The Decline of America's Culture Industries: The Struggle Between Bureaucracy and Creativity

While I was in Italy  this spring I was surprised to see the pervasiveness of Bob Dylan books, art and music. There was a Dylan Retrospectum (art) in Rome, and books about or by Dylan featured in every bookstore. I struck up a conversation with a craft beer brewer in Parma regarding this observation, and he noted that it's not just Bob Dylan that America has exported, but Pop Culture in general.

This notion of American pop culture as a product being exported led to my noticing an increasing amount of commentary about the widespread dissatisfaction with the products Hollywood has been feeding us over the past decade or more. Here are some thoughts generated by feeding a sentence into ChatGPT, regurgitated in essay form.

In recent years, America's culture industries have faced a formidable challenge, grappling with the effects of decay, monopolization, and increasing bureaucracy. As the pursuit of profit has intensified, creativity has become stifled, leading to a worrying decline in the quality and diversity of cultural productions. 

Let's examine the claim that America's culture industries have been transformed into anti-competitive, risk-averse monopolists, suffocating real creativity under the weight of mind-numbing and politically driven bureaucracy.

The rise of corporate giants within the culture industries (esp. Hollywood, literature, music) has undoubtedly fostered a monopolistic environment. Large media conglomerates have acquired numerous entertainment companies, consolidating their control over various creative outlets, from music and film to television and publishing. This monopolization has led to a lack of competition, as smaller players struggle to compete in an industry dominated by a select few. As a result, fresh and daring ideas are often sidelined in favor of formulaic, mass-appealing content that guarantees a return on investment.

Furthermore, the fear of taking risks has permeated the culture industries. Executives, driven by the pressure to maximize profits, tend to prefer established franchises and sequels, diminishing the opportunities for originality and innovative storytelling. This risk-averse approach stifles the potential for groundbreaking works of art and entertainment that push the boundaries of creativity.

To compound the problem, culture industries have become entangled in layers of bureaucracy. The quest for efficiency and streamlining often results in cumbersome approval processes and decision-making hierarchies that slow down productions and impede the free flow of ideas. 

The weight of bureaucracy also affects the individual creatives, subjecting them to creative restrictions and inhibiting their ability to express themselves fully. The prioritization of market research and focus groups over genuine artistic vision further exacerbates the problem, leading to a homogenization of content and an erosion of creativity.

Moreover, the rising politicization of the culture industries has added another layer of complexity. In an attempt to appeal to specific demographics or avoid controversy, creative decisions are sometimes shaped by political considerations rather than artistic merit. This approach may lead to watered-down narratives, sanitization of historical events, or the avoidance of sensitive issues, ultimately undermining the power of storytelling to address important societal challenges. 

In conclusion, the decay of America's culture industries can be attributed to a combination of anti-competitive monopolistic practices, risk aversion, and the burdensome bureaucracy they have imposed on their productions. Creativity, once the driving force behind cultural innovation, is now suffocating under the weight of profit-driven decision-making and politically motivated constraints. To revitalize the culture industries and foster an environment of genuine creativity, it is crucial to address these issues, encourage healthy competition, and prioritize artistic vision over short-term gains. Only then can American culture industries regain their vibrancy and contribute meaningfully to the enrichment of global artistic expression.

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Here's the prompt I used to produce the above brief essay:  "As America’s culture industries have decayed into anti-competitive, risk-averse monopolists, they have imposed layers upon layers of mind-numbing and increasingly politicised bureaucracy on their productions that make real creativity all but impossible." I pulled it from a much longer essay titled America's pop-culture armageddon by David Samuel at Unherd.

In short, the more that is at stake, the less people are willing to take risks. And because the giants control the channels of distribution, the most creative, outside-the-box original ideas never see the light of day.  

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Where things go from here is anyone's guess. What do you think?

Oppenheimer: Random Thoughts Stimulated by This Explosive Film

Here are some thoughts I had this past week pertaining to the release of Oppenheimer, the film.

I once heard the following advice for public speakers: It's better to be ten minutes too short than two minutes too long. If you go too long, even by a little, that will be all that the listeners will remember.

