Are video games not “fiction-based entertainment?” You define movies and television as such so visual media must count.
Seriously. We need to know what is and isn’t included for there to be any hope of a) understanding your argument and b) getting you to own up to any of your words when they are refuted.
Genres and technologies might come and go, but we’re hard-wired for stories. Indeed, I would hazard to guess that we’re telling basically the same stories over and over again. And we get into trouble in real life, because our instinct is to interpret real people’s lives—including our own—and actual history as stories.
I think that can vary quite a bit. They can range from repackaged movies with very little interactivity to very high interactivity with fan-created lore.
U mad bro?
Aeschines, I’m trying to nail down what you’re saying here for myself. Is this what your concern is?
If so, then what will be the alternative? Don’t answer, because I don’t think we can know unless/until we’re there living it. And if this is the case, then I may just label your concern(s) with this Shakespearean title - Much Ado About Nothing. To me, we do continue consuming entertainment, etc. from older times, they are simply repackaged. I’m thinking of things like the movie Clueless , derived from Jane Austen’s Emma, and West Side Story, taken from Romeo and Juliet. Nobody, but nobody, seemed to be put off by this. In fact I (and others, I’m sure) find it interesting, if not downright comforting.
I understood you, in my earlier post, to be at least a little concerned about where stories will continue to come into being from, hence my ham-fisted attempt to demonstrate that they will continue to come from where they always have - our lives. New people come onstage, they struggle with quite similar things as people who lived prior to them, people find inspiration in addressing these struggles as they ever have, and on it goes. True, poetry and classical music (to name two) are no longer at the forefront of the moving line that sweeps through time and defines what popular entertainment (and, by extension, culture) consists of, but again I ask “So what?” I will continue to write, you will continue to write - if very few read the result what does it matter?
Hmm. I just re-read your line up there - “What will be the rewards to the producers?” Is that what is driving this, even partially? See, that’s what has me buffaloed (sorry, couldn’t resist.) What is your motivation here, as well as in the two threads to which you linked?
I agree. I’m trying to imagine a future trend. I could be wrong.
The point is subtle and outside of the standard template of thinking about these things, so it’s easy to get derailed. I agree that we do and will enjoy the entertainment of the past and will repackage it. That’s a big part of my point: Past works, or new versions of past works, will take up mindshare and less new stuff will be processed by the public. Example: Keats will be read in the year 2115, but no one’s work from 2015 will be read then. The canon is closed. We could also find ourselves in a similar situation with movies and TV shows. Now, as I said earlier, there will continue to be a demand for entertainment with modern fashions, technology, etc. But the world of entertainment as we know it today may not continue.
Sure, and people are writing a ton of poetry today that nobody reads. I said from the beginning of this thread that the issue is one of demand, not of supply.
Whether it will matter or not is a different argument. I think it is likely to happen. That’s what I’m arguing. (As for whether it will matter, yeah, I think it will be a bummer for creative people to look at the closed canon and know that their work will never reach a large number of people, as it could in the past.)
I don’t get the buffalo joke–care to explain? My motivation is to explore these actual and potential cultural trends and their meanings.
I apologize on 2 counts. One - you have stated from the beginning that the problem is one of demand and not supply. Two - I am an American Indian, Lenape (Delaware). Buffalo is my last name. You could not have known this.
Your last sentence answers my question. Would you say your motivation has to do with issues of relevancy? One of the reasons I began posting here after many years of just reading is to look for myself at the issue of being Indian in this environment. I have no encapsulation and I may simply be stating a filter through which I am viewing your thread, but I do not want to think of being an American Indian as being a closed canon, to use your phrase. This may be a primary reason I’m in this thread, taking up your time.
“Past works will take up more mindshare and less new stuff will be processed” - that is already occurring to an appreciable extent, no? Of what do you imagine new stuff to be comprised? On reflection, I take back my first apology. The demand is there, just not for, um, consumables that take the form of straight plays, poetry, classical music. The consumables morph as tastes change. You might even posit a “punctuated equilibrium” in which the status remains in place interspersed with sharp upheavals, such as took place with pop music in the mid '60s or with the introduction of rap and hip-hop. I see no reason why this will not continue.
Getting late, need to see if I can sleep. I hope I have not bored you too much with inanities. For my part, this interesting.
My hypothesis: this is about the medium, not the message. The Internet both explodes the options, but also enables Big Data, i.e., ways to step back and regard this online usage exploding before us. It feels like you are seeking to step back and reflect on the sheer mass of content we see before us. It’s a fucking Indiana Jones’ Warehouse.
Ultimately, though, being able to step back and regard doesn’t mean the phenomenon wasn’t there before, only that we can see it somewhat better. I will say that being able to step back and take a Big Data look at storytelling will influence storytelling. As we use Big Data to note trends, folks will react by piling onto the trend and/or reacting against it more quickly, so cycles will compress.
Other thought: how do you define story? I hear this talk about “new stories” and am consistently struck by the rubric “there are no new stories.” You can freshen things up with contemporary depictions - our hero on a journey is a non-white, straight male - or taking advantage of new media (e.g., long-form binge watching; micro-shows on YouTube like High Maintenance) - but the fundatmental story…heart…is one of the few that are eternally out there.
