A big problem in the arts: repetition and dilution

Cafe Society
1

Let’s start with music. My 11-year-old daughter is very independent. I also have done no propagandizing to her with respect to music. Yet she independently borrowed my Beach Boys Pet Sounds CD and was listening to it with her friend. She proclaimed to me, “The music of the 60s and the 80s was so much better than music today!”

This flies in the face of the stereotype of kids loving the music of today and only old folks screeching, “Get off my lawn!” I haven’t seen any research on the matter, but my guess is that, if you were to poll people aged 0-20, you’d find a lot of eclectic listening.

The questions thus arise: Why does she think that? And is she right?

I think I have an answer. The first thing to understand is this: We were all, even the youngest of us posting on here, born in a time when nearly all of pop culture and even art in its modern form was new. Recorded music and movies: about 120 years old. True color movies: since 1935 (Becky Sharp), with most color movies made since the late 60s. TV: since 1948, just 69 years. Novels: only about 200 years. Music that we genuinely find listenable and familiar as a (Western) society: again, a little over 200 years, with Vivaldi and JS Bach in the Baroque period.

Sure, if we want to get into painting, sculpture, and architecture, we can go back quite a bit further. Nevertheless, there was a strong classical tradition in these areas as well until the second half of the 19th century.

So we were all born at the start of it all. Let’s look at music again. Although recorded music dates back to the late 1800s, stuff that has a chance of feeling modern and relevant didn’t come into being until the 1920s. Aside from a handful of Stephen Foster and a few other songs, how many songs with lyrics (that are not church hymns) do people really enjoy from before 1920? And that’s being generous. Even most of the popular Christmas Songs, “standards,” and other songs that may strike people as old but enjoyable are from the 1940s or later.

But even all this is academic when you consider that the human race has a lot of time left ahead of it. Imagine pop music in the year 2600. 2017 is going to seem awfully early in its history, wouldn’t you agree?

So anyway: we were born at the dawn of it all, and we’ve seen lots of change happen in our own lives. I was born in 1971 and have seen lots of change in pop music that people felt were major trends and, most importantly, cared about: Disco, Punk, New Wave, Rap, Hip-Hop, Grunge, EDM… and then it just sorta seems to end, in the late 1990s.

And now we have no trends and my daughter saying music was so much better in the 60s and 90s. And the reason is: there are no more trends. And the reason there are no more trends is because of repetition and dilution.

Look, if you were born anytime between 1900 and 1985, it would be easy to be wowed by the forces of change in the arts and think that the future would be like the past: that is, one impressive wave would follow another, forever. But that wasn’t always the case in the the past, and it isn’t the case now. In the past, there were large swaths of time with very little innovation and even not a lot created that was considered good. Who was the Shakespeare of the 1600s after he died in 1616? There wasn’t one. 1700s? There wasn’t one, though Sheridan is funny. 1800s? The only playwrights academics consider major at all from the time are Shaw, Wilde, and Ibsen. Then we get a bunch of “important” playwrights in the 20th century (none considered as important as Shakespeare), and now the straight play is basically dead and irrelevant.

And so it is in music now. There are more highly skilled musicians today than ever. There are more competent songwriters today than ever. Heck, shows like The Voice imply if not demonstrate that there is almost an infinite amount of vocal talent out there.

And that’s part of the problem. In the 1960s, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met by chance on a train and shared their love of blues. That alone made them different and brought them together. Their knowledge of the blues and their ability to play it at that level was enough to make them stand out a lot in the early 1960s UK music scene. They were truly getting in on the ground floor. Now they are, in fact, awesome songwriters, but they didn’t even write their own material at first! Could those guys do that in 2017? Maybe Jagger for his unusual but great voice and exceptional charisma would stand out today, but the rest would just be your average decent musicians now.

Because all that shit was totally new back then–see what I mean?

And it remained new until the late 90s. And that material retains the glow of its newness and freshness, and those qualities still speak to people. That’s why the music of the past seems better than that of the present to a lot of people.

And this is true in all the arts. You can only splatter paint like Jackson Pollock once and have it be new. I love contemporary art–it really speaks to me. I will defend it all day. But if you showed me a piece from 1995 and a piece from today and had me guess at the respective dates, unless there were something really specific involving technology or style or pop culture, I would be hard-pressed to say which is which.

Fast-forward not too far in the future: 2117, a hundred years. Are detective stories going to be able to seem fresh then? Are super hero movies? Are 12-bar-blues songs? Mind you, I’m not saying they can’t be good. It’s just that differentiating them from the past examples from the past is going to be hard.

