Has JOURNEY Jumped The Shark OR are Happier Days Ahead?
Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 1:36 pmI mentioned this in another thread and wanted to explore it further.
When I was a kid Happy Days was a popular TV show. It was the 70's and our parents who grew up in the 50's had become the executives of the times. They felt that the time was right to revisit their youth and the 50's so they created Happy Days (among other nostalgic works such as Grease, American Graffiti, Sha Na Na, etc). It was great fun until the show "jumped the shark." Many people agree that the episode when Fonzie jumped his motorcycle over a pool containing a giant man-eating shark was the death of the series. From this was born the phrase, "Jumped the shark." which is applied to anyone or anything that has reached its peak and has nowhere to go but down.
I disagree with this premise. I don't believe art can ever reach a peak. It seems to me that art is an expression of the human experience. Certainly, the human experience has so much on the horizon. It also has a lot in which to revel. Happy Days was nostalgic and its audience loved its salute to the 50's however people only want to visit nostalgia - they don't want to live it. As the Happy Days audience grew weary of its slideshow the writers of the show had to resort to spectacle in order to keep them. In a rather extreme effort they mangled together the blockbuster movie JAWS and a cheap Evel Knievel stunt into their show. This destroyed the nostalgia of Happy Days and reduced it to ridiculous.
JOURNEY has been touring now for almost 10 years on nothing but pure nostalgia. Some say that they've jumped the shark. I don't think they have but they're perhaps poised on the ramp and revving up the motorcycle.
When I was a kid Happy Days was a popular TV show. It was the 70's and our parents who grew up in the 50's had become the executives of the times. They felt that the time was right to revisit their youth and the 50's so they created Happy Days (among other nostalgic works such as Grease, American Graffiti, Sha Na Na, etc). It was great fun until the show "jumped the shark." Many people agree that the episode when Fonzie jumped his motorcycle over a pool containing a giant man-eating shark was the death of the series. From this was born the phrase, "Jumped the shark." which is applied to anyone or anything that has reached its peak and has nowhere to go but down.
I disagree with this premise. I don't believe art can ever reach a peak. It seems to me that art is an expression of the human experience. Certainly, the human experience has so much on the horizon. It also has a lot in which to revel. Happy Days was nostalgic and its audience loved its salute to the 50's however people only want to visit nostalgia - they don't want to live it. As the Happy Days audience grew weary of its slideshow the writers of the show had to resort to spectacle in order to keep them. In a rather extreme effort they mangled together the blockbuster movie JAWS and a cheap Evel Knievel stunt into their show. This destroyed the nostalgia of Happy Days and reduced it to ridiculous.
JOURNEY has been touring now for almost 10 years on nothing but pure nostalgia. Some say that they've jumped the shark. I don't think they have but they're perhaps poised on the ramp and revving up the motorcycle.
