An experience that has always stuck with me was when I had just finished my confirmation and I was talking to people outside of the church. A relative of mine, younger than me, was trying to direct someone about his age to me and stated that “He’s the old one over there.” It was the first time that anyone had ever referred to me as old, I was about twelve or thirteen, and it genuinely shocked me. It wasn’t long afterwards that I realised that the concept of something being old is often relative to the point where referring to something as old ends up being so meaninglessness that it requires further clarification. Therefore, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this today.
As you may be well aware of by this point, I’m a big fan of a lot of mediums such as anime, manga, video games, horror etc. and I often find myself enjoying stuff from the 70s, 80s and so on. I notice that I’m relatively alone in that interest with many of my friends instead gorging on much more recent content. I was reminded by this the other day when a friend of mine referred to an anime from the mid-00s as being “old”. While not wrong as we are approaching twenty years since that series came out, it still caught me off-guard as I personally would consider an anime to have been released in the 90s to be the minimum of old while I would more frequently refer to series and movies from the 1980s and earlier as being old.
I also notice that my definition of old shifts from medium to medium. Having explained my personal definition of what an old anime is, it’s worth noting that I’d consider video games made in the 90s and earlier to be old while I’d view films in general to be old if they were released in the 1960s or earlier. As for why I make these distinctions, I presume it’s influenced by the age of the medium. Video games, being relatively new, I judge much more harshly due to the rapid development of graphics and game design compared to books which have a long, LONG, history and which I’d consider to be old only if it was released prior to the 1900s.
Of course, a question that should be asked is why the age of something has to be presented in the first place and there’s many reasons why one might. For me, I often refer to the age of something to set expectations for the others that I’m with when it comes to the social construct behind a work, the techniques being used, its place in history etc. However, I have to emphasise that I get annoyed by people who judge the quality of a work purely by their age. This might be something like “I don’t like old movies.” or “I don’t like older video games.” which are very general statements that tar a vast amount of media with the same brush.
Basically, when you refer to something as old, all you’re really saying is that it wasn’t recent. Beyond that, the term old itself is far too relative and will have different meanings for different people. If there’s anything I want you to take away from this article, it’s to realise that fact as well, that old is relative and doesn’t carry much meaning outside of the person who says it. With that, I would reflect on your own definition of old and whether it shifts from medium to medium as well.
Let me know whether you agree that referring to something as old has as much meaninglessness as I’ve described, what your own thoughts are on the meaninglessness of referring to something as old, what factors influence you when you talk about something being old and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!