What has happened since 2000?

Cafe Society
1

I am trying to put together an informal history of the US from 31 December 1999 to 31 December 2009. Time obviously is short. But further I am at a disadvantage as I do not live in the US. Let us consider some cultural stuff.

In 1999, The Blair Witch Project was a ground-breaking film of 1999, but Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace was the big hit of that year. What has happened in film since then?

In 1999 Britney Spears was the fresh-faced newcomer. Her self-destruction will require a nice essay. Both Madonna and Phil Collins (You’ll be in my heart) were big on the charts the last week of 1999. Honestly, I have no idea at all what has happened in music since then.

In TV we had The Simpsons, and The Sopranos, since then we had a writer’s strike and the rise of reality TV.

So tell me about American popular culture in the first decade of the century.

2

Someone keeps giving money to Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay, and the collective intelligence of the world has taken a 14% dip because of their dreck. To be continued…

LOST changed the face of prime-time television, spawning “clones” of high-concept, epic, character driven, episodic, mythologic and mysterious style TV dramas.

The digital music revolution seems to have finally won out. Apple, iTunes and the iPod changed the music industry forever.

Breaking Bad is the best drama on TV since The Sopranos.

HD media was a long, uphill battle, that took forever to get off the ground. Blu-Ray finally won out, and everyone can now move on.

DVR’s turned out to be the best thing since color TV.

Extreme Home Makeover is the most manipulative and egregious attempt at feel-good, sappy-eyed, saccharine, and over the top “reality” TV. It’s really a cleverly disguised, hour-long, Sears commercial. And when I say “cleverly disguised”, I mean “painfully obvious”.

Most blockbuster movies, and flagship studio flicks for the year are all moving toward greatly improved and almost perfect 3D. This movement is being spearheaded by pioneer James Cameron. I, for one, welcome it.

Robert Zemeckis seems to be obsessed with CG motion capture, yet hasn’t improved on the uncanny look since his first foray: The Polar Express(ionless).

3

The Sopranos, which you’ve already mentioned, is particularly worth noting for (I believe) leading in the new generation of high quality TV that had a clear, continuous storyline. Previous to The Sopranos, there was Twin Peaks and maybe one or two others, but the format didn’t catch on. Really you needed DVDs and someone like HBO with a significant budget to start things off.

Since The Sopranos there has been any number of such TV shows, leading to the continued, spiraling death of movies. Why spend $20 on a DVD of a two hour movie, when I can spend $50 on 13 hours of similar quality TV on DVD?

The Sopranos
24
Lost
Battlestar Galactica
Breaking Bad
Mad Men
Dexter
Carnivale
True Blood
Sons of Anarchy
Kings
Etc.

Of course, now things seem to be headed back the other way a slight amount. For regular TV watching, a continuous storyline where you can’t miss a single episode has some demerits. However, the money has moved to the TV market, so you can still get a higher budget and get strong actors and Hollywood quality cinematography (though still not Hollywood special effects) while using the old episodic format. For instance:

Burn Notice
House
Fringe

4

The annual box-office statisticsare a good place to examine the trends in the movie industry in the last decade. The big trend is the dominance of CG-special effects dominated films across different genres. Special effects films have been around for a long time of course but they have become much more prominent at the top of the box-office charts even as the special effects have become more sophisticated.

  Within this broader trend you have the return of the superhero films which are among the most consistent money-spinners in Hollywood. This was marked by the huge and somewhat unexpected success of Spiderman in 2002 and culminated in the extraordinary success of the Dark Knight last year. CG animated films have also been enormously popular. There were a handful of them in the 90's begining with Toy Story but now you have 5-6 big-budget films every year. And of course we have seen the huge success of the LOTR and Harry Potter franchises.

DVD has transformed the home entertainment business in the last 10 years. In particular old TV shows are available as never before and Netflix and its competitors have enormously increased the choice available to viewers compared to brick-and-mortar video stores. 

