A Little Cultural Research...

So my wife and I were cruising on Netflix the other night after the kids went to bed and decided to watch an 80s classic, Roxanne.

For those not familiar, it is a 1987 film starring Steve Martin and Darryl Hannah about a guy with a really big nose who falls in love with a beautiful woman. It's a modern telling of the 19th Century play Cyrano de Bergerac. The movie is nominally okay.

But it sparked a conversation. We noted that for awhile in the 80s Darryl Hannah was one of those A-list actresses who starred in a lot of big movies but now you don't hear that much about her. On the other side Steve Martin is still going strong.

"Why is that?" we wondered.

So we went on through our week pondering until, thanks to @loswhit over at ragamuffinsoul.com, I came across this:



Now, about 3/4 of the way through this incredibly bizarre video, there is Darryl Hannah...

...hiding her face

...and possible attempts to maintain youth through some facial modifications.

...amid a sea of other used-to-be's, has-beens, and one-hit-wonders.

And this experience left me feeling...

I don't know how it left me feeling.

Maybe sad, sick, nostalgic, amused, confused?

Here were all these people who we once lifted on a pedestal - about 90 percent of them idols and icons from my childhood - and now where are they?

It appears their life has been hard and sad since they left the limelight. And now these once examples of our society's pinnacle of success are reduced to a joke on Swedish TV.

So here are my questions for you:

1) How does this make you feel?

2) What age is the cutoff for this video even to make sense? (As I had a discussion with a room full of teenagers this week in which I found out none of them know who the Borg or Jean-Luc Picard were!)

Happy Commenting!