They don't mention comics, but I think it applies.



http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01 ... yle-201201

Pretty interesting article. I call it the Walmart-ization of popular culture--to gain much needed "shelf-space", a movie/book/album doesn't have to be "good", it just has to have the potential to appeal to the widest demographic. It's been discussed in another thread on these board; Hollywood's tendency to invest money in "tried-and-true" ideas (such as a Three Stooges remake, or a new Muppet movie) can be chalked up to sound business acumen--"new" and "different" ideas are now considered "unproven" and "risky", and just don't make a lot of business sense. Thus the shelves of Walmart are lined with Harry Potter books and John Grisham paperbacks, DVD's from the Marvel and Star Wars "universes", and the complete catalogs of the Doors and Jimi Hendrix on CD.

By Kurt Andersen
Illustration by James Taylor

We do have lives outside of Imwan you know.

Hm. I wonder if that's the Kurt Andersen who hosts Studio 360.

Been working in my sleep again I see.

I wonder how much the complete destruction of the mainstream has helped aided this in the post-cable and post-internet world. Used to be a mainstream trend ran until a new one became popular enough to supplant it, then that trend ran until another one supplanted it, and things actually went away. Today, nothing gets thrown out, it simply shifts gears and continues to turn a profit for whatever niche enjoyed it in the first place.

I would like to put forth the example of Hanoi Rocks, a moderately successful hair metal band from the 80s, who broke up after Motley Crue killed their drummer (more accurately, Vince Neil killed their drummer in a drunk driving accident). They released five albums back in their heyday and their biggest cultural impact is causing Motley's Crue to do a cover of Jail House Rock.

Anywho, they reunited in 2002 and have since gone on to release three more albums (which do extremely well in their native Finland) and the guys look like they haven't figured out the 80s ended.



And they're not exactly alone on this front. Look up any old band that you vaguely remember from your youth and there's a good chance you'll find out that they've released a string of albums since then. Nostalgia tours are nothing new, as older acts have always gone around playing their one or two hits and there's plenty enough acts that keep soldiering on as long as someone is willing to pay them money to put their music on vinyl... but it looks like the economics of the post-Internet world have created a situation where is someone is willing to pony up the cash for a (hopefully) modest return, then someone will do exactly that.

And that's happening all across the pop culture expanse. In the 80s, we used to laugh a bit at syndicated original programming (seriously, just watch a clip of Superboy and try to not laugh at it), but after proving that their was an audience for this sort of thing, it opened the flood-gates for original programming at all of the cable networks... this at a time when everyone is bemoaning the "fact" that reality TV is putting writers out of work, while the opposite is probably true. And while the SyFy network is creating well-loved shows for pennies, NBC's big budget sci-fi family drama pulls in around 7 million viewers... which is less than what Doctor Who was doing for no budget at all in the 60s and 70s.

All of this sort of comes together to create a situation where there's relatively few shared cultural touchstones outside of sporting events. When I was a kid, someone like Lynda Carter could become insanely well-known simply by being on a modestly successful network TV show (one that got cancelled twice in three years). Even if you didn't watch a show, you almost certainly caught a few minutes of it here and there because there were so few choices. We were all on the same page and when a trend's time had passed, we collectively moved on. When Star Trek's popularity allowed it to be resurrected over a decade after its cancellation (thanks to syndication and cable networks), it was unprecedented... today, we have Family Guy, Futurama, Firefly/Serenity, and now Arrested Development (the last thanks to, of all people, a DVD renting service). There's absolutely no guiding force for the mainstream, so everyone kind of does their own thing with the odd fashion trend coming down the pike when something manages the increasingly rare trick of achieving true mainstream awareness.

I like it when a TV show,Movie or even a video game decides to use songs that I've never heard of. I then go check youtube to see who the hell these groups are.I then pass myself off as having eclectic tastes When I was younger most unknown songs in a movie/tv shows were usually pretty crappy .

I have my eclectic taste playlist I'm cultivating on Rhaposdy, many of them gleamed from watching crappy CW shows like Smallville (which introduced me to Regina Spektor and Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt). But lots of fun to have Marilyn Manson, Florence + The Machine, Hank Williams Sr., and FEAR playing one after the other.

Age has a lot to do with this as well. Younger people are much more likely to make an effort to discover music, movies and whatnot that is new and different (new to them, anyway). One people hit a certain age, however, they prefer to be entertained by something more familiar and more predictable than something strange to them.

I'm sometimes surprised to hit the TV menu and find that the movie I'm watching is 15 years old. The biggest giveaway for me is the eyeglasses. Seems to be the one fashion item that does change each decade.

I knew I was old when I learned of the latest drug craze (Oxycontin) via an MTV documentary.

Although I noticed my tendency to declare "today's music sucks" about 20 years ago when grunge knocked the hair metal bands I was listening to from the charts... shortly after I realized that hair metal sucked as much as today's music, and that was pretty much the end of me giving a shit about music. These days, the odd thing slips through, either some 80s punk band I had never listened to before or a current female singer/pianist. I pretty much look for something a little bit mad, which leaves out 99.9999999999% of the pop music I hear on the local stations. In the last three or four years, I count "Dog Days Are Over" and "Fuck (Forget) You" as the only two pop songs I can tolerate hearing a few times every fucking day.

Women's hair is usually the big one, although that's not as severe as it used to be. It's only really noticeable on the people who go out of their way to be fashionable. The dress-down styles are pretty standardized. Same is true of a lot of basic fashion, as the people trying the hardest to look fashionable are going to date themselves really fast.

Tattoos, piercings, and eyeglasses are easily the biggest change in the last decade or so.

For examples of the criminally fashionable, just google the Jersey Shore fuckwads.