Watching old movies
This is a post I wrote in October 2023, and now it’s half a year later, but I gotta post it now, because it’s been in the back of my head since.
The original post:
For whatever reason, every time I see old movies popping up Netflix, I’m always kind of intrigued. I’m sort of drawn to them, but only in a way like “I really wanna watch this”, like I’m drawn to the idea of sitting down for a good 70–80 minutes and watching a black-and-white movie from the 1950’s.
Sometimes I do end up watching one, but it’s never as, for the lack of a better word, ‘glorious’ as in my fantasy beforehand, when I just “like the idea”. You know, you imagine it being just you sitting on the couch, just watching it, getting immersed in the universe of the movie. It’s never fully like that.
But I do enjoy looking at the black-and-white scenes, hearing how people spoke back then, what everything looked like back then.
Like there’s a fire, the fire brigade comes in an old ass truck, they don’t even have sirens yet, they have little bells that are constantly ringing, and such.
And also, the phone calls. Making calls on those big-ass gadgets. And those were the only/fastest avenue of information coming your way.
Even just a good 20–25 years ago, we were just having conversations with people and as we were sitting around, talking, if something came up, and we didn’t know some specifics, well, then we just agreed to not know exactly. There was no googling the answer. If someone knew that piece of trivia, he was considered “smart”.
And the, what now feels as empty, offices in those old movies. People were just sitting behind desks and that was it. No computer, whatsoever, just a person in a room, behind a desk, looking at papers.
With our 2020’s minds we cannot even imagine how anything was done in a time before computers and the online world. In a world where you can just send a command on this “tiny television”, as Darryl said in The Office, and some server [does thing] somewhere physically far from you, but immediately. How did shit get done in a world where you weren’t connected with anybody or anything other than your own mind?
Another BIIIG thing when I watch movies like that is this: it’s a movie from like fucking 1952. That’s 71 years ago. Even the twenty-something maid just answering the phone on your screen right now, even if she’s still alive, she must be like 95.
Even the young kid, little Jimmy, even if he’s still alive today, he is at least 78. But the other people? The older chief of police, who was like 50 in the movie. He’d be 120 today, he’s probably been dead for like 50.
There is a great chance that 99% of anybody who had anything to do with this movie, is dead. Fucking dead. Fucking doesn’t exist anymore.
I often have this thought. That this is how it’s gonna end for all of us, and it’s terrifying.
With my depression, comes the feeling of “I’m tired of life, tired of being alive”, but I’m like “fuck, this is the only way I can exist”. I either exist and this is how it goes, or I don’t exist and then it doesn’t go in any possible way, because there is nothing that could ‘go’.
