Culture Thursday: On cultural degeneracy
Welcome back to our weekly feature, placed on a long hiatus by our Victor's magnum opus!
This little tidbit came across my desk yesterday, and it just opened up a well of feels for me. Really? A reboot of one of the greatest franchises to ever exist? A reboot of films which for many of us of a certain age are sacred ground?
Say what you will about the prequels and sequels to Star Wars: They were not reboots, but continuations of the stories in the original trilogy. They were not retreads, but expansions of the existing universe.
But that seems to be beyond Hollywood's powers nowadays.
Why is entertainment recycling old ideas, old stories? Why can't film and theater present new stories, new visions? On Broadway the safe bet is for a revival. And in Hollywood the studios mine every last ounce of existing intellectual property. Sequel after sequel, prequel after prequel. Nothing new, nothing imaginative. Here's the formula, now go and execute it.
There didn't need to be a live-action version of Mulan, or of Snow White, or of The Little Mermaid. Those films were perfect as they were, cultural time capsules. Turning them from animation to live-action was simply a lazy way for studios to extract more value out of existing IP, rather than risk money on something new. There is no reason for a TV remake of all the Harry Potter books and films, except for another big payday for all concerned, including that execrable wretch J.K. Rowling.
Our televisions carry one ridiculous reality show after another. One doesn't have to think with a reality show. One doesn't have to ponder. One isn't shocked with a revelation. One merely sits and consumes, mindlessly shoveling pabulum into one's mouth. If it weren't for the insatiable appetite of streaming platforms for content, the powers that be would be happy for our screens to be nothing but Love Island all day every day.
Much like we're in a period of political degeneracy, it is no surprise that we're in one culturally as well. Our information age has ushered in a new cultural conservatism. No, I don't mean that sex and violence have been banned, in a new version of the Hays Code. Not at all. Sex and violence sell. But it seems to me that in our mass media culture, the gatekeepers are glaringly risk-averse, preferring to sink money into project which they think will be a good return on investment. The balance between art and commerce has always been fine. But now commerce has won out completely. The film culture we had in the 1970s is unimaginable now. Films like The Godfather, or Apocalypse Now would never see the light of day in this climate.
This isn't to say that new and interesting work isn't being made. But if a tree falls in a forest with no one around, does it make a sound? Why invest in a daring new novelist when James Patterson is a safer bet, with his assembly line of books? Why center a new piece of theater when you can just revive Cats?
The times in which we live call for new thinking, new feeling, new visions. This is why my conspiratorial mind thinks that this reliance on recycling old stories is intentional. Focusing on the past has the salutary effect of not allowing for thoughts of the present, or concepts of the future.
A culture dies when it solely looks backwards. I am a firm believer that a culture must know and embrace its past. But to do so without a concomitant commitment to use that knowledge to tackle problems of the present, and to imagine a future, is the definition of degeneracy. What our entertainment industry is doing is cutting off most avenues for new expression. And that is not what art is supposed to be about.