If you’re older than fifty then you remember when entertainment was big business. Big American corporations made our movies, published our books, recorded our music and amused us sitting around the television set every night. And they made good money doing it. Going to the movies was a national pastime and buying records of popular music was what teenagers did relentlessly. And everyone watched must-see-tv whether it was a Thursday night sit-com or the late-night show with Johnny Carson. Entertainment was bankable.
Well, that’s all over. Kids don’t buy music. They stream it for almost nothing. They stream movies too so they don’t go to theaters. And they really don’t want to pay for it either. Same for books, same for television. The only thing that still kind of pays is cable television. That’s because cable is set up so the fees are lucrative. But guess what? Millennials and zoomers have now cut the cable. Only old people pay for or watch cable. So, the change is complete.
The result is that except for truly bankable extravaganzas like Marvel superhero movies (mostly) or Taylor Swift concerts entertainment producers aren’t spending the money needed to make entertainment entertaining. Case in point, have you looked at broadcast television in the last five years? Don’t. It’s unbelievably bad. The production values are awful, the actors can’t act but worst of all the writing is putrid. It’s as if it were written by emotionally disturbed cretins. The characters are unlikable and the plots are idiotic and completely predictable.
After what passed for Oscar nominees this year, we don’t even have to bother talking about how bad Hollywood has become. Up until recently the only bright spot was that some of the cable channels and corporations like Amazon and Netflix were spending generously on good writers and good actors for some of their series. It could be debated whether these shows were as well made as Hollywood movies were in their heyday but without a doubt, they were head and shoulders above anything that was on broadcast television in the last ten years and they absolutely entertained. But now even these shows are starting to fall apart. Amazon recently spent a billion dollars on a Lord of the Rings adjacent production called “The Rings of Power” and it flopped very badly.
So, what is next for entertainment?
Well, the answer is confusing. What young people like is video games. And because of this they consume other entertainment in a way that relates to this medium. They like to read fan-fic about those games. In other words, fans of the video games write amateur stories and post them to websites so that other gamers can read them. And now these writers are even seeing their fan-fic turned into videos or even movies of these video-centric stories. These stories adhere closely to the limitations and conventions of the games. The characters are constantly referencing their health levels and skill levels as they attempt to conquer different challenges. So, the plot is very much tied to the experience of the game.
I find all of this confusing and somewhat disturbing. I don’t doubt that these video games are exciting and maybe even challenging but how much of the same thing can you stand to consume before something more original and intellectually and even emotionally stimulating will be needed? And at some point, wouldn’t it be reasonable to want a movie about real life where normal people overcome the challenges that happen in the real world? Or how about a comedy or a drama? It can’t all be video games, can it?
Well, anyway that’s what I was thinking about today. I don’t know how all this ends but it’s something that is worth thinking about.