Years ago, I presented my godson a nearly complete set of Hardy Boys mystery novels for his 10th birthday — I loved those when I was his age — and received for my generosity an aggrieved call from his mother, who informed me that the editions I presented were from the 1950s and were therefore unsuitable. As any fan of The Hardy Boys Mysteries can tell you, these books were written and rewritten every so often to update the language and settings, so the editions tend to reflect the customs and attitudes of whenever the revision was published.
The 1950s versions, I was told, included what is now understood as unsafe behavior for children — lighting bonfires with kerosene, riding homemade motorcycles without head protection, carrying knives and guns to confront robbers and kidnappers — and a lot of language that would now get you fired from pretty much any job in America. Plus, she told me, the (very few) nonwhite characters speak in offensive dialects, spellings and all, and she was upset when her son looked up from his copy of The Mystery of the Chinese Junk and asked what it meant to say that someone had “a Chinaman’s chance” at something.
I replied frostily that I had originally intended to present him with the 1920s versions, which were even more culturally incendiary, but I couldn’t find a complete set, so she really should be thanking me. The past, I told her, is a complicated place — better he find that out sooner rather than later — but it’s a small price to pay to have to encounter some awkwardly outdated language in order to enjoy the enthusiastic heroism of Frank and Joe Hardy, boy Detectives.
She wasn’t buying it. Could I please, she asked, run gifts by her before presenting them? Not a chance, I said, invoking something called Godparent’s Privilege (which I had just made up). “In fact,” I added, “you might say that there’s a Chinaman’s — “
But she hung up before I could finish.
My point, I think, was that if you go back far enough, everything’s a minefield for certain sensitivities. My general feeling was that we’re all perfectly capable of making adjustments to old ideas and customs as we go along. And I pretty much felt that way until a few days ago when I was in an Uber heading to a meeting and the driver was listening to “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes.
You remember that one, don’t you? It was released in 1979, well into the contemporary era, and told the story of a guy who was bored with his “old lady” and answered an ad in the personals column — the 1979 version of Tinder, in a way — and justified it thusly: “I was tired of my lady/We’d been together too long/Like a worn-out recording/Of a favorite song.” He clarifies a few bars later: “Me and my old lady/Had fallen into the same old dull routine.”
OK, so “old lady” is out. We know that, right? Even in 1979, it must have seemed at least a little problematic. But then, and I dearly hope this is not a spoiler alert, it turns out that the mystery woman who placed the tantalizing ad in the personals section was … well, I’ll let him tell it: “So I waited with high hopes/And she walked in the place/I knew her smile in an instant/I knew the curve of her face/It was my own lovely lady/And she said, “Oh, it’s you”/Then we laughed for a moment/And I said, “I never knew.”
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They laughed for a moment? At this shocking double betrayal? Each revealed to be a liar and sneak and a cheat, they laughed, and that was that? The people in this song are repellent, selfish, and utterly unforgivable. Nevertheless, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” was a No. 1 song in 1979 and then again a few months later in early 1980, making it the first pop song to reach No. 1 in two decades.
I’ll leave it to you to decide whether a little outdated language from the 1950s is worse than the trashy sexual antics of two people in a popular song from the contemporary era, antics, it must be said, that go totally unremarked as the song is played and replayed throughout the years. As for me, I’m now redoubling my search for the 1920s versions of The Hardy Boys Mysteries because it’s impossible they could be worse.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
