Pop culture 100 years from now: dilution, hardened canon, or good balance?

Cafe Society
1

Growing up, I did not know that I was living in interesting times for pop culture. Namely, I was born less than 100 years after the birth of recorded music and movies, less than two decades after the birth of rock and roll (to wit, 1971). Heck, color movies were less than 40 years old and had been produced in quantity for less than 20 years. Regular broadcast TV had been around less than 25 years.

Even if you’re half my age, it’s the same thing: you were born pretty close to the start of it all. Movies with big CGI affects appeared in your lifetime, etc. All of this stuff can only be invented once.

In the early days of anything, trends can fly fast and furious. Rock can give way to disco to punk to new wave to hair metal and rap to grunge. The rebellion of punk rock could only happen once; if there is a resurgence in its popularity 10 years or 1,000 years from now, it’s going to be a reboot.

You’ve heard the argument that, in terms of fashion and music trends and whatnot, we’re still in 1992. I’m not going to make the argument pro or con on that right here, but it’s something to ponder: Can new trends just stop happening?

So fast-forward to 2114. Now in existence there are over 300 years’ worth of novels, over 200 years’ worth of recorded music and movies, over 150 years’ worth of television programs, and over 135 years’ worth of video games. Moreover, a lot (we hope) will be in the public domain, free for anyone to grab and enjoy as is or reconfigure.

I see three main possibilities for trends:

Dilution. The passage of time and the acceleration of the long-tail effect has created a vastly dilute world of pop culture. Everything is there in the big database, but no one particularly cares about the Beatles or Bob Dylan any more. The same thing for Casablanca and “Five Nights at Freddie’s 2.” Sure, they were great, but there has been so much that is great, and new stuff keeps coming out. Trends in any of the arts are gone, and it is hard to get much attention for what one is doing. Sure, society still needs its water cooler topics, so there will always be a Miley, Taylor, or Kim that is in the spotlight, but they are expected to disappear down the oubliette within short order–like everything else.

Hardened canon. History teaches us that only a few things survive in memory. How many famous playwrights are there in the English language? One, Shakespeare. Do you think Tennessee Williams and Noel Coward are still remembered? Get real. As for pop music, the Beatles, Stones, and Dylan are what has lasted. Yes, ELO and Kate Bush can still be found for the hobbyists who care about that kind of thing, but few do care or remember. Video games have been played out (no pun intended) with a few truly excellent and immersive games developed starting in the 2070s (ah, the 70s, such a magical decade!) giving people pretty much everything they’ll ever need. TV and movies have become passe–why watch when you can live all the action and romance in a video game?

Good balance. As before, the best things are admitted to the canon, which slowly expands as time passes. A few more bands of the Beatles’ stature have come along and been recognized, as have a few authors on the level of Hemingway and Rowling (?). New classic films slowly but surely get added to the roster.

OK, now I’ll tell you what I think is really going to happen. It’s going to be a kind of “worst of all worlds” made up of the first two things. Even now, we have many categories of art and pop culture simply shut down to further canonical additions. We simply are not admitting new composers, artists, authors, and poets to the ranks of the Great. As the music business continues to break down, I think we could find ourselves not even considering any more the potential of a band to achieve the stature of the Beatles. This may already be the case.

There will be a dilution factor when it comes to novels, movies, TV, and video games; although most will simply be tossed out (will people watch past seasons of Survivor in the future? I have my doubts), some stuff will stick, creating eternal competition for anything that comes after. Yet there will always be a demand for new stuff, if only because the stories will need to reflect new trends in technology and society. E.g., the lack of cell phones in 90s movies dates otherwise pretty modern-seeming flicks.

In every ensuing decade, there will be another Seinfeld, Twilight, Thriller, etc., since, owing to human nature, humans have a desire to make something big and talk about it a lot. But the number of things that truly are remembered for very long will not be large. I think the Beatles will be remember in 2114, maybe Michael Jackson will be, but the Smiths, Kate Bush, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift will not. I’m not sure very much TV will be remembered at all. So there will be a combination of hardened canon and extreme dilution. A true “we’ve seen it all before” weariness will set in, and pop culture, now hundreds of years old, will just not seem very important any more.

That doesn’t mean I’m despondent about the human race or our collective future. I think a lot of great things are coming our way. I think the nature of fame itself will vastly change as more people have free time in which to create and present their creations to their friends and the world via the future equivalents of YouTube, Instagram, etc. I do think, however, people will look back nostalgically on the time when pop culture seemed new and important.

That’s my sloppily expressed take on the matter. I look forward to hearing your ideas!

2

Even now there’s not enough time to consume all the great media. It becomes more impossible as time goes on, because we churn out more and more each year. This will grow worse with increasing globalization. Or when computers start producing art. Then it’s over.

Maybe it will be staved off if the future is a utopia where people can lay around and consume media 24/7. But that will just delay the problem.