Everybody has one of those “there’s only X stories out there” - my favorite one is “There are only two stories: One day, our Hero went on a Journey; and One Day, a Stranger Came to Town.”
“Let me tell you the plot of every one of his damned stories. Somebody wanted something. That’s the story. Mostly they get it, too.”
Frustrated. From my reading you keep trying to tell us that what you feel to be true is an actual objective thing capable of being enumerated, but refuse to supply any numbers, any background, any history, or any facts. You say you’re “trying to imagine a future trend” but you seem to be doing so using today as an arbitrary start time, like looking at global warming starting in 1998 and ignoring all previous history. Yes, I’m saying that your arguments seem to me as specious and as fact free as a climate denier’s. That’s an insult.
I’ve pushed you for clarity, but whatever it is you’re trying to say keeps eluding me. So I’m going to bow out, not mad but deeply puzzled.
The idea that the canon of poetry is closed requires an extraordinarily narrow view of poetry, namely that of poetry designed to be read rather than heard, from a specific few cultures, from maybe 250 years of history. There’s a vast amount of poetry being written and performed worldwide, perhaps more than ever before, and the idea that all of it will be forgotten is absurd.
There are rappers performing today who’s works will be studied in 100 years time, just as blues and folk singers from the early 1900s are studied now, and romantic poets from 200 years ago are studied, and playwrights from 400 years ago, and so on back to Chaucer and Beowulf and Homer.
That’s even assuming that the canon of written poetry has closed - if so, it’s done so pretty damn recently, given that Seamus Heaney was still working until his death a couple of years ago, and his work is read and studied now.
Been there, done that in the music threads. Best to engage on a very high conceptual level. To me this is: what happens when technology influences storytelling? The case that “THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT” hasn’t come close to being made.
This is like Economists, Analysts and Pundits who made the “Internet companies changed the cyclical nature of economies!!!” argument up through the Great Meltdown. Nice try. Same as it ever was.
That’s cool! What’s it like to be an Indian?
That’s interesting. Could you explain further?
It is, I believe.
I think one argument template that keeps sucking people in is, “There’s nothing new under the sun–oh yes there is!” So there is a tendency to see my position as my saying that everything’s been done before, so story’s gonna burn out. My point isn’t totally different, however. I’m saying is that people could get tired of the broad strokes, story elements that are fundamental and easily pull people in. Such as the hero’s journey. Now here’s the thing: the hero’s journey is so fundamental that doing it well again would not necessarily seem like “old hat.” But one can still tire of the fundamentals.
By way of analogy, take country music. The tonality of country music is fairly narrow. When someone writes a three-chord song in the country style, no one will scream, “That’s unoriginal–those same three chords!” It’s supposed to have those basics in order to be country. At the same time, it does get harder and harder to write an excellent and interesting country song because the low-hanging fruit have been grabbed. Certainly, there are many, many more country songs to be written, but one is required to search deeper for good melodies, hooks, etc.
And so it is with Story. I don’t think it’s all that hard to be original on some level or other. The question is to what degree that particular instance of originality will “sell.” To give another example from music. I am big Arnold Schoenberg fan. He basically invented atonality in classical music and definitely invented serial composition. His stuff was blindingly original, but it’s not music that is going to be loved by a large percentage of the population. People would rather hear a nice modulation from the fifth to the tonic than what sounds to their ears like random notes. So serialism was original but didn’t “sell” all that well (and after Schoenberg and his students Berg and Webern, it really didn’t sell at all, though composers kept trying for a long time–cuz that was the future of classical music, right?!).
OK, so we want big tonic strokes and V-I cadences. Cool! So let’s keep writing symphonies like that, cool? Whoops! We got our fill of that from Hadyn-Mozart-Beethoven-Brahms-Mahler-etc. So originality in classical music isn’t going to sell, and we’re not working with the broad strokes, either.
I think this is the potential issue with Story. Writers could still be quite original, but people might want broad strokes plots and characters yet feel they have their fill of them from past works at the same time.
I would not say the canon is closed on novels, but there has definitely been a divergence between “serious literature” and pop lit. The further one goes after WWII, the harder it is to find “serious” books that likely to be read for either edification or pleasure 100 years from now.
I agree. I think there is an average per capita “entertainment need” that will be steady over time. But Story is a specific type of entertainment that could nevertheless be subject to what I describe above.
It will, but the Long Tail and other phenomena can result in terrible economics for the producers and subsequent obscurity and inability to penetrate society as a whole.
Nah, I appreciate your thoughtful comments.
I’ve given numbers from the music industry and talked about past trends in arts. Not sure what much more I could do without putting serious time and research behind my thesis. I’m here to explore an idea that seems plausible to me. Not here to say I’m definitely write or really even to convince anyone.
I think what I’m saying is an off-template idea, so yes, I think it’s hard to digest at first. That doesn’t mean I think I’m a genius or special snowflake or anything for thinking it up. Other people here seem to get what I’m saying.