And as time passes, it’s just going to keep getting harder and harder. Sure, things will be updated to accommodate the last technology, the latest styles, the latest slang, and so on. The CGI in 2030 will blow ours away!!! Etc. But all the types of characters, all the plot points, all the ways in which a story can be put together–it will be the same, same, same. And the minefield you have to navigate in order to create something truly new will get denser and more dangerous, metaphorically speaking.

The obvious objection: No, there will be new things! You just haven’t thought of them! Well, I agree. I think virtual reality is a vast new frontier that is basically going to make the entertainment we have today look very quaint. Obsolete, even. I think eventually content will be transmitted directly into the brain, and we’ll be living out video games that seem 100% real. Or going on VR trips that make LSD and heroin seem like a joke. Going on spiritual journeys that genuinely help us be wiser and better. I think the big deals of the future will be totally different deals than we have today.

Canons are already closing. We’re basically done writing new “classical” music and poetry and processing it as a society. We’re satisfied with what we’ve got. Canons in other areas will close as well. People will still make works in those domains, but they will effectively be ignored. What grabs society’s attention will be new things.

Thoughts?

2

There’s a lot of stuff to cover in your post, but this part jumps out as the easiest to address. It’s not that the music was better then or now, it’s just that for music now you have to search a bit more to find the good stuff, but for music from the past more of the dross has been filtered out. Your daughter has listened to Pet Sounds but I’m guessing she’s never listened to Ballad of the Green Berets, which was the #1 song the year that Pet Sounds came out. People in 50 years looking back on the music of today probably won’t know the Chainsmokers other than maybe as an answer to a trivia question, but they’ll know about the good stuff from today.

3

I agree that this is an important effect that can make things in the past seem better than the present. But it doesn’t always work this way, as quality levels can genuinely vary. Separate out the dross in 70s music, and you have a lot of great music (as well as a lot of great music that gets forgotten). But how about 70s TV? There is a kitsch factor that can make watching The Love Boat or Fantasy Island entertaining, but very few shows from the decade hold up. OTOH, a lot of “classic TV” from the 50s and 60s does remain genuinely enjoyable.

How much recorded pop music from before the 1940s is listened to today? Almost zero. Recording techniques were poorer, and the style simply seems pre-modern. (I love a lot from the period, FWIW, especially old acoustic blues.)

I actually think very little from the period 2000-present will be remembered 50 years from now. Again, not because it’s not good–there are many, many great songs in the period. But simply because it has no trend and no “brand” associated with it.

I didn’t talk much about dilution in my OP, but here is where that comes in. For example, Lady Gaga has a bunch of great songs IMO. But she does dance, neo-Disco–call it what you will, but while it stood out in its time, it’s not part of anything bigger. But it’s good, so maybe it will be remembered, right? Except, in 2025, you have a new, outré singer like Gaga doing something similar but a little different. Then in 2032 you have one, and so on. You get a washed-out canvas of somewhat similar things. Maybe each of them gets a song or two added to the canon, I’m not sure, but as time marches on the dilution continues. Meanwhile, the Beatles retain their “brand” and significant mindshare.

The point being, this dilution affects how today’s artists are experienced today.

4

All In the Family, Taxi, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, WKRP, The Bob Newhart Show, etc. Plenty of classic 70s television.

I agree there is more dilution though since today’s listener has many more ways to find and experience new (new-new or new-to-them) music and at little opportunity cost (no more buying terrible albums). And artists have more distribution channels than just begging people to listen to their poorly-produced demo tape. I don’t see this as a problem though.

5

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point about trends, because I don’t see what that connects with what will be remembered or not. I’m guessing your daughter likes Pet Sounds because it’s a good album, not because the Beach Boys were part of the surf rock trend. And Pet Sounds has survived as a classic album through the years not because arbiters or taste decided that it was the best album from that brand, but because people kept listening to it and telling others that they should listen to it.

Also all art forms build on previous works and influences, including pop music. I don’t know what innovations there will be in music (or film or TV) but I would think it would be pretty arrogant to say that we’ve reached the peak and it’s all downhill from here.

Regarding 1970s TV, I’d say that MASH, All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and early Saturday Night Live hold up fairly well.

6

Monty Python excluded, I don’t think these are shows that people watch for pleasure much any more, although they are recognized as good and influential for their time. But it’s ten years and some stuff is going to have a fan base. I have a boxed set of the Wonder Woman show with Lynda Carter, but again the kitsch factor. Compare the number of people who will watch Seinfeld (which I don’t like) with Three’s Company (which I do kinda like but recognize as not as influential or “big” as Seinfeld).

