburban middle-class life in the American High. The Gilded had some GI-like traits... but many not-so-GI-like traits. Roughing it is not something I associate with GI's who experienced more than their share during WWII.

So actors' personal archetypes and movies of the time rarely match. Actors do go into character, and even someone like me with no dramatic training would have just as easily played a Gilded, Progressive, Lost, GI, or Silent character as a Missionary character. So if the setting were the American Civil War in 1970, then as a child star I would have had to play a Progressive. In 1990? Gilded, of course even if that is the generation least like mine. Now? Transcendental. Those are the generational roles that I would have had to play in a depiction of the American Civil War. Going into character for a competent actor is no more complicated than getting into period clothing. OK, so what if it were the Boom Awakening? I'd be a contemporary kid in the Boom Awakening era. About 1990? Silent. About 2010? GI. Now? Lost.

[Eric the Green]

I love those Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego shows. Seeing Steve's comment about them being noisy, I notice that the prophet and the nomads in these programs are rather loud and are narrating an exciting adventure story with a crucial mission, while the millennials are calm, heroic, cooperative and data oriented; just the nature of our generations! No quiet introverted and rather-conforming, helpful young artists involved yet!

[galaxy]

Thought I'd throw this in since people are now discussing examples of the saeculum in television and film - there's a movie that was released earlier this year called Voyagers that was pretty remarkable to me. It has a bland and cliche plot (basically "Lord of the Flies in space, but sexy") and is full of missed opportunities for character development and philosophical thought (seriously, it could have been so philosophical), but here's the thing: as the movie progresses, there is an incredibly clear progression through a High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis, and then another High.

There aren't really any obvious archetypes in the characters, because the story takes place over probably just a few days or weeks and with the same characters throughout, but it's amazing to see such dramatic and clear tone changes that so perfectly fit the cycle.


It makes me wonder about where we can see these patterns exist on smaller scales. I recently tried to describe periods of my own life with turnings, and was surprised by how well it fit.

[sbarrera]

(07-06-2021, 09:24 AM)galaxy Wrote: Thought I'd throw this in since people are now discussing examples of the saeculum in television and film - there's a movie that was released earlier this year called Voyagers that was pretty remarkable to me. It has a bland and cliche plot (basically "Lord of the Flies in space, but sexy") and is full of missed opportunities for character development and philosophical thought (seriously, it could have been so philosophical), but here's the thing: as the movie progresses, there is an incredibly clear progression through a High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis, and then another High.

There aren't really any obvious archetypes in the characters, because the story takes place over probably just a few days or weeks and with the same characters throughout, but it's amazing to see such dramatic and clear tone changes that so perfectly fit the cycle.


It makes me wonder about where we can see these patterns exist on smaller scales. I recently tried to describe periods of my own life with turnings, and was surprised by how well it fit.

For some reason sci-fi is great at catching on to these kinds of archetypal themes and cycles, even if it is schlock. I would happily watch this movie but I know no one else in my family will want to so I'll have to wait for a free evening with just me; that's usually how it goes for me with bad sci-fi. 

[galaxy]

(07-06-2021, 11:12 AM)sbarrera Wrote: For some reason sci-fi is great at catching on to these kinds of archetypal themes and cycles, even if it is schlock. I would happily watch this movie but I know no one else in my family will want to so I'll have to wait for a free evening with just me; that's usually how it goes for me with bad sci-fi. 

I think it might be less "catching on" and more subconscious pattern recognition, along with, potentially, something that is innate to human psychology. I seem to remember reading that George Lucas heard of The Hero's Journey after already having written part of Star Wars, and realized that it fit.

Anyway, if you watch it, let me know what you think!