Oh, don’t get me wrong, mass culture is not in a good or healthy place right now. It’s all becoming corporate-friendly pap. And I do despair a bit every time I see the acclaim a Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas book or a Star Wars sequel show or Marvel slop receive. But I see it as a bit of a Hays Code thing; even though most artists are forced to produce work under the edicts of the invisible king Capital there are enough of them who are smart enough, subversive enough to make art that is still real, beautiful, and just human. And since the current state of culture is largely the result of studios and publishers conglomerizing and then chasing bigger, safer profits I believe that eventually they will become too big, collapse under their own weight, and something else will replace them.

And of course there’s a smaller but healthier scene of lesser studios, publishers, and indies still putting out interesting stuff. Even during that brief period where Streamers were throwing money at everything resulted in some art that never would have gotten made under the regime of cable TV, though obviously that’s quickly ended up replicating the issue.

That might all sound a bit hopeful, I suppose. It is hard for those artists on the fringes eking out work, and it’s hard for those making work that’ll be allowed in by corporate gatekeepers while still being meaningful, and if the publishers and studios do collapse that’ll probably be harder still. But I think it’s possible that someday mass culture will be healthier than it is now.