Starsky & Hutch

Watched the remake of Starksy & Hutch. Couldn't help but compare it to the original.

There is a current trend that makes things from the 70s somehow cool again. (Personally I hated the 70s - it was awful). But films like this, the U2 video in which the band members dressup as the Village People, and the frequent use of 70s classics sampled into new music clearly make the 70s into some form of reference point for contemporary culture.

In Starsky & Hutch we see this reference modified to make the characters fit into a contemporary understanding. Starsky is made to be comically following his mother's footsteps to be an exemplorary police officer. Hutch knows the dark side of life, drink and drugs and an over-zealous involvement in an undercover armed robbery. It would seem that today's heroes cannot be without baggage. I cannot recall any such darker side in the original series.

S&H are forced to be partners, and in a plot line similar to just about every other buddy cop movie they initially dislike each other, and only get to acknowledge one another as equals when their darker sides are revealed and brought into the open. This makes me think that committed friendships are suspect in post-modern thought, as if they might hide something sinister somewhere, or possibly they just don't happen now, so they couldn't happen then.

There is a similar sense of cynicism in Twista with Anthony Hamilton's song Sunshine, which turns a famous love song into a song about money ("I got my mind on my money and my money on my mind").

I am still unsure why the 70s are viewed so highly. Perhaps they didn't have the naivety or politicisation of the 60s, nor the rather naff yuppies of the 80s. Perhaps the 70s are remembered as a time with much of the night life of today, but without the AIDS fears. Maybe the 70s and the 00s share a sense of introspection that fuels a concentration upon movies and parties,clubs and relationships.

Where do you go to find out more about this stuff?

Comments

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Ok, this may sound oversimplistic, but 70s popular culture is a shared memory place for a lot of those producing and consuming mainstream films right now - the generation who saw Star Wars on first release at the cinema - and I guess mainstream 70s culture provides more shared reference points than, maybe, today's will do in 30 years time, as it was considerably less fragmented...

There's a lot more to it than that, I'm sure - keep on posting what you find...