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The Nation's Pulse
Retromania!
Hawaii Five-O, Apes, psychobilly, and why we’re addicted to the past.
Everything new is old again. Channel surf through Hawaii Five-O, Doctor Who, Beverly Hills 90210, and, coming soon, Dallas, and you feel out-of-time in primetime. Turn on the radio and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” the monster song of 2011, deludes you into thinking that you are listening to an oldies station playing a '60s girl-group. For $10, déjà-vu cinema plays The Rise of Planet of the Apes, Conan the Barbarian, Arthur, and other flicks you thought you saw several decades ago.
We’ve seen these movies before (and watched those shows and sung that song, too). Simon Reynolds has written a whole book about the phenomenon, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. It’s about time. “Instead of being the threshold to the future, the first ten years of the twenty-first century turned out to be the ‘Re’ Decade,” Reynolds writes, as in “revivals” “reissues,” “remakes,” etc. We are a present stuck in the past that leaves little for the future.
Old Media merely broadcasts our lameness. New Media fosters it. YouTube, iPods, DVDs, and Hulu bring the then face-to-face with the now. “We’ve become victims of our ever-increasing capacity to store, organise, instantly access, and share vast amounts of cultural data,” Reynolds relays. “Not only has there never before been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its immediate past, but there has never before been a society that is able to access the immediate past so easily and so copiously.” Technology intended to usher us into tomorrow instead keeps us mired in yesterday.
Since Reynolds covers the music scene, Retromania focuses upon sonic folkways. The author introduces us to taxonomaniac record collectors who don’t listen to their stockpile; studio-whiz samplers who use their cutting edge technology to resurrect the aural past; and rock museum curators who attempt to put awopbopaloobopalopbamboom in a gallery. Those whose avocations call them to keep rock music alive instead advertise its death. They miss the point.
Reynolds is decidedly retro about his explorations of retromania. Fascinating is Retromania’s discussion of the surreal sixties success of fifties revivalists Sha Na Na. Established in the wake of the Columbia student riots to unite warring campus factions with rock n roll, Sha Na Na soon found itself performing at Woodstock at the behest of Jimi Hendrix. If not for the cinematic documentation of the faux-fifties greasers entertaining thousands of hippies, nobody would have believed that it had happened. Their fifteen minutes of fame, based as it was on the fifteen minutes of teen idols long since forgotten, probably should have never happened. But it became more like fifteen years. They opened for John Lennon. They appeared in the film Grease. They invaded living rooms every weekend from 1977 until 1981 through their campy syndicated television show. The celebrants enjoyed a career far longer than the celebrated. Could there be more compelling evidence supporting the book’s thesis that we are crazy for the past?
Reynolds is crazy about people crazy about obscure no-hit wonders, subcultures of subcultures, and has-been never-was beens. In a book ostensibly about popular culture, so much discussed never sniffed popular (perhaps it surpassed good). The English ex-pat writes that the Flaming Groovies’ Shake Some Action “was a massive record in the Bomp! milieu.” The album peaked at #142 on Billboard; the fanzine’s milieu was about as populous as a small rock club. He discusses Belbury Poly, whose ambient music samples old public information films and stock scores to television shows. Its genre, hauntology, is so obscure that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. He points to the popularity of Oi! bands and psychobilly music in Japan, noting that a nation of 130 million “can support a huge array of subcultures, retro and contemporary, that exist completely outside the pop mainstream.” Why does a book whose subtitle advertises its interest as pop culture obsess over what escapes nearly everyone’s notice? Books written by critics needn’t be written for critics. Trivia that might have been charming as an aside becomes a bore when it conquers whole chapters. Listening to unfamiliar music can be exhilarating; reading about it is penance for the sins of past lives.
