I watched the first episode and it made me cry. I love it. I learned something from it; about young people that are arriving to the world. And what I learned about them is making me hopeful. It also made me aware of my own age in a different more positive way. In a good way. I feel that I am not only starting to understand and love youth of today, but I am also starting to understand my own perspective, relation to them. I am old enough that they are not reminding me of my own young age so I am free from nostalgia. That feels good. I don't desire to be like them. I can not be. They are radically different and that difference is something unique that I can grasp and admire without feeling regret about it. I was never like them so I am free from bitterness and resentment about lost opportunity. That's truly liberating. I am starting to understand that youth never repeat itself. The way I was young 40 years ago has nothing to do with a way they are young today. And yet, as I am starting to grasp this difference across the generations I am also starting to understand value of where I am standing right now in my own life. Because although my youth is in the past, I am still alive. And as much as they are unique and precious in their age of becoming, I am also unique and precious in mine. No need for comparison, regret and for nostalgia. It is exactly in this unreconcilable difference between us where we can meet and learn from each other. Help one another. After all Luca Guadagino is around my age, and the way he can look at youth of today is exactly speaking about all this. I am grateful for his gaze. It help me see the truth of generations myself. It help me learn to live my life just a bit better. Maybe that's the beginning of some kind of wisdom that belong to my age. I hope it is.
And concerning supposed inaccuracy in the representation of the American army base. This is, luckily, not a documentary TV show about a life in US military base. And beside that, even if it would be, those who claim that they know it better, are misunderstanding the nature of artistic insight into the truth of a place. One can spend all of one's life in such an establishment and yet still not really know it. Accuracy of description is not guaranteeing depth of an insight. On the contrary, such an accuracy usually lead to some form of unwilling reiteration of common wisdom - pure propaganda. Because everything that is grasped on the surface is always already constructed by prefabricated social conventions. To go under it, means to brake rules of representation. That's how art is made.
