Derivative Entertainment and the Swinging Pendulum

NPR had a nice piece this morning on music and film:  Basically saying that the number one movie (Avatar) and the number one song ("Tik Tok" by Ke$ha) are completely derivative (just recycled old ideas put together; a "montage of tropes" as NPR put it), but very skillfully produced.  They seem like they should be great all-around but they are actually unoriginal.  They are great productions only.

I thoroughly agree with their analysis (but please note that I like watching and listening to highly produced things - it's just entertainment though, not art).  It got me thinking about the cultural pendulum swings:  bell bottoms in, now bell bottoms out only to be back in-style next decade; facial hair in, now facial hair out followed by side burns and goatees; slick productions now soon to be replaced by naturalist Cinéma vérité and back; synthesized voices  followed by acoustic guitar back to sampled hits of yesteryear; etc.

Thus is ever was so - history shows us these patterns of taste oscillate back and forth over time.  So, at first I was going to blog about how perhaps this NPR piece is an indication of the end of the highly produced derivative era we have been in:  We should expect retro-grainy black and white movies with no CGI next year with lots of acapella singing and acoustic guitars.

But then I started thinking - the cycle time for the cultural pendulum swings seem to be getting shorter.  We may be the first generation in a position to actually feel the oscillations.  At some point, perhaps the oscillations will simply stop and we will enter a new dialectic. Or perhaps, just as a real pendulum winds down eventually, we may be entering an era of no oscillations - everything will just be mashed together as self forming groups sample their own "montage of tropes" at their own pace.

(pics of Kesha Sebert and James Cameron)