I suspect that this is why many people brace themselves when they hear that a film they want to see is three hours in length. (I kept thinking of Gilligan's Island beforehand--"a three hour tour.") Fortunately, the film's frequently intense pacing and storytelling never gave me a boring moment.

The media was awash with pre-release hype surrounding the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same weekend. I'm sure much of that hype was masterfully generated by Hollywood itself, since neither of these blockbusters was cheap to produce. Some of the excitement surrounding these films may have in part been due to the fact that we were being treated to original work and not sequels to previous "hits." 

I went with three older friends to see the film last Tuesday. All three made a negative comment about the volume/noise level interfering with some of the the dialogue. Two of them also noted they wanted to see it a second time when it comes out on DVD so they can read the captions. In short, like myself, they liked the film, found it powerful and despite the complexity of jumping back and forth in time, gave director Christopher Nolan high marks for this achievement.

It's a story with two threads. First is the manner in which the development of the atomic bomb came together. The second, woven throughout, is the deeper dive into Oppenheimer's private life and the post-war hearings that were conducted in an effort to destroy the credibility and legacy of a scientist who had become Time magazine's Man of the Year. In short, the film jumped back and forth between the investigation of 1953 and the years preceding and leading up to Los Alamos, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Flashbacks are not an uncommon device in movies or novels. For those who do not have a strong background in literature or film, I can imagine that it may have been easy to get lost. Then again, none of the men I was with had that problem. The 8.7 rating on imdb.com would indicate that most people who saw it this week were not fazed by it. Here'e a review excerpt that underscores the same point:

You'll have to have your wits about you and your brain fully switched on watching Oppenheimer as it could easily get away from a non-attentive viewer. This is intelligent filmmaking which shows its audience great respect. It fires dialogue packed with information at a relentless pace and jumps to very different times in Oppenheimer's life continuously through its 3 hour runtime.

The Communism Theme
(Spoiler Alert) The orchestrated character assassination of Oppenheimer the man took place during the McCarthy era. This context was clearly shown in the film. What has also been clearly shown in many other films is how extensively the Communist party had infiltrated the corridors of power in New York, Washington DC and Hollywood in the 30's.

What I almost never see in films is HOW this ideology became so popular or influential.  

For example, here in the Northland and Canada 10,000 Finns left America and migrated to the Soviet Union to be part of the mythological utopia that was being created there. Why? Because for ten years preceding WWII America's economy was a disaster. During the "Great Depression" unemployment was  as high as 25%. This was perceived as a failure of Capitalism. Marxist communism seemed to be the shining beacon of hope for a time. Communism's shortcomings would only be revealed later, but I think it useful to consider these things in the light of that broader decade of hardship.  (See my review of Mr. Jones.)

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There were a lot of great lines in the film.  Many of them were explosive statements made in passing. This one by Oppenheimer shows that he'd thought more deeply about the implications of the bomb than others. "They won't fear it until they understand it. And they won't understand it until they've used it. Theory will take you only so far."

Another message expressed in the film that stood out was this: Politics is an ugly business. Exercising great restraint, Nolan crafts a film in keeping with the storyteller's dictum "show, don't tell." 

If the frenetic pace of the film feels overwhelming at times, think of the pressure these scientists were under while racing against the clock to get it done.  

As for the acting: solid to exceptional across the board. There will be Oscar nominations and probably some winners as well. 

In short, it's a film worth seeing, and worth talking about afterwards with friends.

Woodstock Myths and Realities

For the past several weeks I’ve been planning to write something about Woodstock, simply because the theme seems obligatory at some point during the month of this 40th anniversary year. When I stumbled upon the article The backlash against Woodstock's 40th anniversary it seemed like a good start point.

