KayFabe
Culture seems fractured and ever diverging. We can no longer tell if anything is real or Kayfabe. From the War in Ukraine, to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, we live in a plastic world. People are now citing this could also be World War III.
The Medium may be the Message, and if that’s the case the message is: we are disconnected from Reality. Some form of McLuhan Baudrillardian Nightmare.
Memes have become the weapons of war. We are amidst World War III. No, Nukes won’t be dropped. Where would they target? Instead we will continue to fracture into smaller, and smaller ideological groups. Lobbing tweets, articles, and calling in cancellations from our foxholes.
The Battlefield of Culture is whomever was unfortunate enough to step on the enemy’s landmine. Launching a new offensive for the next few days.
But is it real?
Just about everything goes cold within the first forty eight. Replaced by the inevitable next thing. Everyone in every culture is angry about something. Perhaps because this is culture now. It is the grand unifying thing. The Boomers had Walter Cronkite, we have memetic tribal warfare.
As a Touchstone for Culture, tribalization is good. For it breaks the inherent monoculture we’ve experienced for the past several decades. This will take many forms as we begin to disunite.
Film is back in the Arthouse:
I have mentioned this for a number of years, but we have reached the zenith for what the Hollywood Film Industry can do with film. We are now at the point of continuous reboots, and spinoffs. It is rare for something new to occur, such as Parasite. No one watches the Oscars anymore, it takes a fight for people to tune in.
Further Hollywood is restricting who has access to the medium, and in doing so, will kill new initiates into the genre. The inability to see the classics will create more of an underground culture, which will revitalize the medium; but this will take some time occur. The broad restrictions, and lack of originality have created the perfect storm of staleness and inept bureaucracy that have forced all the creatives to head for other pastures.
And Audiences will follow.
We are in the age of Micro Content.
People want shorter content, but a persistent story. Not necessarily because attention spans have collapsed, but because people want control and modularity.
Continuous but shorter content becomes the replacement for longer content as it fits more easily with the individual. “Netflix Binges” are popular because people are not constrained by the content, but their own schedule.
This at your own pace of consumption
Long form TV has and will continue to do well, The Mandalorian is the most well received Star Wars property for some time and is the current bar for long form television. (We’ll see if they can keep that, ala Game of Thrones).
Why? because of it’s long form story and playing to its niche.
The Micronization of Content is leading to