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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9761809" data-attributes="member: 78087">I think a classic is something you recognise and appreciate as part of you, part of what you know and feel, even when you experience it for the first time. This is a bit rarer when you're younger - you've experienced less stuff and so you can't recognise as many things as when you're older - but it's still possible. And of course something you experience and love early becomes a classic to you as you incorporate it into yourself.For instance, when I first saw Star Wars (on TV in 1982, I think, when I was 7) I recognised it from the toys and lunchboxes my friends had at school but not much else, and enjoyed it for itself, and it became a classic to me over the years as part of me.When I saw <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_of_Delights_(TV_series)" target="_blank">The Box of Delights</a> (a BBC TV series from 1984, based on the children's book by John Masefield) for the first time in 1995 - my in-laws-to-be had the VHS and had loved and rewatched it for a decade - I recognised some things about it, mainly the children's book and 80s BBC trappings, and the unexpected appearance of Robert "Aragorn" Stephens, but it didn't really speak to me and it still doesn't. It's not a classic as far as I'm concerned, but is one to my wife and her family.When I saw <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Spinal_Tap" target="_blank">This is Spinal Tap</a> for the first time this year, I instantly recognised so much of it from both references I'd seen (The Simpsons being an obvious one) and from the feel of it, from the gentle mockery of 1980s England and America, of classic rock bands and the trajectory of famous artists, that it was obviously a classic.</blockquote>

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