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There is no “cultural hierarchy” as Sienfield or many of us over 30 know it anymore.
Until the late 2000s, movies, TV shows, music and pop culture were much more centralised. You tune in at the same time as everyone else to watch the same TV show, or movie. The radio top 40 charts dictated what you’d listen to, and when you’d listen, and beamed to everyone else. Everyone was consuming more or less the same media at roughly the same time.
Now with the internet, streaming, competition from gaming, YouTube, creator content, podcasts and all on demand and unscheduled, “culture” is way more segmented, and there is no clear hierarchy anymore.
Just to add on the TV end, the last time I distinctly recall TV being “appointment” viewing was Game of Thrones…
and D&D did a spectacular job making the last thing everyone talked about the show be forgetting that we wasted our time with that awful final season. Since then, I admittedly have yet to find a true TV show that has been considered “appointment” viewing.
Unless I’m mistaken, and there has been a show that has become a cultural phenomenon like GoT was, it’s ironic that Game of Thrones and that final season seem to be looking like the end of the “must-see” TV era.
With film though, it’s likely the nostalgia and love for film in me, but I still see movies being cultural hits unlike TV now. The buzz around Barbenheimer and Dune Part II at least keep me hopeful that film/movies is a different enough medium where it still can have its moments. Only difference now is studios have to be more strategic than before, and a huge part of that is because streaming took out a chunk of revenue that the entire industry use to earn.
We called them "Water cooler shows"
They're shows that you usually can discuss with your colleagues the next day.
I will happily admit, that the only reason I watch GoT, is cause every monday at lunch at work, there would be discussions about it, and I'd much rather be a part ofthose.
Sienfeld was a water cooler show too.
You can run into your coworker at the water cooler and be like "you caught that seinfeld episode last night? "
I think the last I've heard of one was probably Squid Game. But that came out in one go, and not week to week.
But yeah, the overall idea of this concept has faded, partly cause of streaming, partly cause we all started working from home.
I think entire shows coming out at once ruined this. Some people will have watched the whole thing in a day or two, and want to talk about it, but others won't have finished so be like "hey, no spoilers!" Which ends the conversation. By the time everyone has finished it, the momentum to talk about it has died and the people who finished it first are on to something new
Another issue is dilution.
There are simply too many streaming services trying to out compete one another in terms of having valuable content for people to stay subscribed. So now the market is flooded with archives and new content that is being made at a faster pace to create a buzz/boost.
When the market is flooded with new content coming out at once, it makes the possibility for a cultural hit to become much less possible.
Yes, there still is some water-cooler talk like recently it was Fallout for me but same issue. Shogun, released on week at a time, was easier to talk about but less people I know seem to have watched it.
Streaming fucked the entertainment industry economically and culturally.
Yeah binge release is awful if you want show to have lasting impact
It's also strange that a lot of really really good shows have come out the past few years but only such a small percentage of people are even aware of them. Like Severence, Succession or White Lotus. They get the reviews they deserve but the general public isn't familiar with them in any way.
The part in White Lotus 2 about how it's impossible to have full trust in a couple if you can't ABSOLUTELY ALWAYS see what they're doing so you should accept some uncertainty would have really revealed some deep seated insecurities in more than people than you think
30% of people work from home now, so there's no water cooler talk really. Commercial real estate downtown in New York is still sitting half empty.
Wow, I just realized that's why I got more into sports, was so I could have those "water cooler" conversations with people at work Sports are really the only appointment viewing we have left.
They’ve been replaced with: “wait, you watch that show too?!” moments. Shout out to all my Severance bros.
I remember being in a meeting once where someone asked “did you see the last episode of Breaking Bad?” There were a few nods, but there were also a few who hadn’t seen it yet and said they were looking forward to watching it in the coming days.
The one who asked the question then went on to fully describe the end shot, thus ruining it for those who hadn’t seen it yet.
