Oh, what would my formative years have been like without Aaron Spelling? Making a big bowl of popcorn and settling into my beanbag chair every Wednesday night to watch Farrah Fawcett flip her hair, to see what Jacqueline Smith was wearing that night, to feel inadequate that I would never have a figure like…well, any of them, or teeth that white or hair that stayed where it was put. How else would I have soothed the indignity of my dateless Saturday nights if not for “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island?”
Of course I was over him by the time his list of braless, brainless horrors entered the 80s and 90s. Dynasty, Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place…I had better things to do.
But where would television be today without Spelling setting the bar so low?
Probably no different. After all, at the time of his death, he still had a number of properties in production. But his influence – the dumbing down of the scripts, the skewing down of the demographic – sadly, still lives on.
Yes, I know, it’s the height of bad taste to rag on someone who just died, but for the King of Bad Taste, perhaps it’s merely an homage.
If not for his noticeably jiggling actresses, how would we have Baywatch?
If not for bringing Ricardo Mantalban out of mothballs, how would we have the Wrath of Kahn?
And Joan Collins…well, she would have overdosed on plastic surgery, painkillers and guys like Astin Kutcher if she hadn’t been given a chance to strut her stuff again.
Who else would have brought to life the bodice-ripping novels I wasted my teenaged summers with?
OK, somebody else might have done these things, but they wouldn’t have done it with such…such…wonderful tackiness.
In fact, I think the word “tacky” didn’t exist before he burst into 70s television. It followed beanbag chairs, velour jumpsuits and guys who wore seventeen pounds of gold chains to discos.
But maybe as a culture we needed the kicky kitsch of the 70s. We were licking our wounds from a war we shouldn’t have been involved with, couldn’t win, and ended up slinking away from with our tails between our legs and both eyes blackened. We had a president who’d resigned in disgrace and we needed things to be Lite and Fluffy. We needed Saturday Night Live and pet rocks and Billy Beer and The Pina Colada Song (OK, maybe we didn’t need that). We needed to turn on our TVs and watch braless girls with big hair and blue eyeshadow saying stupid things and, occasionally, wrestling in mud. Maybe it didn’t solve all our problems but was a kind of comfort food.
And Spelling kept on tapping into that cultural zeitgeist, into the 80s when everyone was supposedly flush but us and we could watch beautiful actors and actresses spending their money and discovering that all their millions really didn’t make them happier or any better than we were. And into the 90s when the Melrose Place and 90210 kids, borne of the “Me” generation, tried to find their souls but really never could, and continued to roam the land of plenty, feeling bereft (and each other).
We may never see an episode of “ER” where a couple of the interns get down in their underwear in a mud pit, but still, Spelling will live on in TV Land.
And I'll always have Wednesday nights with Farrah.
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4 comments:
I could have forgiven him almost anything, but not for Tori. Being nice to one's daughter is one thing, but not at the expense of the rest of the world.
Does anyone believe she would have ended up in front of a television camera if not for who her father was?
The Mod Squad and Starsky & Hutch were two from my youth that are his...of course, he had so many, I'm sure everyone has one in their closet somewhere.
As for his daughter, I couldn't agree more, Mike.
I hadn't even heard he'd died until I saw this post. Wow. Talk about the end of an era.
Tori is amazingly homely for someone so famous. And when you listen to her attempt to act, or just speak in general, well, it's grating. It's like waiting in line at a restaraunt you're not sure you're going to like the food at. Knowing that once you reach your table you'll have to wait some more, and that in the end, it probably won't be worth it.
I don't think I ever heard Tori speak, although I don't think I want to, now. At least Angelina Jolie and Nicholas Cage had the (at least on the outside) sense to change their names. But at least they have some talent. And they don't sound bad, either. Nicholas Cage was one of my first movie-star crushes. After Frank Langella and Han Solo, of course...:)
Mike: thanks for stopping by Op-land. I don't think I've seen you here before. Welcome!
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