Originality is Dead
All right, everyone, we knew this was going to happen eventually. All the minds of all the creative people in all history only can come up with so many truly original and groundbreaking ideas, and it would appear that we have all completely run out of them. And if we haven't, perhaps we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. I knew we were getting close when someone decided to make a movie entitled "Dude, Where's My Car?" Of course, I saw that movie, and I have to say I liked it, so in my humble opinion, the bottom had not yet been reached. However, then I started seeing the ads for this new cheerleader-serial robber pic called "Sugar and Spice". Okay, that's it. That is the last one, the last truly original and halfway creative idea, and not even a good one at that. Folks, we indeed are in big trouble.
Some portions of pop culture have been out of creative ideas for a while now, most notably the world of popular music. I knew it was over when Puff Daddy hit it big. I have no problem with him doing what he does, but exactly how much creativity does it take to grab an old Police or Diana Ross track, throw a couple drum machines over it, and add rhymes? I do have to give him brownie points for actually asking Jimmy Page to play guitar for the song from Godzilla when Puffy essentially remade Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir". Just using the original alone would have been close to sacreligious.
Think about it, though, and this goes back to an earlier column I wrote about a lot of things these days being just spit-and-polish jobs on old concepts. All of the boy groups of today, especially the ones that were basically thrown together by some millionaire with a singing pretty boy fetish, are no more than today's New Kids On the Block, which goes back to the Partridge Family, and eventually on a line back to the original pre-fabricated pop group, the Monkees. Such is pretty much proof that tastes don't really change, they just cycle on an every-few-years-or-so basis. Consider hip-hop. Yes, I'm going to get reamed up one side and down the other for this one, but it has been my theory for many years that it's basically repackaged disco, only this time they got it right, and decided not to do every song with the same beat. Will Smith and Puffy are the most guilty of this one, sampling disco songs for their own music. Hell, "Rapper's Delight", the first big-time rap song was "Good Times" by Chic with rhymes thrown over it.
Rare examples of creative new directions in music are often then subjected to the "take what is successful and run it into the ground" policy. Unfortunately, it's always true in rock, where these days the new wave of rap-metal acts that all are beginning to sound a lot alike ("Is that Nickelback or Linkin Park or the new Limp Bizkit song?"), it's nothing more than a repeat of the proliferation of hair bands in the late 80s, and sadly, the glut of angst-ridden semi-grunge acts that filled the radio in the mid-90s.
TV is another area that is sadly lacking in new ideas. Most sitcom ideas have all been tried before; now it's just a matter of hoping your witty writing is better than that of the other 25 new sitcoms that get trotted out every year. No wonder most of them don't make it to December. Not that it matters, of course; 25 more get trotted out in January as "mid-season replacements". Naturally, the worst example of the lack of new ideas in television came this year when CBS in all of its wisdom recycled "The Fugitive", which in effect is the TV version of the movie version of the original "Fugitive" that aired in the 1960s. If that ain't recycling, I don't know what is.
And that brings me back to the film industry and the number of directors who in the past decade or so have been falling all over each other for the rights to do a film version of (insert 60s or 70s TV series here). You name it, they've done it: "The Beverly Hillbillies", "The Flintstones", "Maverick", "Charlie's Angels", "Lost In Space", "My Favorite Martian", and the list goes on and on. Of course, even that trend shows signs of running out of ideas; consider the 1998 attempt at "The Avengers", the TV version of which never saw much light here in the States, and 1999's "Wild Wild West", whose TV counterpart lasted maybe five minutes back in the 60s?
With this in mind, you know they're headed to the 80s now; after all, pop culture does go on a 20-year cycle, so if they can recycle "Charlie's Angels" and "The Brady Bunch" in the 90s, don't think some amateur Spielberg's not out there begging for the rights to "Dallas" or "Dynasty" or even "Mr. Belvidere". As a representative of my generation, that being the one who basically came of age in the 1990s, I hope and pray that I will never see the movie version of "ER", "NYPD Blue", "Dawson's Creek" or any other WB melodrama for that matter. And while we're at it, could we also quit recycling old movies? Other than Eddie Murphy's new take on "The Nutty Professor", nothing else is really cutting it. And someone please stop Disney before they remake "The Parent Trap" for the seventh time.
