Pop culture in America is stagnating. Why Is It a Problem?
American culture seems to remain stagnant. Just 16% of the most watched movies in the nation in 1981 were remakes, spinoffs, or sequels to previous movies. This percentage soared to 80% in 2019.
Many media publications recently reported that Mattel's Barney, the 1990s purple dinosaur, is receiving a contemporary makeover. There may not be anything fresh to say, after all.
According to USA Today, Josh Silverman, chief franchise officer and global head of consumer products at Mattel, Barney's message of compassion and love has endured the test of time. The famous purple dinosaur will be introduced to a new generation of children and families across the globe via content, products, and experiences, said Silverman. It will draw from nostalgia of the generations who experienced childhood with Barney, now parents themselves.
There, nostalgia is the important point.
The majority of American pop culture appears to be stuck in a nostalgic cycle, constantly reproducing material from the 1980s and 1990s in an effort to recreate the unique experience adults had as children. And yet, the content gets increasingly repulsive with each iteration of the pop culture press, replacing warm nostalgia with disgust and pleas of "Please, just let this die!"
That's not to suggest that nostalgia can't be a powerful component of creating contemporary entertainment when done well. The popular Netflix series "Stranger Things" is dripping with nostalgia; it's a sweet love letter to the 1980s, down to the terrible hair. Yet while "Stranger Things" stands on its own two feet and dresses up an already compelling plot with '80s nostalgia, much of contemporary American pop culture appears to exist only as a ghost of something from a better, happier past.
Audiences over the world were ecstatic to watch a new action hero gallivant in pursuit of treasure in 1981 when Harrison Ford first whirled his way onto film as the dashing Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." A copy of the movie was saved in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1999 since it had become such a classic.
By 2008, when "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" entered theaters, Ford's appeal as the leather-slinging archaeologist had substantially diminished. And as an 81-year-old Harrison Ford stumbles his way through "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," slated for release next year, it will undoubtedly be utterly gone.
In fact, the "Dial of Destiny" teaser appears to emphasize the problem of relying too much on nostalgia.
"I miss the desert. I miss the sea. And I miss waking up every morning wondering what wonderful adventure the new day will bring to us," John Rhys-Davies laments, portraying Sallah, a companion of the eponymous Jones who has been around from the very first movie. Oddly, Ford as Jones responds, "Those days have come and gone," considering that this is a trailer for a movie that was filmed over fifty years after the original.
Those times have in fact passed, but Hollywood's reluctance to let them go is making America inherently worse.
Politics follows culture, as famously said by the late Andrew Breitbart.
People's lives are impacted by culture. Citizens who are tepid, homogenous, and unimaginative will be bred by such society.
Pop culture deteriorates more as society continues to consume this recycled, low-quality junk, and the cycle of decline continues.
Pop culture, or culture intended for mass consumption, must be of higher caliber than endlessly mediocre remakes of better stuff from forty years ago.
Hollywood must modernize, but we must also do so if we want to resolve this problem. Rehashes do not satisfy Americans. We must aspire to brand-new distinctive tales that stand on their own and are not just retold historical events.
Barney and all the other dinosaurs may stay in the past with their rightful owners.