The illustrations buttressing the point are flawed. The point certainly isn’t. The bestselling album of the last decade was a collection of Beatles number-one songs, after all. What recordings from the 1920s even charted during the 1960s? Nine of the top ten grossing movies of 2011 are either sequels or based on dated characters such as “Captain America.” A remake-happy Hollywood and backward-looking music industry strip-mining the glory days devastates the cultural landscape for posterity. “The surge decades of pop history were characterised by the emergence of new subcultures and an overall sense of forward propulsion,” Retromania asserts. “What was lacking in the 2000s was movements and movement. One manifestation of the sense of deceleration: 2010 didn’t feel that different from 2009, or even 2004. Whereas in the past, the difference between years — between 1967 and 1968, or 1978 and 1979, or 1991 and 1992 — felt immense.” A mash-up decade obsessed with the identities of dead decades etched no unique identity of its own.
Could the dearth of pop-culture creativity be a symptom of a larger disease? Reynolds sees parallels between Western civilization’s decline and Western cultural rot. “The world economy was brought down by derivatives and bad debt; music has been depleted of meaning through derivativeness and indebtedness,” he notes. Reynolds dubs retromania a “recession of creativity.” We have become a take-much, leave-little civilization. In business, politics, and culture, stagnation abounds.
Do our unhealthy borrowing habits extend to entertainment? Is cultural innovation a victim of technological innovation? Might moribund production affect art as well as business? A line referencing the 1960s within a U2 song from the '80s dubbed a sequel to a John Lennon song from the 1970s best explains retromania: “You glorify the past when the future dries up.”
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
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Shamus| 8.31.11 @ 7:20AM
Hollywood's ideas are all reruns these days.
When was the last time they produced a really entertaining original film?
Mike D.| 8.31.11 @ 7:35AM
Originality and creativity are casualties of a dying civilization. there are some creative people in entertainment, just a lot fewer of them. Its easier to do remakes, and see if its possible to squeeze the last $ out of somebody else's ideas. That saves the burden of having to actually come up with your own idea and thinking is hard work for too many.
Alan Brooks| 8.31.11 @ 9:57AM
Reagan is now your #1 addiction to the past.
Alan Brooks| 8.31.11 @ 9:59AM
The Gipper shall return
The Gipper shall return
Ho ho the merry-o, the Gipper shall return.
He'll be ridin' six white horses when he comes
He'll be ridin' six white horses when he comes
He'll be ridin' six white horses
He'll be ridin' six white horses
He'll be ridin' six white horses when he comes.
Buck Ofama| 8.31.11 @ 10:42AM
Let's take your little ditty to the next logical step, and emulate your "president": sniff, snivel, whimper, whine.
Mike D.| 8.31.11 @ 1:08PM
I'll ask you again @sshole, WTF does this article have to with Reagan?
Truth to Power| 8.31.11 @ 3:02PM
"The Gipper shall return"
That would be appropriate since we have had Jimmah Carter return as a bumbling affirmative action hire. He has a drunken uncle instead of a brother but nothing is perfect. The new Jimmah can hold the Gay Jewish vote which will get him an extra 150 votes and some really clever troll work.
Mike D.| 8.31.11 @ 11:31AM
WTF does this article have to do with Reagan you dipsh!t. Move on fool and save it for another Obysmal article.
Seek| 8.31.11 @ 12:41PM
Living in the past is an addiction that transcends party lines. Yes, conservatives do it, too. And no, there isn't going to be a Reagan II. Reagan I was the right man for his time. But those times are gone forever.
Alan Brooks| 8.31.11 @ 12:41PM
"WTF does this article have to do with Reagan"
Reagan is the Right's retro.
You look back because you have had no-one since 1988; you are beached too-- not just lefties..
Gung Ho Waffle| 8.31.11 @ 5:55PM
Rick Perry is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan.
Occam's Tool| 8.31.11 @ 9:35PM
Personally, I love Roy Orbison, particularly his brilliant last album, which was produced by the genius behind ELO. But he had the best voice in Rock N' Roll, according to the ultimate authority: The King himself.
Riff Raff| 9.1.11 @ 1:25PM
Alan Brooks is a retro-navel contemplator/LSD traveller/tree worshipper/neo-commie. No doubt he prays each day to gian posters of Chairman Mao and Premiere Stalin.
