So, I am sure at one point in time we have all imagined a world where we’d grow up to have no problems; or to have no responsibilities but to collect comic books, or our favorite toys, to be in a sense; a “toys-R-us” kid. Today was my day, alongside with my boyfriend, to go to the Geppi’s entertainment Museum, a wonderful and quirky museum dedicated to the collection of items through out the history of pop culture. The museum is a great example of the best “toys-R-us“ kid there ever was, America. The museum itself is a nice and involved dive into the world of pop culture history from it’s earliest routes to today’s t.v. culture. Given an over all gleam, Geppi’s offers a wonderful insight to everyone’s childhood nostalgic memories of their favorite shows and characters. It also give a nice insight into the world of pop culture that molded American culture. Not only do these familiar faces of cartoon characters remind us of our childhood, they also show the ever changing face of the land we live in from the early days of Yellow Kid, where marketing to children was seen as “acceptable”, to Barbie’s of the 1980s who had over gone a complete make over to catch up with the fast pace world of the 80’s and the standards of beauty.
The museum was a fun experience but it was hard to look at every piece since there is so much things that make up American pop culture. The first room we looked at was the collection of comic books, including things such as Batman issue #1 and much more. Comic books are an interesting aspect of American culture because many of these cultural heroes reflect our society and the things that were going on in our society at the time such as the comics of the 40’s which set up American soldiers against Hitler or the Justice League fighting against the Axis of Evil. While many of us find ourselves stimulated by these images of great heroes that have powers supreme to normal people I can’t help but admit that these images bore me with their over stimulated use of this weak vs. the strong, while trying to free themselves of what held them down. Even though comic books do bore me there is a rich and lavish history with comic books and their “taboo” origins to the American public where people were warned to keep their children from them.
Beyond the hall of comics it was interesting to see the older characters that filled the pages of newspapers and the original cells of popular cartoons for Disney. As you worked the one floor museum it was over whelming to be in the center of all the media pressing in to catch your attention. The nice aspect of the museum was that each room went in order by time period. One room was filled with old puppets from the classic Howdy Doody show, to images of I love Lucy which featured one of the strongest female comedian of the time. Another held classic StarWars toys and Magnum P.I. figurines. The museum was a nice mixture of the birth of mass media to the pop culture of today through the artifacts we giggled over, laughing as we remembered toys we played with as kids.
Yet, as much as we did get a good kick out of talking about G.I. Joe, star track board games, and having to peel the boy off the (I’m sure) bullet proof fan boy sensitive glass casing of the comic books, it was fascinating to see how cultural norms change, even if it is slowly, but change so much that it becomes reflected in toys we love as children. Also it was fascinating to see how much we consume as buyers. Buying into the fact that we need things to make us feel complete, whole, and in tact. It also is amazing to think that one person wanted to pressure the childhood of thousands of people by putting these small trinkets on display. Come from a McDonalds pack, or the limited linings of conventions of just toys stuffed into an attic each piece of the museum breathed with it’s own special form of life.
One of my favorite things was to look at all the posters on the walls of the old nickelodeon theatres which covered a wide range of material from mysteries or westerns. These pop art covers are amazing to look at with the way they styled them and the text they used to advertise the “motion photos.” Another one of my favorites was to look at the nickel and dime paperbacks that were made up of detective stories and stories of heart break. These stories allowed people to escape their world for a bit and to enjoy something much more than their own life.
The Geppi museum was a good experience in understand some of how pop culture of American is a living thing that is always changing and will never be one steady thing.
3 comments:
I agree entirely with how it was interesting to see how the trinkets from the different era's represented the values of society from those eras. It was obvious how our culture became more open and less conservative over time. The dolls at the beginning were much more conservatively dressed than the dolls in the last room.
I also really felt like the comic books reflected what was going on at the time. The evolution of the comic book stories and characters also shows that today. For example, Batman was once a goodie goodie and now he is dark and more engaging to an audience of today's time. And in the 1940's, today's Batman would have been quickly shunned because that image did not appeal to an audience who was fighting in a war that was just and good.
I agree with the way the comic book room was boring. The themes of so many comic books are repetitive with the weak vs. the strong. However, if we look at our pop culture, we probablly have the same repetitive aspects. I also agree with the way that the history of the comic books is interesting and that they reflected what was going on during the time period.
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