There’s a difference between someone who’s an actor and someone who’s distinctly a theater kid, just like there’s a difference between someone who’s a musician and someone who’s distinctly a band kid, and the theater kids seem to be taking over our media institutions lately. Nobody on the current snl cast seems like a normal person with a good sense of humor - they all feel deeply sheltered and siphoned through private schools and theater camps. It’s more about taste than theater in particular too - I can’t judge people for caring about drama as an art form, but too many new celebrities and comedians seem like they can recite songs from wicked and hamilton from memory.
I agree with this. I do think, also, that it is possible that the "bland media" phenomenon is a result of a lack of class consciousness as well? We seem to put so much stock into trauma-related and dark stuff as "prestige tv", the very things that people who have experienced so much trauma and issues are likely to want to avoid (though of course not always), that the only thing left to do as proper "hard-hitting" media besides that is radical critiques and social commentaries that are positive in tone. And because that has connotations of successful and effective revolution (of many different contexts), that is the only kind of art they are not allowed to do. So the options available to artists under capitalism are basically either venting (but resigned and without catharsis or resolution), purposefully pointless spectacle, or psychic self-harm. It's no wonder basically nothing is compelling, because we have had the actual essence of victory as a concept taken away from our cultural landscape. The only things left are things getting worse, or if we're lucky, stagnancy through struggle ("super hero" stories). In even our most optimistic dreams we've managed to appropriate the appearance of catharsis and relief, but have ousted the thing itself from our collective conception of reality, so its hollow and feels somehow darker than things just getting worse normally.
Wow, yeah. This broadens my thought on the subject a lot. There's a couple of things I feel an impulse to respond to but I'll just pick one. (The other is the suggestion that this is a result of lack of class consciousness, I believe that is also a distinct possibility and that class consciousness may be be being wrung out of the media industry iteratively with each generation of creatives getting further removed from overtly leftist influenced media.) But yeah,
This got me thinking about modern media that I consume and re-consume, that I would still consider transgressive and challenging. I realised there's a couple of running themes- drug addiction, dealing with narcissism and family conflict- or combinations of the three. They'll take shots at capitalism too, but always with the bleak conclusion that "haha go right ahead your struggle only makes me look stronger and my stock price go up."
So there are areas where culture is still waking up to itself and areas where we've turned a blind eye or haven't yet shone much light into the darkness, which provide the material to develop compelling stories. But they're often very individual or interpersonal sorts of issues rather than structural ones and they still hit because these topics are not threatening to the economic structure thus can be explored earnestly with a variety of approaches in terms of level of humour and irony and whatnot by people who are expressing their own lived experiences and traumas. So there's still some "good shit" being made but like the window of acceptable challenging topics is narrowing in on like, "this is why your family is broken" or "this is why you can't keep your friendships going" or "this is why despite being the coolest/smartest dude, you hurt and destroy everything around you" etc.
I'm regularly encountering regular normal retiree (actual) boomer-aged people and not particularly "woke" worker friends using terms like "neurodiverse" now, or coming to realise their own neurodiversity, ruminating on the things "we didn't know" and reflecting on their own and their kids' and grandkids' struggles to thrive effectively in a world not designed for them, raised and educated by people trained to read all abnormal behaviour as disobedience to be punished and brought to heel.
Wait- fuck, those people are the generation mostly still holding the reigns of these corporations, right? I wonder if there's actually a kernel of genuine good will behind making on-the-spectrum friendly media (and so on) so pervasive etc even at the boardroom level. Surely not, though. Right? it's got to be either a coincidence or a consequence of the process we've been exploring. Just maybe I'm recognising the upside to this. Perhaps it takes serious levels of media saturation to effect the kind of social change I'm witnessing in conversation with friends and neighbors and this just happens to be a positive gain that doesn't offset the loss of potential class consciousness raising types of transgressive programming.
I'm remembering what a breath of fresh air Adventure Time was when it came out. There's definitely some good and valuable work being produced within the constraints of the system we've been discussing.
But, like you said, a lot of it continues to lead to hopeless and nihilistic conclusions, as you pointed out. It's cathartic to feel seen and represented. It can help process my traumas to see that I am not a uniquely fucked up individual. Yet still it suggests no solutions. Because like you said, the solution is revolution and we can't have that. (Edit: in fact I'm often left in tears by the end of episodes of these things because it would be much better if my problems were unique and not pervasive, or if I could see characters really make breakthroughs instead of the realistic portrayal of the cyclic nature of trauma and mental illness.)
This post does not add much to the discussion but I want to show appreciation for you expanding the horizon of my thinking on this stuff and helping me recognise some dark patterns in the media that I do still find compelling.