Michael Lang’s article is mildly tinged with a cynical contempt for the overindulgent homilies to this symbolic moment in time. He begins in this manner:

Reaching the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival can only mean one thing: nostalgia. It’s been in plentiful supply during the past few months. Predictable retrospectives have been written. An obligatory Blu-ray DVD of Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary Woodstock has been released, with a multitude of extras and a hideously tacky dashiki cover. Even the director Ang Lee is capitalising on the occasion with his portrait of Elliot Tiber, a key figure in finding the festival site, in the forthcoming feature film Taking Woodstock. While those boxes of remembrance have all been ticked, an official 40th anniversary concert is off the agenda.

I myself bought into many of the hippie ideals of the time, but I wasn't blind to the manipulations that were taking place as well. The notion of city kids dropping out and living off the land in communes was a fantasy no one in their right minds could expect to work for raising families, but there were a few kernels of value within the ideals, such as living more simply, sharing, the importance of community among others. Unfortunately, in a broken world these ideals tend to deteriorate in the face of rank selfishness and irritating pettiness.

Lang points out that the commercialism surrounding the anniversary has been part of the Festival since the beginning. He also addresses the co-opting of the Flower people by political machinations.

In truth, the rebellious flower-power spirit so closely intertwined with the American pop culture of the 1960s was in its death throes by the time Woodstock happened. The youthful push towards liberal politics, social unity and higher states of consciousness reached a peak in 1967 with the Human Be-In, in San Francisco, which popularised hippie culture, giving rise to the so-called Summer of Love later in the year. Subsequently, the term “counterculture” became a part of the national idiom, but the hippie movement’s rapid growth also signalled its dilution. In 1968, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and the ensuing chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, left political reformists floundering. The slaying of Martin Luther King Jr further polarised the civil-rights movement between nonviolent protesters and the growing “by any means necessary” contingent. Meanwhile, the nationwide unrest over the escalating Vietnam conflict grew ever more pronounced. Perhaps most damning for the hippie populace, however, was Nixon’s victory in the 1968 presidential election — something he achieved, in part, by appealing to that “silent majority” of the electorate who viewed the counterculture as an ugly blot on the American landscape.

The article is worth reading only as a balancing act against the nostalgic hype, though frankly it (the hype) has been much less than I expected actually. Forty years is about the right amount of time for nostalgia to come to fruition. Barbie and Slinky each made a brief comeback at forty.

For an alternate view of how the rock festival scene played out, check out the film Gimme Shelter, a documentary which follows the Rolling Stones who went on tour in late 1969, culminating in the ugly out-of-control free concert at Altamont Speedway in Oakland. Not pretty. And the Isle of Wight festival that followed was even more harrowing.

Hopefully idealism among youth will not be a passing fancy. I'll be more disappointed if we find our young people to be cynics from the getgo, attracted more to apathy than to dreams of a better future for those generations to come.

Salaries in the New Economy

Sunday's Parade magazine featured the What People Earn story, which has become an annual event. The contrasts of megastar salaries with working class salaries is always bound to stimulate discussion by the office water cooler.

This year Jennifer Aniston is front and center, a 40 year old actress pulling down a cool 27 million. The smiling face of baseball player Alex Rodriguez is on the upper right of the front page, his 34 million dollar income displayed below. By way of contrast, sports blogger Josh Bacott to his left is making $10,700.

Barbie, the doll from Malibu who turned fifty this year, is pictured here as well. $3.3 billion. And by way of contrast, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, has an interesting expression on his face, with his one dollar salary listed for this assignment which carries fairly hefty responsibilities I would guess.

Others listed inside include Guv Sarah Palin at $125,000 along with rapper Jay-Z at $82 million. But there are a lot of ordinary folks here, too. A library director, a truck driver, website manager, probation officer, carpenter, sales rep, tugboat captain... there's a whole range of occupations listed here. I guess we value our celebrities and sports stars 'cause we sure pay them a lot.

According to the article, weekly income rose 2.5% in 2008, and personal savings increased as well. But in another place, one finds less thrilling stats. Unemployment for high school dropouts is over 12% and even college grads are seeing layoffs. This undoubtedly accounts for the shift in attitudes among many for the time being. According to an employment consultant quoted in the article, people are more concerned about job security than they are about job excitement at this time.