Anyhow, I do stand slightly corrected. But my point is that the goodness of output at any given time is not guaranteed to be as big or important as that of any other time.

7

I indeed failed to say what this is a problem.

It’s not a problem in the same way that North Korea is a problem. Or MRSA is a problem.

If you like popular music and like the idea of it being important and, well, actually popular in society, it’s a problem. Take poetry, for example. It’s not important any more. It’s not influential and not popular. But if can still write stuff and go to open mics and stuff, sure.

The same thing could easily happen to pop music. Hey, it’s just a hobby. No one gets famous from it. Or maybe just a handful of Swifts and Biebers at any given time. I think that would be a sadder world.

8

Eh, aside from WKRP (where the syndicated version is awful) they’re all on my local retro-television station along with the 50’s/60’s classics. Also, Happy Days, CHiPS, The Brady Bunch, Carol Burnett and, well, The Love Boat.

So someone must be watching them.

If there’s a “problem” with fewer people becoming huge and famous and historic in music, I don’t think the solution is to shut the spigot on new music and force us to listen to a much more narrow cross-section.

9

That is true, and that essentially the origin of the problem. Because each time you build, you can only innovate and change less than before. It is a bit like capitalism: every company has to grow, yet the the more they grow, the bigger that growth has to be in absolute terms in order be at the same percent. And it’s not sustainable for very long. Growing a $100k/year company into a $110k company is nothing, a cinch; growing a $1B company into a $1.1B company is quite difficult. Each stage of 10% growth is proportionately more difficult.

Similarly, transforming the amalgam of influences of that formed rock into rock was a small difference that equaled a big difference to listeners. Turning that a few years later into the Beatles, again a big difference to audiences. Electrifying. In 2017, however, trying to turn death metal into something different and interesting that is still death metal is nigh impossible. Trying to create something that sounds truly new to jaded ears is very, very difficult.

Things do end, however. Is it arrogant to observe that new poetry and “classical” music are no longer important in society? Or that we don’t really have famous painters and sculptors now? Certainly we don’t have artists in the media of the stature of a Picasso or a Dali or a Degas. And again, it’s not that artists today are any less skilled.

10

That’s the thing. The early material does affect even inexperienced listeners in a different way. As a kid in the 1970s, I was way into 50s music, which was a fad at the time. The trend or genre or what have you is immediately apparent and recognizable. That in turn becomes diluted and repeated over the years so that people can just simply listen to the old stuff instead of what is perceived as an imitation.

11

My guess is that it’s a low-risk, low-reward scenario. You pay virtually nothing for those old shows and get a low viewership that nevertheless pays the bills. TV ratings in general, even for top current shows, have cratered as compared to the 90s:

I totally agree. There is no solution. The long tails is just going to get longer, and music will become a hobby, like poetry.

12

Modern pop music strikes me less as poetry and more like being upset that no one gets famous doing Impressionist paintings like Monet and Renoir used to. You can use the same techniques now but no one is going to get excited about you doing so. But then someone else invents Cubism or Surrealism and we get some new famous people. Music itself isn’t going away but expecting people to keep making the history books with the same basic routine is unrealistic.

13

I’m inclined to agree with your comparison. But Cubism and Surrealism go back to… the 1910s and 1920s, respectively, right? What new trends have there been in contemporary art that can be named or are recognized outside academia since the 1970s?

We are even in a situation where people decry contemporary art as being something a kindergartner can do, and they are thinking of non-representational art that could be from the 1940s. You play someone a Schoenberg piece from the 1920s, and people think it sounds “weird” and “modern.” In both visual art and “classical” music, a point was reached long ago that crosses many people’s ability to process and enjoy. This is basically why we don’t have famous (to the masses) artists any more, and “classical” music is basically dead (i.e., new pieces cannot become part of the canon).

So just as new trends can’t be created in contemporary art and “classical” music any more, it could end up being the case that new trends can’t be created in pop music any more. The continued recognition and appreciation of trends is not a given.

14

This is a really good point by itself. The question it suggests is: Why?

Trends tend to burn out long before they are fully expressed. Impressionism is pretty cool, in my book. It would seem to invite infinite exploration. But long before it’s all that much explored, it becomes considered dull and old-fashioned. That’s a pity.

The same thing happens in music. Long before an infinity of Disco songs were created, the genre was despised and discarded. So, we can’t make Disco songs any more and have them be popular and appreciated so… we have to make something totally new, as you said. But then we fail at that, and it simply becomes a hobby.