The Internet is more sophisticated and interactive compared to 10 years ago: social networking, blogging, youtube etc. Google was just beginning as a company ten years ago.
5

Somebody somewhere decided that quickly switching from angle to angle in less than a second for 15 seconds in a row denotes action and excitement, when in actuality it means giving viewers a headache. More and more movies from the last 5 years have done this, and I despise it.

Video games are more and more realistic every day. Some day we will be at the point where video games and 3D animation will look indistiguishable from real life. After that; real video game porn.

6

Have you noticed how the pace of video game releases has slowed as we have expected more of them?

I have heard that musical acts are now looking at CDs and digital downloads as a sideline to their main business, touring and selling expensive nick-knacks. Does that sound about right?

Keep them coming!

7

Don’t forget the glut of big-money prime-time game shows that emerged in late 1999. It all started with ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which remains as the only survivor. The other networks, of course, jumped on the bandwagon:

[ul]
[li]CBS had a short-lived show called Winning Lines, hosted by Dick Clark. I never had the chance to see this one, so I am not sure what I missed.[/li][li]NBC had 21, which was a revival of a game show by the same name from the past with a smilar format. This, too, was short-lived. It was hosted by Maury Povich.[/li][li]Fox had Greed, which had a fairly good run. Chuck Woolery, a tenured game show veteran, hosted the show.[/li][li]NBC has since had The Weakest Link and is currently running Deal or No Deal which has been its most successful, though WL also enjoyed a good run.[/li][/ul]

ABC attempted another big-money game that was hosted by tennis great John MacEnroe called The Chair which didn’t last long. The contestant was hooked up to a heart monitor. The premise of the game was that the contestant had to remain relaxed while answering trivia questions. If the contestant’s heart rate went above a set base line (that was determined for each contestant beforehand), he or she could not answer any questions until the heart rate went back down. In the meantime, all of the contestants earnings up to that point would begin hemmoraging away in increments of $100 (which increased at higher rates for more advanced levels in the game) for each second the heart rate was too high, which of course, would create more tension for the contestant and make it harder to fight the increasing heart rate. I actually had to look up John McEnroe to cross-reference this show since I couldn’t even remember what it was called.

I should also note that while many of these shows were popular in the U.S., they originated in the U.K.

8

Any important books during this period? (Other than Harry Potter of course.)

9

Wikipedia links:

10

Films that are adaptations of something else have been a popular trend in the first decade of the 20th century. As they always have, film adaptations of books remain popular, the two biggest being the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter series. Thanks to the success of the Spider-Man series, multiple DC and Marvel Comics characters have been adapted into films, with The Dark Knight arguably being the most successful. Disney briefly tried adapting theme park attractions into films- although the Pirates of the Caribbean series was so successful that Johnny Depp’s swaggering Captain Jack Sparrow was actually added to the attraction that inspired them, The Country Bears and The Haunted Mansion failed to catch on. And if Hasbro has their way, toy adaptations will be the new trend- after the success of Transformers, they signed a long-term deal with Universal and films based on Monopoly, Ouija, Battleship, and Stretch Armstrong are already in the works.

Pixar (now a division of Disney) continues a streak of successful computer-animated films that started in 1995. Other studios have attempted to jump on the bandwagon, the most successful of which has been DreamWorks Animation, whose films usually have a sarcastic tone, pop culture references, and big-name voice actors. Shrek has become their Mickey Mouse, appearing on tons of merchandise and a Broadway musical- two things Disney is known for.

