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Childhood’s First “Perceptions”
Ts
(Romanian)
For those born in the late 1960s, it seems that they “opened their eyes” (in the sense of conscious and coherent memories of their childhood) during the “Golden Age” of “Science Fiction” movies…
Of course, each with their “native” “tastes” and “attractions” but also concerning their access to such creations and, above all, each with their period of “development”, of “childhood”, of “current of times” “, blah, blah.
For me, in Romania, the period of transition to “Soviet” communism had almost ended with the takeover of power by the brash “dictator” Ceaușescu…
Which, however, “political analysts” may comment, attracted some “liberal” measures, such as the condemnation of the invasion of the USSR against the “Prague Spring” (1968) by the “madman”, followed by Richard Nixon’s visit to Romania (1969, discussing the first US president to visit a communist bloc country).
I do not give “political” details, but only argue the “initiation” of a period of “liberal” flourishing, which culminated in the visit to England and the meeting with Queen Elizabeth II (in 1978, when Ceaușescu was invited to London, where was received with state honors, an event that was widely publicized worldwide and emphasized Romania’s international recognition).
Maybe I’m “beating the plains”, maybe most of those around me didn’t notice this, but I can remember (in the sense of an obvious “liberalization”, in certain areas of life) Ilie Năstase, great world tennis champion, or by Nadia Comăneci and the Olympic Games in Montreal (1976), without considering thousands of additional arguments.
The “regime” of that time forced an unprecedented development of science and everything related to it (perhaps that is why it is necessary to repeat that individual perceptions, without discussing the “political” ones, are strictly related to access and involvement in “certain territories and environments of everyday life”, particularly “commentable” by “laymen” or other “more manual” or “credulous” categories”).
Concretely, access to knowledge, to science, seemed unlimited for those interested in it, including school activities being oriented towards this “progress” (science circles, science fiction literature circles, technical magazines, blah, blah)…
Jules Verne, Tolkien, Wells, Allan Poe, Twain, Frank Baum, London, Rice Burroughs, Stapledon, Campbell, Heinlein, Shaw, Finney, Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Zelazny, Ellison, Vonnegut, Le Guin, Dick, Asimov, Clarke, etc. were accessible authors to anyone who had “such concerns”, without mentioning the “Slavic” literature (so as not to give “political irritations”) which was particularly strong and creative in those times, without even mentioning Eminescu, with his famous remark from “Luceafărul” “that it took thousands of years for the light to arrive” (from the end of the 19th century).
Even in the filmography of the “Romanian” times of that time (“communist”), I can mention Fantastic Comedy, a Romanian science fiction comedy film from 1975, directed by Ion Popescu-Gopo from his script (the main roles being played by Dem Rădulescu, Cornel Coman, Vasilica Tastaman and George Mihăiță, etc — the subject of the film is the research carried out by an alien robot from the planet Neptune to find a new source of energy on the planet Earth) or The Elixir of Youth (1975 — main roles played by Florin Piersic, Cornel Coman, Stela Popescu, Marin Moraru, etc — where Titus, an old teacher, and well-known gerontologist, invents an elixir that rejuvenates him, shares the precious drink with his friends, they rejuvenate in turn and start making the same mistakes they had done in the past, causing many entanglements).
Then the family environment also intervenes… My grandparents taught me to read, I don’t know what principles, from the “youngest” age, at only five years old reading “science fiction” and “war literature” fluently, one of the grandparents being “retired colonel” who had fought in the Second World War “against the Russians and the Germans” asking me to read his books, a habit has taken over by my other grandfather, a communications engineer, who had me read to him… Science Fiction, while he worked on his “electronics” (a habit that “cost” me dearly when I “entered school”, boring me “to death”, turning me even more into tech, sci-fi, blah, blah).
The “less warrior” grandfather is the one who introduced me to the world of TV shows such as “Doctor Who”, “The Twilight Zone”, and then “Startrek” with its universe…
But also in the world of computer games, such as “Computer Space,” a love continued even after he left “in another time and another dimension” with “Space Wars” and “Space Invaders” (in the late 1970s and early 1980s).
And I want to complete the description of this “background” with “personal” attributes, without forgetting a brief description of the “main titles” (which I will return to in future “episodes”) that “marked” my childhood…
Imagine (I “lived” all this) that we are discussing the period “marked” by movie such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” (by Kubrick, a “hard science fiction” that “holds” the charts “of “even in these times”), “Planet of the Apes” (actually there are more, not only “Charlton Heston’s movie”), “No Blade of Grass” (Cornel Wilde), “The Andromeda Strain” (Wise), “A Clockwork Orange” (by Kubrick), “The Omega Man” (also with Heston), “THX 1138” (produced by Coppola and directed by George Lucas), “Solyaris (Solaris)” (by Tarkovsky), “Westworld” (with the aggressive “western” robot played by Yul Brynner), “The Island at the Top of the World” (Disney’s), “Logan’s Run” (brought “to life” by Michael York, a film that later becomes a television series), “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (where David Bowie “plays”, contested, but I pointed out that it’s all about taste), “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” (Spielberg’s), “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (in his interpretation Burt Lancaster, Michael York, and Nigel Davenport), culminating in Star Wars (Lucas’s three “episodes”), The Boys from Brazil (starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier), Superman (Reeve’s, with Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman), “Mad Max” (with Gibson), “Meteor” (with Sean Connery), “Moonraker” (with Roger Moore’s Agent 007), “Alien” (by Ridley Scott), the appearance of the films “feature film” “Startrek”, “The Black Hole” etc (and the list is “completely” incomplete, but I exceeded the “thousand words”)…
Without talking about animations, the “Asian” area that I didn’t have a connection to, the video games on the Atari consoles of those times, etc…
Now you know who will be “talking” in everything to come, so from the next episode we really “get down to business.”
Merticaru Dorin Nicolae
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