I could not rewatch Got after that finale. I had zero issues with rewatching the show while waiting for new seasons, but after that ending, the show died for me.
I rewatched it a few months back and was shocked by how much better the last season was for me.
Yrs, its still rushed and Bran still sucks but the Danaeyrys arc makes a lot more sense watching her from the beginning knowing her ultimate fate.
Thank you. Please tell me how awesome the penultimate episode is, when Dany finally turns into the Mad Queen. S8 is much inferior to the rest but is still a decent season on its own.
I’ve never seen the show but I’ve heard so many people say that. What was so bad about the final season that killed the rest of the show for you, and a lot of other people?
It was just rushed, everything they built up until then just got tossed away, and most things didnt make sense. You just got invested into something over years that got destroyed at the end.
For me and a lot of others Tuesday nights are for Shogun.
Yup, Shogun and Fallout have been the shows I've been talking about with friends and co-workers
The thing is GOT was the last must see cultural phenomenon. The joke is the novel its based on while good is not by any means the best. I could name a dozen books of similar genre that would if produced and written well could be thecnextvbig thing. Why am I so certain because these book franchises have millions of fans worldwide. However there's no guarantee as film studios butcher these stories for modern sensibilities. I mean the producers of the Avatar the last Airbender live action on Netflix thought the character of Sokka was too sexist and misogynistic and so changed the character. They literally censored a cartoon made for kids do that it wouldn't upset Adults. The Wheel of time was butchered to incomprehension. Amazon's LOTR is like a fan fiction written by a 10 year old. Then she kills the orcs alone. Then the handsome man is Sauron. Then she beats the bestest sword man in the world without sweating. Etc
Tv and film no longer are our primary source of entertainment. We have more options whi h is why delivery of poor products leads to poor reception. I'd rather watch a few YouTube shorts than a boring TV show. I'd rather watch a Kdrama than a Hollywood movie.
Okay, I’ll bite. Let’s see that list of 12 books of a similar genre. ASOIAF is pretty damn elite, IMO.
Yeah, it's not 2666 or Pynchon or whatever, but in fantasy I seriously have no clue what can compete, especially in this sort of grand epic. Maybe like in the sixties there's Gormenghast or if you really want to stretch it, something by Moorcock (but even there I don't know) but like nothing else comes to mind.
Not OP, but:
Chronicles of Amber (Roger Zelazny)
Malazan Empire (Steven Erickson)
Culture (Iain M. Banks)
Elric (Michael Moorcock)
The Way of Kings (Brandon Sanderson)
Farseer Trilogy (Robin Hobb)
A Court of Thorns and Roses (Sarah J. Maas)
The Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros)
Dragonriders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey)
Broken Earth (N.K. Jemisin)
Black Company (Glen Cook)
Riftwar Saga (Raymond E. Feist)
The Kingdom of Thorn and Bones (Greg Keyes)
Also unfinished works like Lies of Locke Lamora and The Name of the Wind.
Even stuff like the Belgariad (David Eddings) and the Dragonlance Chronicles (Weis & Hickman). Not to mention stuff like Dark Tower and Shannara which have been attempted previously, but flubbed their execution.
Netflix was right to consider Sokka too sexist and misogynistic but that's just it, he evolves, not completely but enough to not be too sexist and misogynist. They were wrong for that change because keeping him saying all the girls can't do this or that stuff provides so many opportunities for discussions about sexism; his gender stereotypes being proven wrong over and over is important.
Anyone else really enjoy Shogun? I was always a next day or two viewer, even with Game of Thrones, but I found lately I'm watching Shogun as I record it and just delete the recording immediately. Its became appointment viewing for me.
Kids have no broad concept of time. Star Wars came out in 1977 and Thriller and ET came out in 1982. Everyone in America knew these dates, plus they would know that Reagan was elected in 1980 and re-elected in 1984. TV and radio was just kind of in the background, so big events like the 84 Olympics or the 89 Batman movie happened to everybody.
