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Right now, we are at a place of polarization, yet all of our art sucks (my opinion obviously but it seems to be shared). If you look back at the last time our country was this divided in the 1960's, we saw some of the greatest output of music and literature we have ever seen. We had incredible artists like the Beatles among others. Then of course that was probably the peak of black culture with incredible artistic output that they will probably never reach again. This was probably the last time you saw many black musicians and guitarists be better than their white counterparts. If you take it back to the French Revolution, you saw some of the best political philosophy ever created such as with Rousseau. Political discord creates art and philosophy that has usually never been seen before, but today we don't see any of that. Even Monty Python is more subversive than anything we see today. Clockwork Orange was more subversive than anything we see today. Why aren't we seeing a peak in art again like the time should predict?
Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places but it seems like most mainstream pop culture stuff — music, TV, movies have converged on what goes best for the algorithm and maximum viral exposure, rather than excellent craft, original ideas, or even completeness.
I think the internet is diminishing the creation of art because nothing can really gestate as a complete idea before it’s delivered. And because of the algorithm, only those things like what’s already popular get noticed. I’m hanging around authors and it appears that in order to even be considered for traditional publishers, you need a substantial media presence of at least 200-300 K followers to even be considered. It’s just not possible to simply create a new thing away from the mainstream of culture and have it be discovered later.
Algorithm seems to be the issue.
But people also need to be from a people, place, time, and culture, etc and not the global homogenized algorithm.
What makes say the Godfather good? They were American but a different people and you can tell a story about how they do things. They had bonds between family and business associates. I don’t think modern writing is even allowed to show cultural bonds in an ethnicity. What makes the wire good - they are a distinct people with bonds and relationships amongst themselves.
Now whether you are black, white, Asian but have all the same characteristics of a 120 IQ, if you need to fight you can fight, you vote Biden, hate rascists, are pro-choice, you eat at the same restaurants, and have the same memes.
The wire had tons of inter ethnic bonds and relationships (Carver and Herc??) and wouldn't have been good without it.
Maybe I worded that poorly. They don’t have to be ethnic relationships to make a show good. You just need people to not be global homogenized people where everyone is the same. Ethnic just came to mind because they are distinctively not globalhomo.
I really enjoyed The Righteous Gemstones, largely for this reason. They're all living and filming in South Carolina, and the attention to cultural details is great.
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