From my own viewing habits I’ve seen less and less movies the further back in time I go. I think this will be similar in the far future. Someone born in the 22nd century will watch mostly movies in the 22nd century, some from the 21st, and from the 20th only as historical curiosity, similar to how we watch, say, Birth of a Nation. Some people today are obsessed with Victorian novels or other particular genres, so maybe someone will be obsessed with cyberpunk movies, like how some are with film noir or whatever.

Why watch The Matrix, when there’s a real life matrix?

When you go far enough into the future the language and cultural shifts become so great that it renders great swathes unwatchable for the non-academic. There are tons of influential Greek plays and other literature, but how many have read them outside a classroom?

Video games would seem the most time sensitive, due to hardware constraints. Great, Portal 2 is genius, what computers will still play it in 50 years? Will people still even use keyboard and mice? Unless it’s remade or re-released, it’s going down the tubes. But some games very well could become permanent cultural icons. Mario and Zelda have made billions of dollars for Nintendo for the last 30 years. Why not another 30? Maybe Mario Brothers 1 for the NES and blowing on cartridges will be long forgotten, but you can play the new one in the real life matrix.

3

I’m sure that a few artists of the 20th century will still be considered great and notable by the start of the 22nd century. So I guess I’m voting for “not dilution”.

4

I’m now trying to imagine how the BACK TO THE FUTURE movies will go over then.

5

Music seems more ‘eternal’ in its appeal, so I don’t see why at least 20th century music will remain known, as classical composers are now. I think both films and games will be considered too dated, so endlessly remade as they are already, often to my irritation.

Or there may be a fourth option for the future of pop culture: ‘Completely banned under the auspices of the Global Caliphate’. Even the Beatles will be niche, then.

6

Pop Culture has been around for more than 100 years. Why not look at what has happened already?

We definitely have a “hardened canon” in that a lot of stuff that was once popular isn’t around anymore, or, if it is, people generally don’t know about it.

Literature lasts, but only a few significant peaks stand out and survive. And not necessarily because they’re the best. Edgar Allen Poe wasn’t the only writer of off0kilter stories. Sherlock Holmes had rivals (there was even a book and BBC TV series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes) Most of those authors and their progeny are forgotten, except by the really rabid fans. There were immensely popular writers of little domestic dramas and of world-shattering social reforms that are completely forgotten now.

IK se this with the science fiction that I read in my youth. Popular authors like L. Sprague decamp, Henry Kuttner, Catherine L. Moore, George O. Smith are virtually forgotten now, except by diehard SF fans. You won’t find their books on the shelves at the bookstore (unless it’s a used book shop specializing in sf and fantasy). You could find a lot of their stuff in e-book form, but you’d have to know to look for it. And as the books in ther lending libraries age they tend to get tossed out (especiall the paperbacks), so forget about finding them there.

You do find reprinted the works of Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard are there, as are Verne and Wells. But even among these survivors, you’ll only find certain works. The bulk of Asimov’s 400-odd opus is out of print, including some of his science fiction and most of his essays. Try and find a lot of Clarke’s older stuff. If you find Wells and Verne, it’s likel;y to be The tIme Machine, War of the Worlds, the Invisible Man, 20,000 Leagues, Around the World in 80 days, and the Mysterious Island, and not much else from these very prolific authors.

And it’s the same thing for mysteries (there have been a LOT of very clever mysteries, exploring all kinds of bizarre explanations and means of detecting, that arguably belong in print, but aren’t) and westerns and historical fiction and every other branch of literature.
Whyat’ll survive from what’s out now? Hard to tell. I suspect that a lot (not all) of Stephen King will – the man’s oeuvre has hit the critical mas needed for survival. I’ll bet Tolkien will. It’s hit a critical mass, too, and the story’s not pegged to the period he wrote it as much as, say, King’s is. I’ll bet Game of Thrones won’t. Or Dean Koontz. Or murder mysteries that involve detailed recipes.

7

Dopers, at least, do, judging by the number of threads about them that keep showing up. Already I suspect you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Yes, I do: they’re remembered by people who care about theater/plays. Also George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon—all famous in the sense that the average person is likely to have at least heard of them, and the theater afficionado is likely to have seen or read at least one, and quite probably more, of their plays.

8

I’d say 99,999% dilution, 0,001% canon (yes, exact figures).

How many 17th century composers do we remember and listen to on a regular basis? Half a dozen, a dozen at most. Same for 18th century composers and 19th century composers. So I guess it will be the same with 20th century: 10-12 will be remembered perhaps including a couple of film music composers if the genre somehow merges with classical.

Popular music? Nothing.

The Beatles may be remembered by the same type of people who remember artists like Aristide Bruant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristide_Bruant). The rest will be in some database but nobody will care enough to go through it.

Same thing with the rest of the Arts: a dozen names each.