Personally, I can't tell whether these kinds of articles help us or hurt us. I can imagine that for some, these salary comparisons only stir up envy and jealousy. They don't show the sacrifices many of these people made to achieve what they've got. Though on the other hand, in many instances the rest of the story has not yet been told. Most of the images are of smiling faces, but we can't always see what's behind the smiles. In the end, we do get an interesting picture of what has value in our culture today.

You can read George Anders' What People Earn here.

Battle of the Brands

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid." ~Hedy Lamarr

About a month ago I read that Barbie turned fifty this year. In my opinion, she still looks pretty good for her age. A little nip and tuck along the chin line and some exercise to keep the muscle tone hasn't hurt any. She never seems to put on an ounce of weight, unlike a lot of other dolls, so apparently fame never led her to change her values, or or diet.

Back in the early Sixties my mom used to sew Barbie clothes for my cousins as well as other girls in the 'hood. For the purpose of fitting the clothes she sewed she had a couple Barbies we dressed for success, for the beach or for the ball at my mother's whim. Because it seemed unseemly to her, she eventually bought a Ken doll to keep her boys from playing with Barbie.

Barbie eventually became the unrivalled brand champion in the international toy category.

One of the hallmarks of capitalism is the manner in which companies battle for marketshare and top-of-mind awareness in consumers. In marketing, companies seek not only to define their brand, its name and assets, but also to place it in the center of the consumer's mind.

Branding is a way in which a company differentiates itself from the competition. You can see this in the variety of flavors in which rock and roll came to America in what is known as "the British Invasion." The Animals, Beau Brummels, Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Rolling Stones, The Who, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix were groups which crossed the seas to win the hearts of young Americans, with varying degrees of success. (Hendrix himself was from Portland, but his group originated across the big pond.)

Over time, with the onslaught of fame and the music scene tabloids, the individuals within these groups became brands in and of themselves, again with varying degrees of success. Each of the Beatles went this route, Eric Burdon of the Animals, Jimi Hendrix, Clapton. If you said Jagger, everyone would know what you meant. He was clearly defined -- the androgynous guy with big lips and hip walk -- and even became a caricature of himself. Keith Richards represented everything you didn't want your daughter to associate with. The Beatles played up their innocence and charm, though eventually their various personas emerged.

Brand images are not always a positive. The Standard Oil Company spent a great deal of money trying to come up with a unique company name that had no liabilities in any language. They came up with the word Exxon. Unfortunately for Exxon, the image that pops immediately to mind when much of the environmentally conscious public hears the word is Exxon Valdez. The 1989 oil spill off Alaska's Prince William Sound continues to rankle.

The top five global brands of 2008 were Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft, General Electric and Nokia, in that order. Number six on the list was Toyota, the highest ranked automobile company. In 2001, Ford was the world's top automotive brand, listed eighth, one slot behind Disney. But today, slotted at 49, Ford exemplifies the U.S. auto industry which has slipped badly.

When we say beer, Anheuser-Busch wants you to think of Budweiser, the King of beers. Ranked #33 in the 2008 list of Best Global Brands, Budweiser is now being challenged by a Chinese beer of all things.

Actually, Budweiser's number one seller is Bud Lite, which proves the company made a good move back in the Seventies when they saw the lite beer trend coming and fought hard to establish their cred in that arena. But SABMiller claims it sells more of its branded product Snow and has now become the world's best selling beer.

Well, back to Barbie, who in 2001 was ranked 84 in the list of Best Global Brands. Times have changed. In the current top one hundred, Barbie failed to make the cut. That's why she's recently been spotted in several Manhattan taverns crying in her beer. And rumor has it she's also been cited for drunk driving on Long Island. Twice. Fortunately, by keeping it out of the tabloids it hasn't done too much damage to her brand image... unlike some other ditzy blondes in the news, for better or worse, though in that celebrity culture, sometimes even bad news is good, as long as they're still talking about you.

PHOTO: While in Sedona we noticed that MacDonald's, home of the Golden Arches and the world's eighth-ranked global brand, was sporting Green arches, a very chic, New Age attire.