Yo! Alan! They screwed up your lobotomy. Get a refund!
Seek| 8.31.11 @ 12:38PM
How about "Inception," "The Social Network," "Winter's Bone," "The Fighter," "From Paris, with Love," "The Ghost Writer" and "Shutter Island?" -- all from 2010. Why don't more "culture warrriors" become more cultured instead of making war on imaginary enemies like Hollywood?
Shamus| 8.31.11 @ 6:10PM
This is not a bad list of movies, but it seems like kind of a stretch. There are still good art movies being made. Inception is the only wide release movie in the list that is not based on a book or on real life.
KyMouse| 9.1.11 @ 1:29PM
On Broadway, they call them "revivals." The 2011 season on the Great White Way has included, I believe, "Hello, Dolly," "Evita," Godspell," "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (love the movie!), and ""Death of a Salesman."
Among the shows seldom "revived" are "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," which I suppose is too politically incorrect.
What's old is new again, because it is almost guaranteed to sell tickets.
Dan Mathewson| 9.1.11 @ 5:01PM
Toy Story 3?
RT| 8.31.11 @ 7:46AM
And it's all the sadder when you consider that there must be legions of writers out there wishing that someone would read their script.
Generally speaking I won't watch a remake - they're usually awful.
Christopher Landrum| 8.31.11 @ 8:10AM
This post prompts a quote from Orson Wells: "in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
canuckistani| 8.31.11 @ 9:32AM
The same for Irish music and poetry and many many self-made stories of the US. You seldom if ever here about suburban, well-fed, well adjusted artists making good. It is the pain, neuroses and maladjustments of an artist that breaks through the mundane.
Hollywood writers were the same years ago: misfits, often Jewish or gay or communist. Now they are millionaires with just one hit script - and well shod with a series of lousy formulaic ones. Risk-taking is now a science with all art removed and the movie mogul is a sycophantic suit.
Watch indie films. Many are smarmy overindulgences, but a few are true gems each year.
A byproduct of the current economy will be more starving artists - thus more idiosynchratic art.
JP| 8.31.11 @ 11:39AM
There also seems to be a growing field of historical fiction now that writers can easily upload thier novels for free to Kindle. Most of it is sludge; occaisonally there is a novelist who has a feel for a period and can write a decent story.
JimH| 8.31.11 @ 8:37AM
The borrowing and rehashing is not a new phenomenon in the arts. Composers have always reworked their own and the works of others into new music. Any number of movies have been remade repeatedly and not just recently. What is alarming is the current dearth of truly new material in the movies, theater and pop music.
LS| 8.31.11 @ 1:54PM
There have always been culture vultures. What we have now is cultural cannibalism. Non-creative types who binge on the art and music of others yet don’t do the proverbial homework, resulting in massive amounts of content-less effluvia.
Result: Kultural Kuru.
TrueBlue| 8.31.11 @ 5:25PM
It comes back to nobody wanting to take risks. They all want to go with what they know works from past experiences instead of doing something new. It's because there is no motivation to innovate in this country. Innovation requires more effort and money than just regurgatating old ideas, and if you know the government is going to take 50% or more of your success, why should you put forth that extra effort?
Petronius| 8.31.11 @ 8:41AM
When it comes to amusement fare the theory of roobism applies. The masses know what they like and like what they know. Familiarity and predictability are the parameters of taste in our mediocracy. Any writer or producer knows they are bound by the average spectator's willingness to think and that limit is very narrow. The only medium where this does not apply is books as the bottom feeders don't read. So we are stuck for the past present future imperfect so well reflected in the utterance of the late Peter Finch in Network: "The truth is, I just ran out of bullshit!"
JimH| 8.31.11 @ 9:06AM
Many works now considered classics were once viewed as too avant-garde and not appreciated at the time. Modern artists take a cargo cult approach by giving their creations some aspect to deliberately cause outrage and offend the bourgeois, trying to link their tripe to formerly controversial works of the past, and either not realizing their lack or being unable to add any artistic merit to their work.