Unless kids are big sports fans they can’t keep track when there are 10 Fast and Furious movies and 25 Pokemon season and 23 movies.
Same thing with money. Kids don’t go to arcades or handle cash much. They used to get sent to the ATM with a card and then the store. Now the ATM part is cut out. Money is just nebulous numbers.
i hate to sound like a boomer (im only 32) but I cant help but feel that the heavy saturation of the internet, digital technology, and everything has kinda been a net negative. Plenty of positives of course, but it feels that what we lost was pretty significant.
The thing is that the under-40 audience bought into the whole diversity/"be yourself" thing (remember that old "Twitter taught me to listen" image?) so much it has become unable to even imagine a different world. Even if most of them realize how harmful modern technology can be, they aren't willing to cut down on its use and see old media as "boomer stuff" belonging to the dustbin of history.
Ironically, for all the supposed diversity it was supposed to foster, the fragmented state of modern culture granted the groups with the most vocal fan bases a complete dominance of the landscape, pushing everything else to the underground, giving us the paradox where it has never been easier for one to create content, but at the same time it's harder than ever to get noticed.
Yes, it's the people who wanted diversity and representation who are to blame, not the greed of ultra-capitalists and their megacorporation overlords
This comment feels like you are making a lot of generalisations, some of the points don’t even connect with each other.
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The pandemic created some "appointment" viewing moments, but interestingly, these were only on streaming:
Tiger King & Squid Game
Ted Lasso season 1 as well, I think
Yeah, isn't that what the title says?
People say things like this often, but at the same time the idea is continually being hammered into me that Taylor Swift is the biggest most important thing in the history of the world.
Well, she is.
Pop culture is fragmented and it won’t be put back together again. The world that all tuned into see the final episode of Seinfeld does not exist anymore. It can still happen in small doses, like Barbie and Oppenheimer last summer and it’s so fun to see when it does.
That’s a good way of putting it. The exception not the rule idea means it is really cool when something big breaks through.
In my opinion it has always been the exception and not the rule- the power of great storytelling.
clearly this isnt true
go back 30 years and a lot more people were just going to the movies for the sake of it and seeing more movies. you had a lot more movies break through in pop culture even if they werent that great.
true but we also were forced to see things culturally.
I am old enough to remember coming home from school and trying to find something to watch. That exposed me to movies and TV shows I would have never experienced otherwise.
Why do I know what Gilligan's Island is, Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy, Sanford and Son?
Why did I watch Shawshank Redemption, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, It's A Wonderful Life, Friday, Beverly Hills Cop, as a child?
They were on TV. This doesn't exist anymore because kids will just go on YouTube or Netflix and watch what they want. There is less and less universal cultural benchmarks. Even in music, when's the last time we had a Thriller? Nevermind? The Chronic 2001?
I really don't think that many people would care who shot JR these days. Not enough to crack the zeitgeist, at least.
Game of Thrones was also there, I feel like. Every person I knew was watching it at the end. It ended in a disappointing manner, though, and I feel that probably left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths about this sort of thing
Yeah this is still possible I think, it’s just hard to create something this good that everyone cares.
Paradoxically the general offer is way way better in terms of quality than what was back then, the problem is that there is so much content out there nowadays on so many different platforms that is very hard to stand out - hence why established IPs with a built in fanbase are so hot right now
Breaking Bad. People were watching it in bars. It was a whole thing. But yeah that's a long time ago now.
But at the same time I feel like I know a lot of people who never watched it just because HBO is kind of niche in who has it
Like me. Never watched it. HBO isn't even in my country.
You say that but Game of Thrones existed.
Games of thrones ended 5 years ago now. The writing was on the wall then but it’s changed a lot and rapidly since then still.
Game of thrones achieved that by its own merit (until end at least)
Lots of shows in the past achieved that purely by being the only good thing on tv at a certain time of day
As they said to still happens in small doses. Succession was probably the last thing a bunch of people tuned in for but that doesn’t mean pop culture isn’t beyond fragmented.