Now excuse me while I mourn over the fact that SR-71 was right on the money when they sang "you couldn't make a Mel Brooks movie today..."
Some portions of pop culture have been out of creative ideas for a while now, most notably the world of popular music. I knew it was over when Puff Daddy hit it big. I have no problem with him doing what he does, but exactly how much creativity does it take to grab an old Police or Diana Ross track, throw a couple drum machines over it, and add rhymes? I do have to give him brownie points for actually asking Jimmy Page to play guitar for the song from Godzilla when Puffy essentially remade Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir". Just using the original alone would have been close to sacreligious.
Think about it, though, and this goes back to an earlier column I wrote about a lot of things these days being just spit-and-polish jobs on old concepts. All of the boy groups of today, especially the ones that were basically thrown together by some millionaire with a singing pretty boy fetish, are no more than today's New Kids On the Block, which goes back to the Partridge Family, and eventually on a line back to the original pre-fabricated pop group, the Monkees. Such is pretty much proof that tastes don't really change, they just cycle on an every-few-years-or-so basis. Consider hip-hop. Yes, I'm going to get reamed up one side and down the other for this one, but it has been my theory for many years that it's basically repackaged disco, only this time they got it right, and decided not to do every song with the same beat. Will Smith and Puffy are the most guilty of this one, sampling disco songs for their own music. Hell, "Rapper's Delight", the first big-time rap song was "Good Times" by Chic with rhymes thrown over it.
Rare examples of creative new directions in music are often then subjected to the "take what is successful and run it into the ground" policy. Unfortunately, it's always true in rock, where these days the new wave of rap-metal acts that all are beginning to sound a lot alike ("Is that Nickelback or Linkin Park or the new Limp Bizkit song?"), it's nothing more than a repeat of the proliferation of hair bands in the late 80s, and sadly, the glut of angst-ridden semi-grunge acts that filled the radio in the mid-90s.
TV is another area that is sadly lacking in new ideas. Most sitcom ideas have all been tried before; now it's just a matter of hoping your witty writing is better than that of the other 25 new sitcoms that get trotted out every year. No wonder most of them don't make it to December. Not that it matters, of course; 25 more get trotted out in January as "mid-season replacements". Naturally, the worst example of the lack of new ideas in television came this year when CBS in all of its wisdom recycled "The Fugitive", which in effect is the TV version of the movie version of the original "Fugitive" that aired in the 1960s. If that ain't recycling, I don't know what is.
And that brings me back to the film industry and the number of directors who in the past decade or so have been falling all over each other for the rights to do a film version of (insert 60s or 70s TV series here). You name it, they've done it: "The Beverly Hillbillies", "The Flintstones", "Maverick", "Charlie's Angels", "Lost In Space", "My Favorite Martian", and the list goes on and on. Of course, even that trend shows signs of running out of ideas; consider the 1998 attempt at "The Avengers", the TV version of which never saw much light here in the States, and 1999's "Wild Wild West", whose TV counterpart lasted maybe five minutes back in the 60s?
With this in mind, you know they're headed to the 80s now; after all, pop culture does go on a 20-year cycle, so if they can recycle "Charlie's Angels" and "The Brady Bunch" in the 90s, don't think some amateur Spielberg's not out there begging for the rights to "Dallas" or "Dynasty" or even "Mr. Belvidere". As a representative of my generation, that being the one who basically came of age in the 1990s, I hope and pray that I will never see the movie version of "ER", "NYPD Blue", "Dawson's Creek" or any other WB melodrama for that matter. And while we're at it, could we also quit recycling old movies? Other than Eddie Murphy's new take on "The Nutty Professor", nothing else is really cutting it. And someone please stop Disney before they remake "The Parent Trap" for the seventh time.
Now excuse me while I mourn over the fact that SR-71 was right on the money when they sang "you couldn't make a Mel Brooks movie today..."
Labels: movies, music, television
posted by Dave | 7:31 PM
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