TrueBlue| 8.31.11 @ 5:29PM
Actually this is becoming an issue with books as well, as more and more editors are women who try to push feminist views on unestablished writers. After all, if they don't like the story, then obviously nobody else will either.
idalily| 8.31.11 @ 11:47PM
Bull.
Ken in People's Republic of MD| 8.31.11 @ 9:49AM
It's funny you include Hawaii Five-O in your headline. Sure, the name is retro, the new show isn't. I mean, really, Kono as a hot babe? The Kono of old was a rather brutish he-man, often played for laughs. Never really got a chance to see him in a bikini, and we're all thankful for that.
Chin-Ho Kelly has a young, hip stud? I'm sure Kam Fong only wishes he could like like today's Chin.
You want retro on your viewing schedule? Try NCIS. Not only do they have a grizzled TV veteran in the lead role, the went out and got an even more grizzled veteran in a key supporting role. The spin-off, NCIS LA, followed the same casting with a key supporting role. If any new series should have followed NCIS' lead, it should have been Five-O, and they didn't.
In reality, aside from getting the names right, the only resemblance today's Five-O bears to the Jack Lord version is that it's set in Hawaii.
And the other irony of the piece is the music industry. In the old days, musicians were generally anti-establishment, they didn't care what the establishment thought, and their music proved it. The Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beach Boys(yes the Beach Boys), so many others all had something to say and what they were saying didn't always jive with what mainstream America was usually saying. Hence the counter-culture status of many a band in the 60's.
But today, no band gets a contract with out going through testing, audience reactions, consultants, fine-tuning, so on, and so on. That's why the Top-40 basically sounds alike. Your basic mix station, "The best hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today" doesn't really vary all that much from one tune to the next. It's all corporate.
Now, there's no doubt that the Stones, the Who, and the Beatles all had making money as their number one goal. It's just how they went about it that's different. I really don't think the Stones or the Who or a host of other bands, both from here and abroad would have gotten the time of day in today's musical climate. Indeed, I knew our time as a civilization was over when the Rolling Stones, the original and ultimate anti-establishment, anti-corporate garage grunge band signed with Best-Buy a few years ago to have the store be the exclusive seller and distributor of their latest masterpiece. That went against all that Mick and the boys stood for.
And it was a sad day for us all.
PolishKnight| 8.31.11 @ 10:41AM
Regarding Mick and BestBuy: Few young people even "buy" albums anymore. So it's probably the old hippies who can't figure out how to use an MP3 player or their computer or are stuck on vinyl who are going to BestBuy to pick up the album.
And that may be a good decision on the Stone's part because how many vinyl shops are around anymore?
Petronius| 8.31.11 @ 11:13AM
Vinyl is coming back big PK. Old master cutters in LA are coming out of retirement and firing up platter lathes that sat idle for almost 30 years to issue new masters for houses like Acoustic Sounds @ $35-$60 per 180 gram LP. And the trade in used vinyl has an epicenter 2 blocks from my house. The Record Exchange is ground zero for the analog purist. Turntables, arms, and pickups command five figure prices. Grab an issue of The Absolute Sound or Stereophile and see what you're missing before you listen to it.
Butch| 8.31.11 @ 3:27PM
What's my 1978 Pioneer turntable worth, Petronius? It still works. Still have the vinyl, 60s through 80s, but they're scratched and they stick.
PolishKnight| 8.31.11 @ 10:38AM
The author mentions Doctor Who. There's a disgusting spin-off called "Torchwood: Miracle Day" where the theme is continually leftist to the point of absurdity and, in addition, tons of gay romances. Yet, as the author points out, it's obsessed with the past. The leftist media is totally obsessed with the past, especially evil European and American history.
Here's my explanations:
1) They don't have a future and they know it. Diversity is about making the world look like Detroit and Mexico City. They only support that bleak future because they hate losing.