Y’know, if this were a new phenomenon, we could write an all-new all-different story about us only just now dealing with this-has-all-been-done-before-ism. Except, of course, we can’t, because – by definition – folks have already written such stories.
I don’t think it’s all that narrow. We used to have big names like Keats, Whitman, Dickinson. Society doesn’t process new poetry such that poets can become famous like that any more. In the English-speaking world. I can say with confidence that’s true of Japan too. Not sure about elsewhere.
I agree that a vast amount of poetry is being produced. I never said supply was the issue–demand is! The idea of the canon being closed is a little different than saying all of it will be forgotten. We are not creating big-name poets any more, and poetry has virtually no influence in pop culture. But academics could continue to maintain a history of poetry and remember what they think is important on into the future.
Rap is art, and it can be great art, but it’s not poetry per se. People enjoy rap as live or recorded performances–basically as music. (Yes, I know there are poetry slams with rap. I would not say those are enjoyed by the masses.) People are not going to crack open books of rap lyrics 100 years from now and enjoy them on the page. They are going to listen to recordings.
I have heard “Howl” by Ginsberg (1956) described as the last poem that truly had wide cultural impact. Average people were actually talking about that poem. Heaney seems more like a poet appreciated by poetry buffs and academics. Regardless, yes, the poetry canon was closed recently. Robert Frost (d. 1963), Dylan Thomas (d. 1953), Elizabeth Bishop (d. 1979), etc. Rod McKuen (d. 2015) is an outlier: the best-selling poet in the history of the world, but he is basically now forgotten as a poet. And he was certainly never appreciated by academics. Trashed, rather.
I don’t say the canon is closed based on my personal opinion of these and other poets. I say that based on the fact that they are not known to the masses, and the media doesn’t treat poetry as important art any more. The only people who take new poetry seriously are academics and poets themselves (who of course would like to believe they will someday have a legacy like Keats’).
People are reading and analysing Bob Dylan’s lyrics now, and he’s still active, recording and touring. The same will be happening in 100 or 1000 years time with at least a handful of people who are writing now.
Your arguments that “the canon is closed” don’t really work, because what will happen is the canon will be redefined. In the 19th century, the difference between baroque, classical and romantic music was important to everybody, nowadays it’s all considered classical music. There would no doubt have been those who listened to Beethoven’s music and lamented that all the good music had been composed.
What I suspect will happen - and indeed, what is happening - is that music that isn’t considered “classical” will be added to the canon. It happened with Stephen Foster, it happened with Leonard Bernstein. No reason it can’t happen with, say, John Williams or Michael Kamen.
Same with poetry. Your distinction between poetry and lyrics is pretty arbitrary, ultimately. Most poetry throughout history has been written to be performed, and it’s simply an accident of history that our current canon is an exception to this. In 1000 years time, the writings of Keats and Dylan will be considered outside of academia (assuming they’re considered at all) as part of the same thing, just as Beowulf and Chaucer are to most people now, despite the centuries between them. Same with Classical literature, despite spanning a millennium and both Greece and Rome, it’s considered one entity.
I have a book that collects all of the lyrics of Leonard Cohen. It’s basically a poetry book.
I have similar for Dylan. You probably know this already, but Cohen has published several books of poetry apart from his lyrics, and was at least somewhat famous as a poet before he became a singer.
Not all lyrics work as written poetry. I have Springsteen’s lyric book, and it’s pretty disappointing as a read.
I missed whether this has already been mentioned in this thread, but my understanding is that when Beowulf was part of the Anglo-Saxon oral tradition, it was sung, and now we read it as verse.
I think very few people read Dylan’s lyrics in a book for pleasure as poetry. Sure, I think his lyrics will be considered important in 100 years because he’s a giant of pop music. I agree that in such a case the line between poet and musician is blurred, though there are very few such people who will have that status. No one is going to think of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” as poetry, though they are great song lyrics.
I made the distinction because of the medium. Putting on a Beethoven symphony requires a huge orchestra and a shit-ton of man-hours to learn and practice. One reason new symphonies don’t get performed (very much at all) is because orchestras will tend not to want to invest that time and effort in them.
My point was really about medium. I am not even trying to make a distinction between classical and pop in terms of quality. So yes, Beethoven and the Beatles are both “canon,” that’s fine. They will both be remembered in 100 years.
Similarly, the reason why the straight play is essentially defunct is not because a TV show is a radical departure from a straight play, but TV scales better and performs better costwise.
I agree in a limited sense: the words on the page had to at least sound good when read out load. And I’m sure people did readings of parts of the Iliad and Paradise Lost, but they couldn’t do a reading all at once. Those were works intended to be read as we read novels today. But any short work could in theory be read out loud.
Well, if song lyrics work as poetry read off the page, then they could be considered the same thing. If not, not. Personally, I think only a tiny fraction of Dylan’s lyrics work as poetry outside the song. “Blowin’ in the Wind,” yes. The line “Everybody must get stoned,” however, works great in the song, but that song just read aloud would sound ridiculous.