The greatest everything of all time
Posted: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 by Tyler Durden in Labels: entertainment
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The greatest everything of all time
Kevin Spacey choice: The Wire.
No rational person would dispute the assertion that the five greatest TV dramas of all time areGame of Thrones, The Sopranos, The West Wing, Breaking Bad and The Wire, (while more cautiously naming the five greatest comedies as 30 Rock, Fawlty Towers, Hancock, Seinfeldand The Simpsons).
And no rational person would dispute that the five greatest rock songs of all time are Sunshine of Your Love, Purple Haze, Bohemian Rhapsody, Satisfaction and Good Vibrations (unless you insist that Good Vibrations does not meet the definition of “rock” and would be better placed alongside Whiter Shade of Pale, Imagine, Stairway to Heaven and Viva La Vida in a list of the greatest pop anthems of all time, thereby making room in the rock list for Jailhouse Rock).
The most important and influential guitar player that has ever lived, is still living or ever will be
But a rational person is likely to dispute that the five greatest movies of all time are Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Casablanca, Bonnie and Clyde, and Psycho. That list was released recently byEntertainment Weekly magazine in an issue devoted to the greatest of everything, causing outrage in my household, which feels that The Princess Bride is essential to any such selection, and The Godfather Part Two is better than its prequel.
EW’s rival, Empire magazine, certainly doesn’t agree, having declared its top five to be Jaws, The Shawshank Redemption, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Godfather.
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We seem to be in superlatives season, when an assortment of media outlets and cultural luminaries are adding the phrase “of all time” to lists of favourites and hoping to provoke an argument from their audiences.
In addition to the list of greatest movies mentioned above, Entertainment Weeklyventured onto other platforms ...
Albums: Revolver, The Beatles; Purple Rain, Prince; Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones; Thriller, Michael Jackson; London Calling, The Clash. (To which I might add these Australian suggestions: Diesel and Dust, Midnight Oil; Back in Black, AC/DC;Whispering Jack, John Farnham.)
TV series: The Sopranos, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The Wire. (Australia: SeaChange, Frontline, Mother and Son, The Secret Life of Us).
Novels: Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy; The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald; Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen; Great Expectations, Charles Dickens; 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Australia:Cloudstreet, Tim Winton; Truth, Peter Temple;The Magic Pudding, Norman Lindsay).
Superheroes: Superman; Iron Man; Buffy The Vampire Slayer; Batman; Spider-Man. (Australia: Babe, Red Dog, Skippy, Crocodile Dundee).
Villains: Darth Vader, Star Wars; Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill, The Silence of the Lambs; Norman Bates, Psycho; Amon Goeth,Schindler’s List; Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (Australia: Mick Taylor, Wolf Creek; Terry Clark, Underbelly A Tale of Two Cities; Hughie Warriner, Dead Calm).
Last month the actor Kevin Spacey entered the debate, giving a speech in London that included his selection of “the greatest TV series of all time”. But instead of having the self-discipline to settle on five, he nominated 17. For the record, they are: The Sopranos, Rescue Me, Weeds, Homeland, Dexter, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Damages, Sons of Anarchy, Oz, The Wire, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and House of Cards(the recent US version starring Kevin Spacey, not the English version broadcast in 1990).
I bought a digital radio last week and discovered a station called Stardust, which claims to be offering “The Greatest Songs of All Time”. In fact its playlist is very far from that (none of the 10 rockers and anthems listed above have appeared during my listening so far, presumably because they are not bland enough). But why shouldn’t Stardust jump on the superlatives bandwagon?
And Rolling Stone has just published a book called The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. When I glimpsed the cover in my newsagency, my first thought was that the top five would have to be Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Picasso, Michelangelo and Turner.
As it turns out, those are not the kind of artistsRolling Stone means. The artists in this case are musicians, and “all time” means since the 1950s. RS got famous admirers of the musicians to write essays about them.
The top five, as voted by industry luminaries and music journalists, are: The Beatles; Bob Dylan; Elvis Presley; The Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry.
So far there’d be little argument, but the placement of artists further down the list is peculiar, to say the least. Seminal figures such Frank Zappa (71) and Talking Heads (100) appear behind annoying ephemera such as Sly and the Family Stone (43) and The Sex Pistols (60).
Eric Clapton is described by Steven Van Zandt (who played Silvio in The Sopranos, Frank inLillyhammer and guitar in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band) as “the most important and influential guitar player that has ever lived, is still living or ever will be”.
Yet Clapton appears at number 55, while Jimi Hendrix is number 6. (Clapton’s consolation may be that he gets two more bites at all-time greatness, because The Yardbirds are at number 89 and Cream appears at 67).
The only Australian connection is AC/DC, who appear at 72. They are described by producer Rick Rubin as “the greatest rock & roll band of all time”.
I know the pressure is on to deliver superlatives, and I don’t want to seem unpatriotic, but in a chart that includes the Rolling Stones, Cream, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Queen, The Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival, applying that superlative to AC/DC is just silly.
To debate the choices, go to Comments.
The Tribal Mind column, by David Dale, appears in a printed form every Sunday inThe Sun-Herald, and also as a director's cut on this website, where it welcomes your comments.
David Dale teaches communications at UTS, Sydney. He is the author of The Little Book of Australia - A snapshot of who we are(Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark The Tribal Mind.
David Dale teaches communications at UTS, Sydney. He is the author of The Little Book of Australia - A snapshot of who we are(Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark The Tribal Mind.