2) Since they're such massive hypocrites, they can't really envision a future they can explain. This was a problem with the Star Trek series that went communist after Next Generation. A universe without money so, what's the point of gambling? How do they determine who has their own private spaceships? Who gets to live in Paris versus, well, Detroit? :-)
3) They hate the present and each other almost as much as they hate the right. Well, in some ways they love the right since bashing them is how they get to feel superior. So naturally when they walk about the past they can obsess with how much better the modern PC world is (even as they clearly relish in the fashions, manners, and cultural strength of the past versus twitter relationships.
Sci-fi of old was, well, progressive in the meaning of the term that they've long lost. People could have as much stuff as they liked without guilt. They could ride in flying cars without feeling bad about not walking to work. They could eat anything they wanted and fix it with a pill. A world without leftist guilt is one where they can't control people and get more power for their government idols. In the world of the conservative future, people had more choices, not less, and government became less necessary, not bigger.
Petronius| 8.31.11 @ 11:23AM
PK
Please don't do this to me. I can't bear the thought of the EPA putting Spacely Sprockets out of business and seeing the Jetsons apply for MRE stamps.
PolishKnight| 8.31.11 @ 11:59AM
One of my favorite memories in High School was my history teacher observing that the Flintstones and the Jetsons were largely the same family and culture. A stay at home wife, a two parent heterosexual family, etc. except... the Jetsons were prescient in one way:
While working class Fred Flintstone worked in construction, George Jetson worked in... IT! "Push more buttons George! You don't want us going out of business!"
Petronius| 8.31.11 @ 2:35PM
And George never beat the company computer at gin. I still wonder what Rudy did with his money.
Cheers
JimH| 8.31.11 @ 1:02PM
I enjoyed the early Dr. Whos and was happy when it relaunched. I'm not too keen on ithe current incarnation. The original Torchwood wasn't bad if you could get past the Bi leader. The new series is dreck. Star Treck was never clear as to the nature of the Federation economy. There are references to an ideal welfare state, but there are traders, particularly the Ferengi, whose ethos makes Objectivists look like Trotskyites.
TrueBlue| 8.31.11 @ 5:36PM
Thankfully there is plenty of reference to money in DS:9, but I agree ST:NG bugged me on a regular basis even if I did like some of the characters (Chief O'Brien, the only enlisted guy in Star Fleet!).
Sugartown Super| 9.1.11 @ 1:20PM
Lily: "How much did all this cost?!"
Picard: "The economics of the future are...different."
Replicators for everyone!
Occam's Tool| 8.31.11 @ 9:37PM
Well, Israel has a future. But Europe is becoming Eurabia toot sweet. No future there because no kids not named after the King of Stooges, Moe.
astorian| 8.31.11 @ 10:39AM
A big part of the problem is just how insanely EXPENSIVE it is to make a movie or to stage a new Broadway musical.
If you have to spend more than $50 million to make a new movie or musical, you can’t afford to take artistic or creative chances. You need to attract a large audience just to break even. And one of the safest ways to attract an audience is to give them something they’re already familiar with and predisposed to like. So, you make shows that revolve around the popular culture of the desired audience’s youth.
Why hire a young, unknown Richard Rodgers or Frank Loesser wannabe to write a score for a new musical? The audience isn’t familiar with this young composer and might not like his new songs. It’s a lot safer to take a collection of songs by aband or artist they already like and build a serviceable story around those familiar songs. That’s how we get shows like “Rain” (the Beatles), “Mamma Mia” (Abba), “Jersey Boys” (the 4 Seasons), “Movin’ Out” (Billy Joel) and “Rock of Ages” (a bunch of Eighties “hair metal” bands).
It’s NOT because Broadway producers are so nostalgic- it’s that they’re terrified! They have to sink a fortune into each new show. People MIGHT like new songs from a promising young composers, but they DEFINITELY like the Beatles. Why take chances?
