It isn't me, empirically it has been demonstrated that America is in a creativity spiral

[bshole]

The most shocking change in my lifetime has been the slow and steady demolition of American culture. To me nothing demonstrates this more dramatically than the vast wasteland of movies and music created today.

According to the research, creativity starting falling in 1990s. From what I can observe, it is now in utter free fall. Creativity is the secret sauce for a culture, lose that and the nation follows. Two years ago, the middle class became a minority for the first time in my lifetime. If you ever wondered what an empire was like in the midst of its death spasms.... no need to wonder any longer, you are living in it.

http://www.creativitypost.com/education/yes_there_is_a_creativity_crisis

 

[Carson Dyle]

"American culture"

LOL!

 

[IronWing]

Why innovate when the last good thing you did pays for 95-120 years for copyright or 20 years for patents which you can evergreen? We are moving away from an innovation/production economy to a rent economy. To reverse this requires changing IP and tax laws to reward work over rent collection.

 

[Vapid Cabal]

People are too busy being divided an offended to be creative.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Too much IP law bullcrap. If you create something you'll either accidentally infringe on some right and get sued for millions, or some company will take ownership of your work and profit off it and you will lose rights to it. But the biggest thing is the risk. It's just too high because of how strict IP laws are and how strict the sentences are.

What pisses me off is that the US keeps trying to push their BS laws to everyone else too. They just pushed their stupid crap through NAFTA so now copyright and patent extensions apply here too. This will affect a lot of things such as access to medication.

 

[Kaido]

To me nothing demonstrates this more dramatically than the vast wasteland of movies and music created today.

I actually think we're in exactly the opposite situation - we've never lived in such a creative & inspirational time in the entire history of humanity. More people have access to more creative tools now than in the entire history of the world. That concept may be hard to swallow if you only look at it from a commercial angle, but that's because a box-office movie costs $100 million dollars to make & the studios want to take safe bets that will make money.

In reality, there are tens of thousands of amazing musicians on SoundCloud & incredible filmmakers on Youtube. You can make movies & do photography with your smartphone, you can draw & paint & airbrush on your tablet, you can edit & produce films or even entire symphonies on your computer. Basically, if you're even remotely creative, the world is your oyster. But if you only go by what the movie theaters & radio have to offer, then yeah, you're going to hear a lot of re-runs & re-mixes, haha.

 

[OverVolt]

Actually the economic center of the world is also the creative center of the world.

Like how many creative risks are you going to take in a business where 50% of the people are going to get laid off. Nah, you're going to keep your head down for pink slip time. Very few would think their best option is to attempt a huge creative risk and that is why there is so much recycling of previously successful franchises.

Economic leads, creativity follows.

CALL OF DUDES 59.... MARVEL... HEROES.... SOMETHING.... XXXIIIIII part 2

 

[OverVolt]

I actually think we're in exactly the opposite situation - we've never lived in such a creative & inspirational time in the entire history of humanity. More people have access to more creative tools now than in the entire history of the world. That concept may be hard to swallow if you only look at it from a commercial angle, but that's because a box-office movie costs $100 million dollars to make & the studios want to take safe bets that will make money.

In reality, there are tens of thousands of amazing musicians on SoundCloud & incredible filmmakers on Youtube. You can make movies & do photography with your smartphone, you can draw & paint & airbrush on your tablet, you can edit & produce films or even entire symphonies on your computer. Basically, if you're even remotely creative, the world is your oyster. But if you only go by what the movie theaters & radio have to offer, then yeah, you're going to hear a lot of re-runs & re-mixes, haha.

The tools are irrelevant because its a battle for people's minds. Its far more important what you make vs how you made it.

 

[FerrelGeek]

Movies, TV shows, and music are definitely in a creative slump.

 

[KMFJD]

So many reboots of old shows...do we really need a reboot of Magnum PI?

 

[nakedfrog]

I actually think we're in exactly the opposite situation - we've never lived in such a creative & inspirational time in the entire history of humanity. More people have access to more creative tools now than in the entire history of the world. That concept may be hard to swallow if you only look at it from a commercial angle, but that's because a box-office movie costs $100 million dollars to make & the studios want to take safe bets that will make money.

