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Notes -
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.
Could you clarify how “the algorithm” is contributing to this?
It seems to me that the algorithm is predicting what you want way better than TV execs in the 90s, and if you don’t like what you see then that’s on you.
The problem is in discovering things you might like that’s unlike what is out there now. It effectively keeps the avant- grade new stuff from being easily discovered. So because I llike Star Wars, the algorithm of whatever streaming service I use will show me more stuff like Star Wars and things that other fans of Star Wars like. This is good for people who produce formulaic stuff that fits the mold of “stuff Star Wars fans like.” It’s terrible if you’re making a film or TV show that’s not like Stuff Star Wars Fans Like. If I’m making something like Three Body Problem or X-Files or Stranger Things, unless something like that already has an audience or some hook to a name brand experience, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll find it. Which actively selects for people who can put their stuff into a formula similar to other things.
I think this is why there’s so much franchising of content. A show about a space academy might be interesting, but it’s a lot easier to sell it if you can stick Star Trek logos on it. Joker was mostly a mediation on an ordinary guy driven to madness by circumstances and lack of access to medical care. It had to be about Joker to be worth filming. And thus a shitty version of that story — but within a franchise— will reach a more mainstream audience and thus make money. A good, but independent film won’t.
This isn't a new phenomenon brought on by The Algorithm though. Producers since the dawn of cinema have seen franchises as an easy way to guarantee viewers, right? And perhaps more to the point: all your examples are content that is being decided by human producers in the human world of Hollywood -- these aren't decisions being made in Netflix or YouTube's spheres of influence.
There are maybe specific versions of this argument that are good (e.g. I've heard people complain YouTube penalizes creators if they produce too slowly (though an explicit Google search about this today suggests this is not the case)), but leveraging a brand to get views is a tale as old as viewership.
(Also it a bit tangential, but I really doubt the guy who originally had the idea for "Joker" actually wanted to tell a story about an ordinary guy driven to madness. They wanted to tell a story about the Joker, in the same way that the person who wrote "Wicked" wanted to tell a story about a specific popular villain, not a generic coming-of-age story about a social outcast in a magic school).
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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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Yeah, The Wire doesn't succeed because groups are overly distinct (though it often shows they are). It arguably succeeded because the writers aren't Nowheres.
They had careers before Hollywood and lived their whole lives in the region. The city feels like an actual place and not Vancouver in Yankee drag. Entire plotlines and direct quotes are ripped directly from their experience (Simon's Homicide is basically The Wire). So they have roots, a position that isn't just ideology. Many of the characters are basically real people or composites of them, so they aren't predictable hacky stereotypes (though a "woke" author would have had Herc and Carver's stories end the same way)
A lot of the writers and showrunners not only often have much weaker credentials than you'd think - and in fact may be selected for their inexperience but they seem to be the same sort of person who uprooted themselves, moved to Hollywood, learned the new emperor's religion and now repeat that as their way of bringing value and climbing the ranks. So, if they're faced with something they're not familiar with, why not just let ideology act as a shortcut? As we see with the recent Barbie news, it becomes even more insufferable when such people get a ton of validation from their audience for this behavior.
So you end up with so much of the media and the personalities in it sounding the same.
Yeah, I agree. Especially since many of the actors were from the street and some even had a serious criminal record. They just don't make them like that anymore.
The Safdie brothers do.
Example?
Two examples could be Julia Fox in Uncut gems and Arielle Holmes in Heaven knows what, but it's a more general thing, they cast plenty of non-actors essentially playing themselves.
Here is a short video that talks about it.
A Playboy model is not exactly what I mean, but Holmes is a good example.
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