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So I guess Steven Spielberg has fallen under the sway of AI. This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise — his buddy Marty is also a fan, and his bestest best friend George thinks its "inevitable." All of this is happening against a backdrop in which movies and TV are continuously recycling the same handful of IPs, every major studio terrified that stepping outside of the Star-Wars-Game-of-Thrones-Marvel-DC-Hunger-Games-Harry-Potter-Lord-of-the-Rings-Based-On-Those-Toys-You-Liked-As-A-Kid circle jerk will lose money for The Investors, because the ultimate goal of any true Hollywood auteur is upholding shareholder primacy.
Now, this trend isn't exclusive to Hollywood. It has seeped into other areas of popular culture, from AI-created pop songs to re-re-recycled musicals, most of which seem to be worn retreads of movies or insipid attempts to slap threadbare plots on a rock band's back catalog. (We've already seen a musical cobbled together from 80s hair metal standards; I can only assume that it's only a matter of time until we get a Taylor Swift or Chappell Roan take on the same tissue paper thin premise.) Most people don't seem to care about this dearth of artistic integrity and basic quality control, which is particularly exhausting for those of us who do. Your average citizen is happy to consume whatever grey pop culture slop is placed in front of them, and is quick to point out that each decade has been full of bad art produced to make a quick buck. Which is true, except that even a lot of the bad stuff of yesteryear is at least interesting in hindsight. Most of the bad stuff these days is offensive not because it's bad, but because it's bland. The grifters of decades past at least had the decency to funnel their cash grabs through naive and misguided dreamers. These days they merely drag out faded logos, slap them on products and wait for us to waddle forward with cash in hand. The other strategy is to tout dull, soulless, computer generated pablum as exciting and cutting edge, which seemingly has the same effect. Their Madame Cash Grab is naked, and the public is left with two options: pretending that the lady is wearing haute couture and taking her out for the evening, or decrying her appearance while she entertains us anyway. After all, what else are we going to do? Give into boredom?
To which I say: Why not cancel the date entirely and find something better to do?
In the 1993 album/multimedia presentation Alien Dreamtime, the ethnobotanist, lecturer, and author Terence McKenna opens his multi-part lecture with the statement, "History is ending, because the dominator culture has led the human species into a blind alley. And as the inevitable chaostrophe approaches, people look for metaphors and answers. Every time a culture gets into trouble, it casts itself back into the past looking for the last sane moment it ever knew." While McKenna was discussing far broader issues than the stagnation of pop culture, I think his words (and indeed the rest of his Alien Dreamtime lecture) remain incredibly prescient. Our current cultural paradigm has turned out to be a blind alley, a dead end road driven by consumerism rather than creativity. Western pop culture is in many ways enthralled and enslaved by intellectual property; creators are constantly told to consider marketability and profitability over originality. The result is a collective unconscious that looks like overworked and underfertilized cropland. We've gone beyond trying and failing to grow new things. We're now actively afraid to even attempt it.
The answer isn't to keep plowing. It's to find new fields all together.
Escapism is understandable these days. It's desirable. It's required, in many ways, given the utter horrors that surround us on a daily basis. (Getting away from screens will only do so much if people will go out of their way to tell you about the innumerable fresh hells being churned out by the Epstein class ever hour on the hour.) Arbiters of taste will tell you that the only mode of escape is through the popular zeitgeist, but why should we keep listening to them? Because we're afraid of looking out of step? Because we lack other means of relating to our fellow humans? Or is it because we think that art and culture are things that are dictated to us, rather than that which we create ourselves?
We can, in fact, turn away from Big Culture. The ways of doing so are myriad. The British zine Peasant documents individuals who are reviving and reinventing Morris dancing, turning what was once a hobby reserved for white men into one that is multicultural, gender inclusive and queer. Bandcamp is home to major label artists, but they are the minority on a site that features millions of songs from artists experimenting in a dizzying array of subgenres (and occasionally sub-sub-subgenres). Indie web developers are separating themselves from Big Social and carving out a vibrant niche outside the algorithmic conveyor belt. I'm sure there are many, many more groups out there who are engaged in similar counter-cultural endeavors. The point is that we can starve the beast, and we can do so without going completely mad from boredom or mental anguish. To quote a criminally underrated show from the 90s, "If the movie stinks, just don't go." Instead, spend that time creating something that brings you tangible joy, rather than a fleeting moment of mere hollow enjoyment. Let Hollywood, Broadway and other entertainment industrial complexes collapse under the weight of plagiarism machines and quarterly earnings reports. We can create for our friends and for ourselves. A thousand years of human history can't be wrong.
What would it look like to have a world in which people wrote stories for friends, rather than going with them to watch stories written in board rooms? What would it be like to perform original works in living rooms and backyards, rather than seeing a live show based on an animated movie adapted into a musical adapted into a live action film? What would it be like if art of all stripes was once again driven by the joy of sharing your creation, rather than the need to add extra zeros to a financial report?
