One of the main criticisms my pop culture views have received thus far is how incompatible they are with those of my peers. I must admit: The claims of being old fashioned and out of touch with current trends may be somewhat accurate.
Perhaps a childhood spent in the certified retirement community called Picayune has affected my cultural appreciation. I did grow up in my grandparents’ house, watching Lawrence Welk and reading classics instead of playing with the neighborhood kids. I’ve always felt like I was born in the wrong era.
I recently decided to embrace my so-called antiquated notions by watching a new historical fiction TV show called “Boardwalk Empire.” HBO’s new Sunday night series chronicles the culture of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1920 — the birth of the Jazz Age and Prohibition.
Presumably, we’ve all heard of the Roaring Twenties, if only through the required reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” or “This Side of Paradise” in high school. But aside from those mostly dreaded masterpieces, the 13 years America wasted banning alcohol hasn’t really been explored in pop culture — until now, thanks to director Terence Winter and actor-producer Mark Wahlberg, the brains behind “Empire.”
Before the show premiered Sept. 19, this Prohibition business seemed familiar enough to someone raised in a dry county.
But a dry country? Nationwide hypocrisy? Say it ain’t so.
It’s evident from the Martin Scorsese-directed pilot episode that this is not your mama’s period drama. Viewers get an immediate sense that our great-grandparents’ generation was eerily similar to our own in terms of scandal and debauchery.
Don’t let your elders’ lectures about the “good old days” fool you: They were just as reckless and insubordinate as we are.
Though the irreverent speakeasy jargon closely mirrors the art of expletives we’ve now mastered, the inhabitants of 1920s Atlantic City  — yes, on the Jersey shore — are genuine gangsters, unlike those Italian-American wannabes manufactured by MTV.
The difference between HBO’s foul-mouthed flappers and Snooki? Most 1920s women were literate. Believe it or not, the bootlegger’s favorite accessory — aside from a full flask — was a book, and the prop department of “Boardwalk Empire” won’t let you forget it.
But the cultural connection between the 1920s and 2010 extends far deeper into the ideologies underlying such behaviors.
We live in an age of unprecedented individual freedom — anything goes, and if our personal interests aren’t represented, we have the right to raise hell about it. This social liberation is largely attributable to Sigmund Freud’s ideas about human psychology, which didn’t really catch on until the 1920s.
For instance, the post-Victorian generation was the first to adopt Freud’s theory of sexual desire and the subconscious: Apparently sex is all humans think about, and if we suppress those urges, we’ll destroy ourselves.
Fast forward nearly a century, and we’ve got Tiger Woods, Jesse James and a slew of prominent public figures succumbing to “sexaholism.” Psychobabble aside, the truth is they’re just pigs. But I guess the medical industry profits more when they have diseases to cure.
It’s also no coincidence that the rise of modern culture can be traced to the 1920s and the launch of mass media. When movie-going became an essential American pastime, young people began looking to Hollywood for life lessons — and we’ve been doing it ever since.
But if you really want to learn something valuable, gather with your great-grandparents to watch an episode of “Boardwalk Empire.” You’ll share more common ground than you think, and they can recount how they dodged Prohibition — such expertise comes in handy at Tiger Stadium.
Kelly Hotard is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Picayune, Miss. Follow her on Twitter @TDR_khotard.
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Contact Kelly Hotard at [email protected]