It’s no different with movies. A 33 year old who grew up playing with Optimus Prime and Dinobot action figures is probably more likely to see a Transformers movie than a wholly new and original sci-fi movie. A 45 year old suburban Dad is already predisposed to stay home and wait for movies to come out on DVD. He’s FAR more likely to leave home and go to the theater to see a movie based on a TV show or a character he already knows than he is to pay big bucks to see a wholly original movie.
If making new shows weren’t so costly, artists and producers could take more chances.
PolishKnight| 8.31.11 @ 10:44AM
I wonder... I remember that Crocodile Dundee was made for a fraction of the regular cost of a Hollywood film and then went on to become a huge hit.
A lot of the costs are probably for the big name actors (Ever see Bowfinger?) I love the line: "Get me the finest camera crew we can afford!"
Seek| 8.31.11 @ 12:42PM
That was a funny film. Steve Martin's baby all the way.
Petronius| 8.31.11 @ 11:39AM
Commercial, (Equity) theater is the last trust in this country. Both production and craft union concerns are closed shops: no outsiders allowed. The relatives of the people who own show business control the self serving legal establishment. And it is suffocating under the weight of insularity.
Jack Olson| 8.31.11 @ 12:35PM
I saw footage of the late Charlton Heston, who complained, "Today it costs too much to make a movie, it costs too much to promote a movie, and it costs too much to go to the movies. The lightest summer rom-com now costs as much to make as they spent on 'The Ten Commandments.'" If he was right, that helps explain why producers make all these sequels and remakes, all these comic book and ripped-from-yesterday's-television movies. The big studios don't want to risk that much money on anything original. Let the indies do that, then copy their ideas which succeed.
As for why it costs so much money to make movies today, look at the length of the credits. The original "All The King's Men" listed sixty credits. The remake listed six hundred, including a music credit for Huey Long. Part of this inflation of staffing is an illusion; studios outsource many functions which were once done by uncredited studio employees. "Gone With The Wind" didn't credit the show's accountants or caterers or Clark Gable's chauffeur. Yet, the ever growing list of credits reflects the fact that big studios today seem to need an army of people to make a movie.
Petronius| 8.31.11 @ 2:39PM
They all have to join a craft in I.A.T.S.E. and all members get screen credit.
canuckistani| 8.31.11 @ 10:52AM
I think we have some selective amnesia on here.
My local oldies station plays American Top 40 in their entirety from the same week usually 35 years ago. From then to today, other than Ryan Seacrest versus Kasey Kasem, the mix from black pop to rock to rock/country is startingly similar. Disco replaced by technopop and funk replaced by hiphop. Country rock and hard rock are still there with some rhythm updates. That's America.
Mutiny on the Bounty has been remade several times, as was Robin Hood, Scarface, King Kong, and A Christmas Carol in the years before the 80's dark ages emerged. Part of it a scarcity of original ideas, but it could also be the tremendous weight the boomer generation still has on pop culture and their apparent reticence to change. Possible?
Are we so old that we are incapable of change?
Pat| 8.31.11 @ 6:01PM
Canuckistani: you nailed it. About the only thing we can still do well in Obama’s America is entertainment. Unlike this author’s view, the vast diversity of entertainment available today is staggering, from old classic movies, thanks to Turner, to made for television series to blockbuster special effects sci-fi like the movie Avatar, there’s something there for all tastes and all ages. But it’s in our nature to complain about entertainment today, we thoroughly enjoy complaining and Obama and his minions haven’t figured out how to tax it yet. However, looking back at Rome during the time of the Caesars, the same problem existed, we know it did because they wrote about it.
Just imagine bringing your lunch to a full 10 hour day of gladiatorial contests, animal hunts, mock military battles and amusing, if somewhat gruesome, comedy acts. In the first half hour watching “the Games”, most of us modern sophisticates would toss our cookies and rapidly flee the Coliseum, but the citizens of Rome not only took it all in, they had time to bet on the matches, jeer the Emperor in his special box and visit the area under the stands for an inexpensive meeting with a working girl. Year after year, the Games became more spectacular, more bloody and much more expensive.
