Why is it okay to create crap and mass-market it?
How is it that people find it acceptable that movies are such crap?
Over and again, the same tired gimmicks glitzed up by this summer’s latest CG techniques. I was reading a blurb about how great Star Wars: Birth of the Empire is going to be, and felt the same hopeful “maybe it won’t be the same old overdone drek Hollywood tends to pump out” feeling I got for episodes one and two. Until I read about some climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Anikin, while “surfing on lava”. I got this horrible image of the two of them on surfboard-size pieces of rock, literally surfing down a stream of lava. I’m sure it won’t actually be like some alternate 60’s surfing film, and it’ll look great. But it’s depressing that even Lucas, who created one of the most inspirational and well-told epic films ever (if not the most original theme), has to rely on glitz to carry his latest works. Ooh, someone’s bitching about the Star Wars Prequels! How edgy!
Why is it okay that pop music is tailored to be as homogeneous as possible?
Labels tend to go for the easy route of signing people who already sound and look like what’s already popular. It makes good business sense: If Britny is in now then it makes sense to hire other people like her. Those will all be slightly different (if only for bookkeeping purposes) and whichever rise to prominence will influence subsequent signings. This is what’s known as a safe investment. Presumably labels have a certain amount of money set aside for unsafe investments, artists that are non-mainstream. These may swing either way: they may be hugely popular, or they may bomb. Or perhaps they’ll acheive some mediocre level of success. Either way, they represent a huge risk for labels, so these are far less common than the “tough innocent slutty athletic skinny peppy vacuous blonde” genre.
Why have I not yet been shot?
Fuck I’m whiny, aren’t I? Well, I’ve a lot of opinions on stuff, and even though many of them are misguided or underinformed I insist on getting them out. Besides, I don’t like repeating myself. So once I’ve gotten a lot of this crap out of my system (and gotten used to regular writing) I’ll start writing more interesting things.