Disney themselves have been using all aspects of their empire- including, but not limited to, the motion picture arm, record label, theme parks, publishing, cable channels, and the ABC television network- to create their own stable of young talent, perhaps best exemplified by their taking under their wing an obscure, struggling band known as the Jonas Brothers or finding a young actress named Miley Cyrus and turning them into superstars, appearing in all of Disney’s media departments. Disney also uses this interconnectivity to introduce new talent on shows featuring already-existing stars and propping up other parts of the empire by, for example, having Cyrus et al. appear in a TV special alongside the Muppets- whom Disney bought from Henson Productions in 2005- in an attempt to introduce the latter to Disney’s young audience. Not surprisingly, new talent is always being brought in, as stars seem to have an expiration date: the Jonas’s 3-D concert film earlier this year failed to match the success of Cyrus’s, and their new TV show had to be moved to another time slot after being beaten in the ratings by rival Nickelodeon- who is now taking a page from Disney’s playbook and creating their own stable of multitalented stars.

11

Thank you all.

12

Babylon 5 also comes to mind on this score, well before The Sopranos.

13

General: More Individual focus.
Caused by new technology and increased leisure time.

Good:

  • Increased social interconnectivity. Cell phones everywhere, facebook.
  • In music there is more indie music, more eclectic selection, less focus on the hit lists.
  • Huge growth of the internets

Bad:

  • Pointless time use on facebook, twitter
  • Reality tv
  • Music channels almost never showing music.
    Movies: Style over substance
    Not necessarily in a bad way, since good style is an attractive quality. It is especially appearant in the large number of remakes and adaptions. (The substance is pre-made, so it is basically all style.) CGI is the big new style element.

Good:
-Batman films
-Kill Bill
-Lord of the Rings
-Requiem for a dream
-Wall-E
Bad / focus on style, substance lacking:
-Transformers
-The Day after Tomorrow
-Pirates of the caribbean
-300
-Narnia
TV: Bigger, better series
Series that are large in scope and you need to follow. Better writing and effects. (This also results in less need for canned laughter.)

Top examples:
-Lost
-The Sopranos
-The Wire

14

SpongeBob SquarePants is ten years old and now a staple of every child’s viewing.

15

Damn. Really? I still haven’t seen an episode, but now I kinda feel like I must.

16

Have a kid. I bet you memorize every episode.

17

If I had to pinpoint the two really distinctive trends of the decade it would be the rise of sophisticated mobile devices and social networking and the combination of the two.

Ten years ago digital cameras and MP3 players barely existed and mobile phone were far less sophisticated than today. Today these devices are a part of everyday life. At the same time you have sophisticated online services to distribute the content from these devices like Flickr and Youtube. Or you can buy music and video for these devices online. Phones with keyboard and big screens are far more common so you can keep up with blogs, Facebook etc without being tied to your PC. You can record a video on your mobile somewhere in ,say, Iran, upload it to Youtube within minutes; and the video can be watched by millions of people around the world. That would have seemed miraculous just ten years ago.

Another interesting trend is the rise of more intuitive interfaces between people and their gadgets. Touch, gestures, voice recognition, facial recognition etc. The Wii and the iPhone have been big success stories and Project Natal on the Xbox is an exciting vision of how you can integrate several of these features in one device. Windows 7 will probably push the envelope further on PC’s as will the next version of OSX. We should see a lot of innovation on tablet PC’s in the next few years.

18

Two television notes.

First, many reviewers have said that The Wire is the best television show ever made. Gotta talk about The Wire (and see it if you haven’t already).

Second, The Daily Show (and The Colbert Report) became significant cultural forces. Talk about Jon Stewart’s takedown of Crossfire (he went on that obnoxious show and instead of being funny, tore them a new asshole; the show was cancelled shortly thereafter) and Stephen Colbert’s takedown of the president at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

19

You can’t skip this decade without mentioning American Idol. Love it or hate it you can’t deny it’s popularity.

Also for this decade I would say the onslaught of “elimination based” reality shows. Starting with a large group of players and whittling them down over the season i.e. Survivor, BigBrother, Dancing w/Stars, Apprentice, Amazing Race, American Idol, Bachelor, etc.

20

What about WHo Want to be a Millionaire? Weren’t all these shows offshoots of the writer’s strike?