Rome’s unquenchable appetite for killing spectacles featuring animals even resulted in the extinction of several species at a time in history when there were no tranquilizer guns or rapid transportation – ask a zoologist whatever became of the European lion. Still, the Romans complained that gladiators weren’t as tough as they remembered, the naked slave girls not as shapely and the vast spectacles just pitiful rehashes of those put on under Augustus or Nero. Changing our entertainment won’t help, not unless we first change our own natures.
Bob Grant| 8.31.11 @ 11:33PM
How will the ability to filter and personalize our entertainment and news choices determine what is offered to us in the future?
Obviously the days of EVERY family sitting around watching the Ed Sullivan show or Walter Cronkite reporting the evening news are gone.
The continued balkanization of pop culture and the news media will usher in some brave new world that gives me an uneasy feeling about society in general.
My guess is people will cling even tighter to the past.
Robert Pinkerton| 8.31.11 @ 10:55AM
The science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon articulated Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." I submit that, in the realm of contemporary popular culture, Sturgeon was an optimist: He neglected to consider either craperoo (sequels to supposedly self-contained stories with definite endings, whereby to extend a single story into a series) or craparola (remakes of stories successful in their time, but "updated" to make them "contemporary").
JimH| 8.31.11 @ 1:07PM
And when observing Sturgeon's law over time we tend to forget and discard the crap and only recall the good stuff.
Citizen Jerry| 8.31.11 @ 11:02AM
What does it say about Hollywood creativity when they can only make a mediocre rehash of shows that weren't that good in the first place?
Maddox| 8.31.11 @ 11:20AM
What you see in entertainment are the hopes of some who want to capitalize on the success of past ventures because they are not able to succeed on their own ideas. Often the result is mediocre at best.
The retro craze in fashion and decorating is an attempt by liberal designers to take us back to the "good old days" of the sixties and seventies, when the politicians of today were young and beautiful, protesting in the street and dropping acid. They are still the self absorbed do gooders they were then and they are ruining our country's economy and good name. This time they are taking us all on their bad trip.
Colin | 8.31.11 @ 11:47AM
I guess this guy has a point. Why consume ourselves each day with the likes of Little Richard, The Beach Boys or some classic Beatles when we can tune-in to the unmatched talents of (the late) Amy Wino and Kanye Whatzhisface and that guy Beyonce's bumpin' with.
Maaan, what WERE we thinkin'?
CRANK IT UP!
Old Soldier| 8.31.11 @ 12:15PM
Retromania exits because the past (at least how we remember it) was better.
Back then (for me it's the 70's and 80's), it was better. Not in terms of wealth, technology or comfort. It was better because we had confidence, optimism, and hope. Seems like we have lost most of that now.
We were confident that our freedom would defeat communism, but the Soviet Union collapsed, then the socialists won. We thought we were going into space, but decided to spend it all on welfare and medicare instead.
The present is too damn depressing. Were they nostalgic for the 20's or Teddy Roosevelt during the Great Depression?
Lord Karth| 8.31.11 @ 6:37PM
It's the demographics. In the 70s and 80s, the dominant demographic---the vile and deeply devolved Boomers---were young and energetic. Now they are all old, set in their ways and incapable of generating new ideas. All they are prepared to do is demand their "entitlements".
As long as the Boomers are still the culturally dominant demographic (and thanks to their political dominance, this will remain the case until the last Boomer returns to his master, Satan), this situation will not change.
Xers and Millennials, arise ! Throw off the Boomer yoke ! You have naught to lose but your chains !
Your servant,
Lord Karth
cicero| 8.31.11 @ 1:48PM
Could it possibly be a lack of imagination? Prior to the era to television, and instant and constant visual stimuli, everybody had a diferent vision of an idea. When you read about a literary characters, you formed an image of that character. Everybody's image was different. This was a constant thing.
Overe the past few generations, people don't have to exercise their imaginations. Someone else informs them of the image they are perceiving. For instance, when as a boy, I would listen to the radio show about the Lone Ranger, my image of the character was different from that of every other 7 year old boy. With the advent of television, everybody had the same image - Clayton Moore. This may account for the dearth of new ideas coming out of what should have been our creative class, when it comes to popular culture.