9

I was writing from the perspective of the future I was portraying after each of the bolded scenario names!

10

Although I was by no means clear enough, by “hardened canon” I mean not only that most stuff gets thrown out but that no one else is admitted to the Great and Unforgotten. You give the example of sci-fi. It may be that there is never again a sci-fi writer whose stuff lasts more than a decade or two, whereas Dune, even if it is not read, may at least be remembered as existing.

Yes. Robert Sheckley is one of my favorite writers, and I find it sad to think that he attained his small peak of fame back in the day and he will probably be completely forgotten now.

King has a chance. He may just be of historical interest. Do you know who is the best-selling poet of all time? He’s sold some 40 million copies of his books. And his music, recorded by himself and the likes of people like Sinatra, was also hugely possible. Rod McKuen. He is totally forgotten now. And it was less than 40 years ago that he was pumping out best-sellers. There are more things to keep King in the public mind, such as that his books have been made into movies, but I don’t know if that’s much of a guarantee either. There are a lot of beloved movies based on once best sellers, and people do not go out of their way to learn about the authors.

11

I think people will listen to 20th century music in 2114 and probably 2214 precisely because it was the beginning of it all and will be seen as having a youthful vigor and vitality to it. But that doesn’t mean people will necessarily be taking the Beatles and Dylan seriously as great artists or anything. Or, probably more likely, they and the Rolling Stones will remain the only artists that get the history book treatment.

12

Okay, my bad.

13

As an example of what I mean by hardened canon, there are pretty much no famous playwrights now, and no one is considered to be of “Great” stature. Excluding musicals, if I try to think of a playwright who has achieved success in my lifetime, hmm, David Mamet? And no one pretends that Mamet’s stuff is going to be a thing 100 years from now. I think at the time of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams there was the hope that “important” work was still being created, but I don’t think anyone thinks of those two or their contemporaries as being Ibsen level.

14

Nah, to state my thesis carefully would have taken more time and text, and it would have ended up several times more boring!

15

The optimist/idealist in me wants to think that certain artists which are obscure now will become rediscovered and famous at some future point, or that at least (contrary to that last sentence up there) there will be a small but fanatical minority which will spend a lot of their time sifting through the past looking for lost gems. I am biased of course since they are my favorite band, but it would be a shame if their shimmering melodies and intricate power chords became completely lost to obscurity, locked away in a dusty archive web page somewhere that nobody knows.

But, as of now, that’s not how things go, and those artists who missed out on the big time during their heyday don’t see their older works resurrected like that for the delight of current (and future) audiences. But at some point that state of affairs might change.

16

rant coming

One hundred years ago, there was no such thing as a canon of popular music. It was beneath notice. There was no canon for movies, no canon for genre fiction, no canon for humor of any kind. There wasn’t even a canon of American writing; only the British had real writers worthy of the name. There was classical music, classical art and sculpture, classical writing. And that was all.

The whole notion of a canon is relatively new. It exists only because of a new thing in the world - a middle class of importance. That starts in Victorian times but mostly is a 20th century phenomenon in the U.S. The middle classes wanted respect and had pretensions. Aping the cultural tastes of the upper classes was a quick and dirty short cut. That class grew up immersed in art; the middle class did not. They had to be taught what was considered classy by the classed. So they developed a canon that could be taught in schools; the best books, the best music, the best art. If you thought it was boring, you were at fault. Your betters disagreed.

That’s a canon. The word’s lost all meaning today. A canon of science fiction writers? An oxymoron. Everybody grows up immersed in popular culture. There’s no higher group to make decisions and no need to tell young people that they should enjoy rock music, even if they consider it boring and it has to be forced on them. The books that the upper classes read in the 19th century and were forced on schoolkids for the next hundred years are being thrown out of curricula today because they never should have been there in the first place.

Being remembered in the future is not the same as a canon. The Good Stuff inside any art form isn’t a canon either, although that’s the way it’s mostly used. They’ll always be Good Stuff, and always people who will champion it. A hundred years from now there will be an additional dozen totally new art forms we can’t conceive of today, and they’re all have Good Stuff. Will anybody be universally knowledgeable about all of them? No. A human lifetime won’t have enough time in it.

Let’s kill the whole notion of canon now, and be done with it.

told ya

17

The beginning of it all?

Popular music has always existed. What is new (post-1945) is the massive, multi-million economy and marketing based on it.

Regarding playwrights: Tom Stoppard and Peter Shaffer?

18

The beginning of the recording of it. Plus, there were also lots of relatively new forms, such as blues, rock, country, and so on.

I don’t know those playwrights. I’ve only heard the name of Stoppard.

19

A lot of chaff will be winnowed away. Think of what silent film stars are still remembered.

20

I hear ya. That’s the dilution factor. I don’t think either Robert Sheckley or the Church are coming back, sadly. They may always have a small number of fans, or they may lack even that.