Example. I have been doing some open mics lately. There are some old dudes in their 60s who have some truly great original songs. That they perform very well. Great stuff. But it’s “folk,” and folk is old-fashioned and there’s no market for that. So they’re just some old dudes playing at an open mic, and they shall gain neither fame nor coin from their work, decrees the Christ of Obsolescence.

15

I just wanted to quote this to say I disagree. I think the problem with this assertion lies in thinking creativity and innovation within arts works as one linear progression. It doesn’t.

The progression of art the last century is more similar to how technology has progressed: Someone creates something, someone else uses the ground aleady covered in the earlier creation to either expand or create something new. Multiples of this happen at the same time, some fields split, some fields merge, some die, others are revived. Iterative, sure, but not limited by it.

Art is nowhere close to being as integrated in society (therefore making it less visible) as technology is, but it’s not because of a lack of breaking new ground. There is many reasons for this: Culture is not being prioritized for funding, art is often demanding of its audience, it’s not prioritized in education, it’s not “usable”, it is very difficult to live off of art while still having more or less the same educational requirements as other fields (BA, MA and PhD), it is a complicated field and getting more complex every year, the market is extremely lop-sided, so on and so forth.

Here are some: Shock art, land art, performance art, installation art, public installation art, multi-media art, public performance art, artscience, net art, lowbrow art, hyperrealism, grafitti, blobism, participatory art.

If you’re interested in art you’ve surely heard about some of these.

Remember, trends and -ism’s are usually coined after the fact, often quite a bit after the fact. Add to that, a lot of what is now recognised as groundbreaking art, like f.ex. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, was not recognised or particularly well known until decades after it was first presented.

In fact, there’s more art and more diversity in art now than ever before, thanks to inexpensive, accesible technology. That also means it’s more difficult to get wider recognition. More and more, you have to know where to look to find the ‘new’ experiences. But they’re everywhere, I assure you.

16

I agree with the creation part of that, but not the digestion part, which includes critics (professional or amateur) recognizing what’s going on and the public becoming aware of it and appreciating it. After all, if changes and trends are happening in the dark without an audience, then the artists aren’t making any money and this stuff isn’t going into the history books. They may touch a few people along the way–I do believe that sometimes an audience of one is enough–but it won’t be art in the public sense.

Digestion does require something of a narrative of change. No, it doesn’t have to be strictly linear, and there can be multiple lines. E.g., we can talk about the separate paths and mutual influences of pop, country, hip-hop, etc., if we choose. We can break things into subgenres and so on. But that public narrative can also break down and end, as it has for poetry and “classical” music. I would say architecture too. Does one hear about famous architects and those crazy/amazing new trends in architecture these days? I suppose if one is into it, one does; otherwise, it barely gets talked about.

All you say here is true.

Most of these are forms, not trends. E.g., you could have a cubist sculpture and a cubist painting, but sculpture isn’t a trend. I’ll give you credit for the Keith Herron, Banksy street art trend, though. And performance art… a form, but there is some trend kinda caught up in the form.

I think you see my point too, though, right?

Don’t know about the “usually.” Living through musical shifts in the 70s and 80s, the names were applied rather quickly: Disco, Punk, New Wave, and so on. Sometimes to the objections of the creators themselves (e.g., “Grunge” vs. “Post-Punk”). But I take your point.

Diversity and the long tail are actually a big part of the “problem.” There’s probably more diversity in poetry now than ever as well–the issue is that simply no one cares about new poetry.

17

There was a thread like this maybe six months ago. Yeah, as far as cultural memory goes the only people who seem to matter are the first people to do something, and then the first people to do it well.

For stories, there’s only so many different types of personalities, emotions, and human relationships. There’s not a whole lot of new stories to be found out there in the search space, especially if you’re a lumper. All the low hanging fruit was plucked long ago. We figured out the “strong dude beats everyone up and performs amazing physical feats” story thousands of years ago, but people still can’t get enough of it. The next Avenger movie will make eleventy billion dollars.

There’s also a lot of tropes being older than people think going on. I see this in video game circles, a young industry with quick generations, where someone will praise a modern game for some creative feature and I’m thinking Game Y did it first 25 years ago, get off my digital lawn!

I remember seeing someone jokingly make a similar point about pornography. Why is this still being made? It’s the same as what already exists. There’s more porn than anyone could ever watch. Such saturation should crash the market.

18

Just to clarify, my former post was mainly about contemporary art.

What makes something art, is only that the creator recognizes it as art. This idea is why fine arts has moved from the domain of painting, scuplture and drawing to absolutely whatever one can express oneself through. Something can be art without ever reaching an audience. The digestion part is only what adds the qualifier good or bad (simplified, but I guess you understand what I’m getting at).

