Welcome to the weekend!
Hope you've had a good week. I've been knee-deep in multiple projects, one of which I can't even hint at yet. That aside, lets talk about the current entertainment landscape, and how it's been changing recently. We are finally seeing the last embers of the 20th century extinguished and what we are being left with has yet to be seen.
Let us explain why that is.
We've gone over a bit about the slipping quality of corpo entertainment and its various reasons for it current terrible state before. In fact, it's been a constant theme. The Cultural Ground Zero effect is real. Of course, we have the usual reasons/excuses for noticing this trend: the "nostalgia" argument, the "changing tastes" argument, and the "catering to the market" argument" are all the most common. And yes, some of those might apply, but are not enough to paint the bigger picture. None of the give the full view of what's going on.
For instance, no Zoomers or younger gens care about mainstream entertainment anymore, just as much as no one except aging "Geek Culture" Cultists desperately holding onto their youth even look twice at it anymore. Some passively consume the slop, but none pay it any real mind anymore. It's like how a Baby Boomer goes to the television to think. It's just expected and passively consumed. No one actually cares about this stuff anymore, and they haven't for a long time now.
You won't find any shortages for the reasons behind this, but I think the video from David V. Stewart above highlights all the potential arguments and explanations as to why things have changed. This is before he gets into the main crux of the issue. I'd suggest watching it for good reason. He has a very good way of getting things across.
That aside, I do see a hard turn coming in the future due to both how fragmented our culture is and how those in charge both dumb down and belittle real creativity at the expense of ambition. It's going to lead to a generation that is just plain going to ignore "fiction" entirely. They will see it as a waste of time, much like we basically already do now.
What will happen is because of how vapid, predictable, and repetitive, mainstream entertainment is, as well as the cratering emphasis on "imagination" (We're a long way from the silly "Reading Is Magic!" punchline of the 1990s), on top of the lack of interest in 20th century IP among younger gens, will all lead to a fracturing in the overall.
You're going to see the mainstream focus more on "reality" entertainment (A growing trend since the end of the '90s) with things like streamers, reality programming, and video essays, taking the air out of the room. At the same time, anything "fiction" related will struggle unless it a flavor of the month supported by one or more of the above things.
The reason for this is the mainstreaming of "tropes" since the Geek Culture '00s have made Following The Formula Right the only thing a corpo needs for you to hand over their wallet. What the formula is depends on how you were trained to consume your entertainment. What you then have are Gen X to Millennials begging for scraps, whether they be rehashed tired formulas, endless subversions of the same handful of ideas, or More Of The Same.
None of these groups desire stories, they desire their youth resold to them forever, like Baby Boomers buying endless Beatles merch and products well into retirement age. The old IP is all they want, quality has nothing to do with it. This is because the "quality" to them is merely in repeated names, aesthetics, and actors/voices saying what they want to hear. The core story, the morals and the deeper meaning, don't matter as much as the surface level. If it did they would engage in other things outside the IP. But like Baby Boomers, it doesn't matter how good something is, because it isn't John, Paul, George, and Ringo. At the end of the day that's all they care about seeing.
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| Evergreen meme for a reason |
How did this come about? For many reasons. We all know it's real, but it's hard to put a finger on what exactly is to blame for it. This is because the explanation is multifold.
Those among these older generations, present company included, are to blame for the current state of things. We cheered for vacuous slop, meaningless pop cult references, and selling our youth back to us forever. We made fun of the Big Bang Theory for being "geek blackface", but Scott Pilgrim was no different in pointlessly catering to "Geek Culture" vapidity. Just because one is better made doesn't make them both slop. Slop is about intent. There is no meaning to either except ego stroking and pandering to a generation that deserves neither.
What we have here is not only the End of Pop Culture, but the end of the 20th century influence on culture as a whole. Those days are gone and they're not coming back.
The elephant in the room is also that Western Culture has been built off negativity, subversion, and bitterness for over half a century now. It has lead to a low trust society, fracturing political and religious outlooks, and mainstreamed misery into common discourse. Politics didn't cause this: it lead to the current sociopolitical situation everyone hates.
I don't tend to address politics here directly, because it's really a dead end discussion point. The second someone sees a buzzword, their brain clicks on to a certain track and you become Friend or Enemy. At that point, you might as well be speaking backwards. But this isn't about Friend or Enemy, it's about understanding where we're headed.
And this is all due to where we've already come from.
I'll be blunt. The Right sees the arts as useless and a dead end. They refuse to support anyone even remotely on their side, ceding the ground to people who hate them. They would much rather support grifters who put out low quality versions of "based" calendars, political talk shows, or vapid entertainment stuck 20 years ago. No one is investing in any real countercultural efforts (and if they are, they are very much the exception to the rule). There is nothing even remotely approaching art here.
The Left is no better. They see the arts as an opportunity to promote whatever new thing they were told to support by their favorite TV/online personalities, and morphing their own works to comply with these updated slogans. They are convinced that something like naming a villain Tonald Drump is high art to be applauded and high brow commentary on par with the best Russian Literature. They also happily subvert their own IP for updated messaging at every opportunity. There is nothing approaching art here.
Surely, that's everything? After all, we've addressed both "sides" of the discussion, right? No, we're not done.
Centrists pretend to be above it all, saying they want no morals, lessons, or politics, and just want Entertainment. This is impossible. There is no piece or art without meaning, without something to say, and in fact any art worth engaging will have these elements in them deep inside on some level. The actual problem should be that there is little focus on what is being said, how to say it, and how to connect with the audience. Instead, the focus is on returning to the *Insert Decade Here* standard where everyone was Sane and Not Weird, even though they were and we just didn't notice because we were kids back then. There is nothing approaching art here.
This leaves you with the three modern views of how art is seen: to be taken for granted, to weaponize against your neighbor, and to consume mindlessly between sugar binges. That's it. There isn't anything else. What you are left with is an upcoming younger generation whos see all of this and has no reason to engage. Art is clearly meaningless because that's how we see and treat it. Therefore, the younger generations will turn away from it.
It will also lead to the more common usage of AI generators for entertainment, because it gives the bare minimum. This will be good enough for them, and we've given no valid argument against them doing this. What else is consuming art for anyway? We don't have a good answer for this that isn't a cliché from the 20th century since proven incorrect by how things have decayed.
The ignorance of the Right lead to the belittling of art, the arrogance of the Left lead to the pamphletization of art, and the mindless consumption of Centrists lead to seeing art as novelty, trope checklists to follow or subvert. Don't get me wrong, none of these positions are exclusive to any of these groups, but those are the main three views of entertainment that has lead to the irrelevance of art on modern day living. The younger generations have internalized this and are ready to apply it to their own position.
And, again, what reason have we given them to think of anything else when all we focus on are things we should have let go of long ago?
20th Century IP has no meaning to those born outside of it. No, not even if you "update" the morals, and not even if you Go Back To the old morals. It has no relevance for the 21st century man living in uncertain times caused by the previous century, and the more we cling to it the more younger generations will turn away and move on without us. The 20th century is not the center of the universe, and we're quickly learning how irrelevant it's most likely going to be in the long run. We should be preserving what worked now before it all gets disposed of.
We've treated existence and reality as a novelty for so long it has turned our outlook cynical and barren, matching our entertainment. The only way to move forward is to take what we learned and apply it to the present. This requires letting things go, but also looking forward to the generations before us who need a guiding light. We have to be there for them, not ourselves. We're not kids anymore. We need to start acting like it.
Thanks for reading. That's it for this week!
See you next time, and please be sure to support smaller and independent artists trying to make a difference. It's the only way we'll see any change.
