Beware the dark powers of Netflix. There I was, last Sunday morning,
reading the news of actor James Garner’s death on my laptop and
nostalgically recalling how much my father, a longtime TV critic, had loved
Garner’s benchmark 1970s-era private-eye drama, “The Rockford Files.”
But my memories of the show were vague — I was 12 when it premiered. I wondered idly if Netflix might carry it. Because isn’t that what our contemporary digital lifestyle is all about? Access to whatever we want, whenever we want. Time has no meaning in 2014 – get me the 1970s, now!
Before I could check myself, I was sucked down a time-warp rabbit hole, a fact I could not easily explain to my 16-year-old son, who was curious, and perhaps slightly alarmed, as to why I was spending a Sunday afternoon binge-watching car chases. I had expected to be charmed by James Garner. I didn’t expect to become obsessed with the question of how Jim Rockford’s adventures in L.A. would be different if he had owned an iPhone.
The wide-lapel shirts. The endless car chases. The shocking lack of racial diversity in Los Angeles as presented on 1970s television. There are plenty of obvious differences between the America of 40 years ago and the America of right now.
But I couldn’t stop fixating on just how often everything stopped in its tracks so that Jim Rockford could put a dime in a payphone: multiple times an episode. Without those payphones, the plot wasn’t going anywhere. But in between those payphones, Rockford lived in a kind of L.A. limbo-land, his whereabouts gloriously unknowable. No one is as isolated today as Rockford was in his Plymouth Firebird on an L.A. freeway.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes uses a smartphone just as you would expect a genius detective to, with the entire Internet at his disposal to assist in the deductive process. It’s clever, but it always seemed like cheating. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock didn’t need no stinkin’ smartphone! A few puffs on his pipe was all that was necessary!
It was hard for me to avoid the sinking feeling that Jim Rockford with an iPhone would no longer be Jim Rockford. Always-on Wi-Fi would accelerate his genial slouch. The languid ocean outside his trailer would end up a trivialized mote in his Instagram-feed. The string of dames in distress wouldn’t appear unannounced at his door; they’d find him on Tinder first.
Reasd more: The truth about our Wi-Fi society: What the quest for constant connection really means - Salon.com
But my memories of the show were vague — I was 12 when it premiered. I wondered idly if Netflix might carry it. Because isn’t that what our contemporary digital lifestyle is all about? Access to whatever we want, whenever we want. Time has no meaning in 2014 – get me the 1970s, now!
Before I could check myself, I was sucked down a time-warp rabbit hole, a fact I could not easily explain to my 16-year-old son, who was curious, and perhaps slightly alarmed, as to why I was spending a Sunday afternoon binge-watching car chases. I had expected to be charmed by James Garner. I didn’t expect to become obsessed with the question of how Jim Rockford’s adventures in L.A. would be different if he had owned an iPhone.
The wide-lapel shirts. The endless car chases. The shocking lack of racial diversity in Los Angeles as presented on 1970s television. There are plenty of obvious differences between the America of 40 years ago and the America of right now.
But I couldn’t stop fixating on just how often everything stopped in its tracks so that Jim Rockford could put a dime in a payphone: multiple times an episode. Without those payphones, the plot wasn’t going anywhere. But in between those payphones, Rockford lived in a kind of L.A. limbo-land, his whereabouts gloriously unknowable. No one is as isolated today as Rockford was in his Plymouth Firebird on an L.A. freeway.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes uses a smartphone just as you would expect a genius detective to, with the entire Internet at his disposal to assist in the deductive process. It’s clever, but it always seemed like cheating. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock didn’t need no stinkin’ smartphone! A few puffs on his pipe was all that was necessary!
It was hard for me to avoid the sinking feeling that Jim Rockford with an iPhone would no longer be Jim Rockford. Always-on Wi-Fi would accelerate his genial slouch. The languid ocean outside his trailer would end up a trivialized mote in his Instagram-feed. The string of dames in distress wouldn’t appear unannounced at his door; they’d find him on Tinder first.
Reasd more: The truth about our Wi-Fi society: What the quest for constant connection really means - Salon.com
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