In reality, there are tens of thousands of amazing musicians on SoundCloud & incredible filmmakers on Youtube. You can make movies & do photography with your smartphone, you can draw & paint & airbrush on your tablet, you can edit & produce films or even entire symphonies on your computer. Basically, if you're even remotely creative, the world is your oyster. But if you only go by what the movie theaters & radio have to offer, then yeah, you're going to hear a lot of re-runs & re-mixes, haha.

Yep.

 

[Kaido]

The tools are irrelevant because its a battle for people's minds. Its far more important what you make vs how you made it.

Absolutely. Content is King. Buster Keaton wasn't limited by silent black & white movies. But if you have a computer or a smartphone or a tablet, there's almost no limit to what you can create...you don't need a film studio or an orchestra or even art supplies to create amazing content anymore. For example:

https://www.artstation.com/contests

https://cgsociety.org/galleries/editors-pick

https://www.deviantart.com/popular-all-time/?offset=24

https://vimeo.com/channels/thedecade

https://soundcloud.com/charts/top?genre=all-music

https://www.ranker.com/list/best-short-films-on-youtube/jacob-shelton

https://www.shapeways.com/marketplace

If you only pay attention to what's on the radio or in the movie theaters, then you're all you're going to get is highly-polished, commercialized content that is catering to the masses (mostly teenagers). But then you'd be missing a wealth of creativity in the treasure trove that is the Internet.

I do think all mediums have a half-life for the initial foundation during exploration...it happened with writing, it happened with photography, it happened with music, it's happened with film, and it's happened with video games. Even in VR, a relatively new medium, it's always the same stuff re-packaged over & over again - wave shooter games, archery games, etc. There's a great article by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) about JK Rowling suing a small publisher:

http://www.linearpublishing.com/RhinoStory.html

If you haven't seen the "Everything is a Remix" series yet, here's all of the episodes in a single video:

Anyway, commercially? Yeah, we're stuck in a remix slump. But that doesn't mean that creativity has spiraled down, just that big companies don't want to take risks that would potentially cause losses in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. There's also a lot of greed, corruption, and even just plain production & marketing costs involved with producing entertainment content & making money from it. Check out this article on why major-label musicians rarely make money from album sales, for example:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml

If you have a halfway decent product, then making money is primarily about advertising at that point, and sadly, a lot of very creative people with great art, music, game, and video products don't get heard because they don't have a multi-million-dollar budget to get the word out, so we see a lot of rehashed movies, TV shows, and music content rather than a lot of fun, new, original spins on things.

 

[KMFJD]

snip

Excellent post, thank you!

 

[PowerEngineer]

It may just be you.

I see this lament about the decline of creativity and American culture as being another example of what every older generation (in this case, the baby boomer who grew up in the 1950's) says about the havoc that the younger generation is raising. I am sure I heard roughly the same thing back in the days of the hippies, the Vietnam war protests, Woodstock, and pervasive marijuana use.

 

[repoman0]

Not a film guy, but as both a musician and avid listener I can say that if you don't think there's incredible amounts of beautiful and interesting new music out there, much of it created by Americans, you don't know where to look. Not to say that's entirely your fault because it can be hard to find ... but there's a whole lot more out there than what you hear on the radio. I have some incredibly talented friends creating fantastic records that don't get more than a few thousand listens on Spotify because mass exposure is hard.

 

[FeuerFrei]

Local stores aren't playing current hits anymore. Just tracks from a decade ago or more. I think the populace has given up on pop hits.

Everyone's isolated in their own music bubble, rather than rallying around new releases with universal appeal. The music industry (a shadow of its former self) is pandering to urban hip-hop party music and electronic crud, because that's the only demographic who's still spending much on music.

The internet is the modern testbed for music acts. If you amass a significant internet following, labels might come knocking with deals for you.

Why does tv keep bringing back old tv shows? Full House, Roseanne, the Gong Show, etc. What's next ... Friends 2 ?

Reviving the past isn't a bad idea, ... but it doesn't make you look innovative or creative. And there's a risk of disappointment.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Cynicism ... I have the cure for cancer, war and being poor. But none of you deserve it. I will go to my grave with the cure for everything.