A while ago now, so much has changed in the media industry since 2020 that things from before covid really cant be used as good examples of what is possible post covid.
Didn’t expect this to be J Seinfeld’s directional debut “the star-studded comedy is a fictional account of the creation of Pop-Tarts toaster pastries”
Seinfeld. Bee movie. Pop tarts. What a career tbh.
That you Dwight?
It's been a recurring industry joke in comedy and well known that Jerry has been working on a bit about Pop Tarts since the 90s, it's like his baby, constantly going back to work on it and never thinking it was quite good enough to debut publicly. I guess he decided to turn that concept into a screenplay, which yeah, that sounds about right for his weird personality. I laughed when I read about this because I kept hearing this pop tart bit story on comedy podcasts from different comedians over and over again and wasn't sure if they were just making it up because it's so absurd.
I went to his stand-up show a couple years ago and he was talking about finally getting to make the movie.
Bro is preparing for his shitty pop tart movie to tank
It’s primarily on Netflix, so he pre-prepared.
I think that’s the reason he’s doing this with Netflix, his movie would flop hard in theaters but with Netflix they’ll never release the actual viewing numbers so he can avoid looking bad. Netflix just pumps out this stuff to pad out their library and it’s risk free for the creatives involved.
i don’t think jerry seinfeld of bee movie fame cares how anything he does is perceived anymore
he’s probably still pulling in 8 figures a year in syndication money
He's got Bee Movie money, he doesnt care if this one tanks.
We have a century’s worth of movies and we keep adding more on top. Unless we were amongst older generations who got to see them as they came out, our watchlist grows longer and longer, fragmenting the viewer experience.
I feel this with videogames too. I mean some of the biggest games of the years are "remasters" or ports of games that in my mind aren't even that old. Every year it is going to get harder to release a new game when you compete against an old game that everyone is also playing.
Couldn't you say this about any media, the list of books to read, albums to listen too, shows to watch, games to play etc all get long and longer each day
I agree. Sometimes I wish new stuff would just pause coming out for even a year so I can get at least partially caught up. (Obvs, that won't happen due to economics)
The huge amount of movies that increases every year also muddies the waters so it can be harder to figure out what are the actual gems to watch out of the mediocre B movies so many streaming services release nowadays.
I guess that's what sites like reddit are for... where people can post their honest, non-incentivized opinions/recommendations. Although I guess at some point, every movie studio will buy tons of bots to disguise themselves as humans to say that "[Big Studio A's movie] was so great! Highly recommend!"
I mean the fact that it costs nearly $100 (tickets and snacks) to take my wife and kids to see a movie it’s no wonder people don’t go as much anymore. If I wait 6 months I can rent it on Amazon for like $5 and make popcorn at home.
Then again 100 dollars isn't really what it used to be, either.
That’s honestly part of the problem too.
It's the main problem, just completely unsustainable.
$100 is an exorbitant amount to pay a few snacks and ~2hrs of entertainment, which includes advertisements you’re paying for the privilege of watching.
It's a lot, but so is everything else. Generally everything is too expensive.
I’m not trying to be facetious, but what does ‘everything is too expensive’ have to do with this conversation or article? It’s just shutting down people’s opinions and derailing for the sake of it.
But you dont need to buy 40 dollars worth of popcorn and drinks. That's irrelevant to the cost of a movie.
Not that irrelevant. Everything used to be way more affordable, making a family outing to the movies much more appealing.
Video games are bigger than movies now..
Video games has been bigger than movies and music combined for some time. Probably because between console, PC, and mobile games, anyone and everyone is playing some kind of game.
And games tell stories now in a quality I'd say is pretty on par with good movies.
Ehh. A handful of games do, sure. But definitely not the norm.
Come on now.
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Fate Grand Order nearly-singlehandely made the Fate series to outgross the entire Superman IP. Mobile Games are crazy gold mines.