Hi. Thanks for your replies. Are you a research student? You sound like one. I'm gonna try to answer your queries as well as I can. I think you'd also like to know that I was born in the 90s, and I was a teen in the 2000s.
You say that the movie feels sort of outdated right now, even clichéic, and I must admit it feels so to me too. But I can't really make up why..
What is it that has changed through these fifteen years that make us watch a movie like this and say. "whoa, this is impossible now"
-is it that we have grown up and we are now adults and much less dreamer?
Film wise, I'd say
The Beach feels clicheic and outdated right now because we have seen similar plots and scenes in lots of other films before and since 2000.
Young person goes on a self-discovery journey alone on unexplored territories sounds like the plot of many movies. Off the top of my head, I can enumerate a few generally or partially based on this:
Wild (2014),
127 Hours (2010),
Into The Wild (2007),
Hector and the Search of Happiness (2014),
Lost in Translation (2003) etc.
After 16 years since
The Beach was released, lots of us kinda know what to expect if we were to go to Thailand, mainly due to travel agencies and internet! People who go on vacation anywhere regularly buy trips from travel agencies or online, with flight tickets, hotel details and basic itinerary included, which makes the vacation pre-planned. I haven't actually heard about people buying flight tickets on a whim and disappearing in exotic places just like that, but again, I'm European and I wouldn't know the travel patterns in the U.S.
I wouldn't say we have grown and become less dreamers. In fact, I believe generation Y might be the dreamiest of all, with our higher educations, late exposure to workforce, sense of self-entitlement, and delusional desire to travel and conquer the whole world if possible as soon as possible.
so the reason has little to do with us growing old.
-may be the general average awareness and knowledge of the world has changed now: may be there's no more room for urban myths, or more dramatically not even for the hope of experiencing some new adventures.
It really feels like there's not that much to discover; or rather it feels like we (or contemporary youth) don't have anymore that kind of naivety and desire to discover.
You are correct. We now have more knowledge about how things are in other countries, and what the situation might be once we get there, because of internet, mass-media, social media, Google, Google maps etc. Discovering and exploring land abroad can now be done virtually on Google maps and similar online platforms, something that Richard did not have access to and so he had to resort to handwritten maps, word of mouth and local urban legends. We now have access to any piece of information in the world at a click distance - no need to ask other people anymore.
I ascribe much of this to the globalization of knowledge, to the internet, and to the overall economic situation, which is much less prosperous and hopeful than it was in the beginning of years 2000's, and that has made young people extremely practical and pragmatism.
Watching a movie like this one makes me feel like I was lucky enough to have lived in a time when we had more fantasy in our everyday life, but when much of this could also actually be attained, not just dreamed about.
Yep, nowadays economy stinks in pretty much all countries (including Thailand) and the world was a happier, more prosperous place at the beginning of the 21st century, and we are very lucky that we got to live a bit of that growing up. The fantasy stemmed from infrequent access to internet, lack of mobile apps, smartphones, tablets, fancy gadgets, and more resort to the knowledge in our brains as opposed to knowledge quickly picked up from the internet. I personally preferred the 2000s because of my personal experiences which did not include internet (yes, I do hate internet but I am irrevocably addicted to it unfortunately) and the things I learned about life during those teenage years. Now, I often feel like everything I do is somewhat connected to or for the purpose of internet: taking pictures while traveling to post on Instagram, keeping in touch with my friends via Facebook, using internet on a daily basis at work and at home etc. Being wired all the time leaves little place for genuine adventure
The Beach-type, and those who go/live off the grid are considered outsiders or hipsters by the modern society, so what choice do we have?
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