The future of entertainment is still unwritten. So we get to decide what that means. But only if we have the metaphorical balls to walk away from what they say it will be.
Now, this trend isn't exclusive to Hollywood. It has seeped into other areas of popular culture, from AI-created pop songs to re-re-recycled musicals, most of which seem to be worn retreads of movies or insipid attempts to slap threadbare plots on a rock band's back catalog. (We've already seen a musical cobbled together from 80s hair metal standards; I can only assume that it's only a matter of time until we get a Taylor Swift or Chappell Roan take on the same tissue paper thin premise.) Most people don't seem to care about this dearth of artistic integrity and basic quality control, which is particularly exhausting for those of us who do. Your average citizen is happy to consume whatever grey pop culture slop is placed in front of them, and is quick to point out that each decade has been full of bad art produced to make a quick buck. Which is true, except that even a lot of the bad stuff of yesteryear is at least interesting in hindsight. Most of the bad stuff these days is offensive not because it's bad, but because it's bland. The grifters of decades past at least had the decency to funnel their cash grabs through naive and misguided dreamers. These days they merely drag out faded logos, slap them on products and wait for us to waddle forward with cash in hand. The other strategy is to tout dull, soulless, computer generated pablum as exciting and cutting edge, which seemingly has the same effect. Their Madame Cash Grab is naked, and the public is left with two options: pretending that the lady is wearing haute couture and taking her out for the evening, or decrying her appearance while she entertains us anyway. After all, what else are we going to do? Give into boredom?
To which I say: Why not cancel the date entirely and find something better to do?
In the 1993 album/multimedia presentation Alien Dreamtime, the ethnobotanist, lecturer, and author Terence McKenna opens his multi-part lecture with the statement, "History is ending, because the dominator culture has led the human species into a blind alley. And as the inevitable chaostrophe approaches, people look for metaphors and answers. Every time a culture gets into trouble, it casts itself back into the past looking for the last sane moment it ever knew." While McKenna was discussing far broader issues than the stagnation of pop culture, I think his words (and indeed the rest of his Alien Dreamtime lecture) remain incredibly prescient. Our current cultural paradigm has turned out to be a blind alley, a dead end road driven by consumerism rather than creativity. Western pop culture is in many ways enthralled and enslaved by intellectual property; creators are constantly told to consider marketability and profitability over originality. The result is a collective unconscious that looks like overworked and underfertilized cropland. We've gone beyond trying and failing to grow new things. We're now actively afraid to even attempt it.
The answer isn't to keep plowing. It's to find new fields all together.
Escapism is understandable these days. It's desirable. It's required, in many ways, given the utter horrors that surround us on a daily basis. (Getting away from screens will only do so much if people will go out of their way to tell you about the innumerable fresh hells being churned out by the Epstein class ever hour on the hour.) Arbiters of taste will tell you that the only mode of escape is through the popular zeitgeist, but why should we keep listening to them? Because we're afraid of looking out of step? Because we lack other means of relating to our fellow humans? Or is it because we think that art and culture are things that are dictated to us, rather than that which we create ourselves?
We can, in fact, turn away from Big Culture. The ways of doing so are myriad. The British zine Peasant documents individuals who are reviving and reinventing Morris dancing, turning what was once a hobby reserved for white men into one that is multicultural, gender inclusive and queer. Bandcamp is home to major label artists, but they are the minority on a site that features millions of songs from artists experimenting in a dizzying array of subgenres (and occasionally sub-sub-subgenres). Indie web developers are separating themselves from Big Social and carving out a vibrant niche outside the algorithmic conveyor belt. I'm sure there are many, many more groups out there who are engaged in similar counter-cultural endeavors. The point is that we can starve the beast, and we can do so without going completely mad from boredom or mental anguish. To quote a criminally underrated show from the 90s, "If the movie stinks, just don't go." Instead, spend that time creating something that brings you tangible joy, rather than a fleeting moment of mere hollow enjoyment. Let Hollywood, Broadway and other entertainment industrial complexes collapse under the weight of plagiarism machines and quarterly earnings reports. We can create for our friends and for ourselves. A thousand years of human history can't be wrong.
What would it look like to have a world in which people wrote stories for friends, rather than going with them to watch stories written in board rooms? What would it be like to perform original works in living rooms and backyards, rather than seeing a live show based on an animated movie adapted into a musical adapted into a live action film? What would it be like if art of all stripes was once again driven by the joy of sharing your creation, rather than the need to add extra zeros to a financial report?
The future of entertainment is still unwritten. So we get to decide what that means. But only if we have the metaphorical balls to walk away from what they say it will be.
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