A lot of art is in the public eye, even if it doesn’t generate money for the artist. Exhibitions, performances and public installations happen all the time, everywhere and often at a monetary loss for the artist. Since we live in a time of cheap audio and video recording equipment, the work is usually documented and often uploaded somewhere on the internet, as a testament to last until a domain is no longer paid for.

By professional artist, I mean someone who works at a professional level, can manage to get exhibitions and shows, someone who knows the process of and meets the requirements for applying for grants, and have a portfolio. I’d guess most who qualifies for this has a day job or work freelance to support themselves.

I’d call it ‘movement’ rather than ‘trend’, but participatory art is a movement in that respect. Of the ones listed I would place shock art, land art, artscience, net art, lowbrow art, hyperrealism, grafitti, blobism and participatory art as movements. And these are only some. Some of the examples I listed are not movements per se, but rather interdisciplinary art-forms encompassing several movements, including several forms in various media, true.

But yes, the hey-day of -ism’s may be gone, I don’t know. Some of what is made now, will probably be put in a category a decade from now and called ‘contemporary’. A lot will be forgotten. Maybe even further down the road some will be rediscovered.

The 70’ies was not the end of big name artists. The exalted few still thrive!

This point was specifically about Fine Arts, but usually might have been an overstatement. Some movements have declared themselves as such, often with a manifesto, but many have been categorized later by art historians.

Maybe todays ‘movements’ are less visible right now, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be more defined in a few decades. I also think a lot of movements/initiatives in the 20th century did not make it into the history books.

But people care about electronic music, right? Tastes change, mediums fall out of favour, some are rediscovered at a later date. I guess I don’t see this as a problem, as much as inevitability.

19

It was probably mine. :slight_smile:

Yes, even among smart people, it’s pretty limited. Cubism is Picasso, Surrealism is Dali, end of chat. Hey, at least Impressionism gets a few more.

Yeah. I think society has an organic need called “shit to talk about,” so you will have a Bieber song, a Harry Potter book, an Avengers movie (i.e., their equivalents) in 2075, 2100, and so on.

Oh yes, TVTropes, very dangerous stuff… And yes, a lot of stuff is pretty damn old.

I have indeed read that the halcyon days of porn are long over. I think the reasons why new porn is made can be found in the reasons why new anything is made, even once everything has been done:

  1. Make sure it looks and sounds good. Use the latest video and sound technology. Probably irrelevant with respect to music, at this point. With 4K and now the absurd 8K, we are approaching the end of the line on video as well.

  2. Make sure it’s modern. I was watching Sideways (2004), a pretty modern movie the other day, but there was the use of a pay phone and there was a flip phone in it! Dated!

  3. Hi, Opal! (RIP)

I mean, there’s always room for a good new song or story–and personally, I long to go to the movies and be thrilled by something, but the latest crop of superhero movies is pretty terrible and boring. But there will always be a floor to demand for such things simply based on minute changes in fashion and technology.

20

No disagreement. It’s a matter of personal perspective. I think it’s sad that poetry just isn’t important any more, or that new symphonies can’t be debuted that make a real splash and get added to the canon, but most people could give two shits about that. And I don’t really blame them.

And that’s scary too, as an aside, how much hasn’t lasted on the Internet. It’s a lot like writing on water.

Your point about movements is a good one, thanks.

And I guess it’s all going to be “contemporary” forever, at this point.

I think physical art is in a bit of a different category because rich people can collect it. So you can have someone like Damien Hirst who is worth gazillions but who I doubt is known by even 0.1% of the US population. (Of course there is all the money from grants and public installations, etc. etc., when it comes to physical art, but simplifying here…).

I don’t know about that. The history of poety after the beats doesn’t seem to have been written at all. “We trashed Rod McKuen and so-and-so won an award that no one cared about in 1977.” Sure, an academic specializing in this would take umbrage at that and provide a narrative, but it would have no social resonance.

It’s the topic for another post, but the biggest problem I see is that, even in my lifetime, we have gone

From: Not enough good creative people to satisfy demand by society for creative works.

To: Way, way, WAY more than enough good creative people to satisfy demand by society for creative works.

Now, we can debate when this point was reached for any given medium, but if you’re a creative person today, you’re kinda fucked. Supply is Jupiter, and demand is one of its tinier moons. And this inversion of supply and demand has happened over a very short period in human history, and I don’t think global society is even quite aware of the fact yet. And until we colonize other planets and they have their demand for local art and culture, we are stuck with this reality: people pumping out tons and tons of shit for other people to care about, and not enough people to care.