As a 40+ year old white American, I agree with most of this list (I’d reduce “Hannibal Lecter series” down to just “Silence of the Lambs”), but if I were to ask my 6–12 year old kids about these, I feel like they wouldn’t know who 1/3rd of these are. I’d be curious to see if there was a common thread or set of threads between all of these that point to what traits our Western society value/avoid or what makes a successful franchise in the West.
They probably haven’t seen a lot of them and may not recognize the names off the top of their head, but I have a hunch that if/when they do see them, damn each and every one is going to give them a couple little aha moments where they recognize that something else they’ve seen has parodied or referenced these movies, or that it’s where a meme comes from.
And I’d agree that Silence of the Lambs is probably the most important of the series by a longshot, but one book and a movie adaptation does not a franchise make in my mind and I think that Hannibal Lecter is a big enough character in the public mind (because the Silence of the Lambs movie) that the series as a whole kind of gets a pass
As a 40+ year old white American, I agree with most of this list (I’d reduce “Hannibal Lecter series” down to just “Silence of the Lambs”), but if I were to ask my 6–12 year old kids about these, I feel like they wouldn’t know who 1/3rd of these are. I’d be curious to see if there was a common thread or set of threads between all of these that point to what traits our Western society value/avoid or what makes a successful franchise in the West.
They probably haven’t seen a lot of them and may not recognize the names off the top of their head, but I have a hunch that if/when they do see them, damn each and every one is going to give them a couple little aha moments where they recognize that something else they’ve seen has parodied or referenced these movies, or that it’s where a meme comes from.
And I’d agree that Silence of the Lambs is probably the most important of the series by a longshot, but one book and a movie adaptation does not a franchise make in my mind and I think that Hannibal Lecter is a big enough character in the public mind (because the Silence of the Lambs movie) that the series as a whole kind of gets a pass