We live with the entirety of human knowledge and history in our pockets. We live in a dynamic, flexible time in which a person can communicate with anyone in the world on the Internet. Our lives are constantly changing with technology that is produced at a high rate. But, with regard to entertainment, it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Our generation’s entertainment preferences are rooted in nostalgia. Instead of creating new content, the media of today appears to be obsessed with recreating and rebooting stories of years past. Music, movies and TV shows indicate we are no longer living in a world of pure imagination, but rather a creative purgatory more concerned with brand recognition than artistic innovation and originality.
Perhaps the most recent example of old ideas being reused can be found in Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me,” which won Record of the Year at this year’s Grammy Awards. It’s essentially a Sam Smith remix of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” yet it was held as a breakthrough. Perhaps it is people’s forgetfulness or ignorance that allows old ideas to be praised as new.
Instances of past-dependent creation are increasing exponentially in the music industry. You can hardly hear an album that does not have a cover on it. Not only that, but media constantly makes comparisons of contemporary artists to older artists. If the artists of the past continue to be held with such religious reverence, we will never have an artist reach the heights of Michael Jackson. Can you imagine if each time Michael Jackson sang or danced we were told he was a new James Brown? Constant comparisons like that would have definitely hindered his ability to have an unprecedentedly successful career.
Film has been experiencing similar limitations. The amount of remakes and reboots presently produced is absurd. It is almost as if mainstream screenwriters and directors completely ran out of ideas and decided to remake movies and books they remember from their adolescence.
For instance: Marvel Studios acquired the rights to Spider-Man for an upcoming film, which was an exciting endeavor for its makers and fans.
It is not. Spider-Man has existed since the 1960s and we have seen five Spider-Man movies — plus countless cartoons and comic books — since the beginning of the millennium. Oversaturation is just one component of the problem with reboots like these. Another problem is the alteration of characters and storylines. Most of the movies don’t stay true to the comics, so it feels like legacy is just being used for licensing purposes. Aren’t there any new superheroes they can make movies about?
Television isn’t much better. It is stuck in rewind with its characters, stories and concepts. We watched the same cartoons as our parents. Our kids will probably watch the same cartoons we did. Just look at Cartoon Network’s upcoming shows; you would think this was the 1960s. Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo all have upcoming shows airing on the network and have already gone through countless rebranding attempts over the years. These reboots rarely embody the shows’ original charm. They are simply unimaginative attempts to profit from old and tired concepts.
In this new age, nothing we watch or listen to seems very new. It all appears to be re-polished versions of the same vinyl, re-shot scenes from the same film and a rerun of a TV show that we have already seen. As a consumer, I want innovation. I want imagination. I don’t want to see old ideas regurgitated.
Emanuel Griffin is a UF journalism freshman. His column appears on Tuesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 2/24/2015 under the headline “New media is actually dressed-up, old media”]