Just thinking. . .
Bob Grant| 8.31.11 @ 11:17PM
Excellent!!! I think you're on to something.
Look at the damaging effects video games have on the imagination and individual creativity. They arguably build problem-solving skills but dampen individuality and creativity.
Don't take my word for it, just visit your local video game store and there you will encounter the most one-dimensional people in your life.
RT| 8.31.11 @ 3:49PM
When today is bad and you have little hope for tomorrow, all you have is yesterday.
Steve| 8.31.11 @ 5:30PM
That is great ! I am going to steal that :) !
Skippy| 8.31.11 @ 4:25PM
"Sing me back home,
with the songs I used to know,
make my old memories come alive.
Take me away, and turn back the years.
Sing me back home, before I die."
Merle Haggard
Lord Karth| 8.31.11 @ 6:32PM
This article, and this letter thread, are proof of one thing:
Americans spend too much time on "entertainment". If they were to turn the TV off, put down their various electronic devices and focus a little bit more on their proper work (or preparing themselves to actually DO some sort of work), this culture could be turned around.
Not that I expect to see that in my lifetime.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Bruce Cartwright| 8.31.11 @ 7:16PM
Adele sounds like a 1960s girl group? I think not. Unless the 1960s group was precogging Alanis Morissette.
PCP Smoker| 8.31.11 @ 8:49PM
I think this is the result of political correctness. The other day I was watching "Have Gun -- Will Travel", with Richard Boone, and was surprised at how dark the show was. One would not find anything like that these days.
Tony in Central PA| 8.31.11 @ 8:50PM
My fifteen year old niece has an encyclopedic knowledge of songs that were popular from before the time I was even fifteen. They're the same songs we 've been hearing on classic rock stations and in commercials and movies for most of the last 40 years. Radio stations have offered prizes for decades for people who can call in to identify songs they play for less than one second. If you can identify a song in less than a second, its time to listen to something different or quit altogether.
Movies are even worse. There are the endless remakes that can only offer improved special effects as a reason for being made in the first place. Movies are made from TV series that were mediocre at best when they first appeared decades earlier. The characters and stories are often incomprehensible in these remakes, but many audiences and critics don't seem to notice.
Bob Grant| 8.31.11 @ 11:02PM
I cannot imagine what a current teen will fondly remember of pop culture when they are middle aged.
Season 7 of Survivor or Big Brother?...or season 8?
Lady Gaga's third album? Ah yes, all those beautiful coming-of-age songs like faking orgasms or engaging in orgies.
Extremely sad for those of the current generation.
It's no wonder there is a longing for the past. Not only for older people but young as well.
POST American| 9.1.11 @ 12:04AM
----------------BOTTOMLESS LINE--------------------
FACT IS culture is, and always was, engineered,
authorized and directed from the TOP----DOWN.
Just as the Globalists launched the first wave
of EUGENICS 'pop' in the 1920's ----so with the
Stanford Research/CIA and Rockefeller/Tavistock
engineered 60's dope culture.
Cut to the chase!
'Sexual Liberation' = Elimination VIA Sex =
EUGENICS godsend
That we're 'addicted' to the past is itself largely
the well-planned result of a cultlure industry that's
been programming franchise slum creative
values since the 'Nix is ON'/MAO sellout in
1972.
In short, rap and hip hop are now a few decades
old --and Hollywood's been making the same three
or four films since 1972.
Their 'attempts' at coming to grips with the
cultural and social debasment of things ALWAYS
end up as predicitve programming and demoralization.
In other words ---yet another facet of
the Globalist RED China sellout and TREASON OP.
Hence, even on the creative level ---the unborn
is being BALKED in the name of biz nihilism and
EUGENICS expediency.
SOOOOO---Keep a goin' kiddies!
----------Gaga n' Wal-Mart n' RED China wampum
------------------JUST KEEP A GOIN'