Do you remember any part of the past fifteen years? If so, you might recall somebody mentioning that we now live in a highly fractured entertainment environment. The prevailing notion was that our popular culture, once a vast monolith of consolidated culture comprised of three television networks and single-screen movie theaters, had begun to slowly shatter into a million billion niches, each capable of holding only a dozen or so highly specialized fanatics at a time. We were all supposed to become so engrossed in our own peculiar, esoteric interests, that we would eventually lose the ability to talk to one another, since we no longer shared any common entertainment. Thanks a lot, Internet!
Or… maybe not?
What if I described for you a man who was incapable of naming more than one title in the Hunger Games series? A man who isn’t entirely sure what a hufflepuff is. Who hasn’t been to a movie theater since, oh, I don’t know, whenever it was that Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released. A guy who can’t afford the really good cable package that everyone else seems to have, and therefore is beginning to suspect that A Game Of Thrones is some sort of soft-core “Skinemax” series that a bunch of hipsters have ironically decided to take seriously, but he can’t actually prove it. (And also believes–but also cannot prove–that George RR Martin manages to type up his novels despite the full-on erection that must constantly be getting in his way.) A man who thinks Girls is one third of a really old Motley Crue album.
Why, I do believe you’d say this hypothetical man (ahem, yes) is out of touch. Which raises the question: out of touch from what?
A-ha, MONOCULTURE! It was you all along!
Er… that’s not quite right is it?
Because it isn’t just mass culture–it’s also the fractured, fractal culture that was there all along. There’s been fanzines and samizdat and specialist mailing lists, and midnight movies, and underground booksellers, and subculture since the dawn of mass culture. It’s just been hidin’ sorta. The Internet made it easier to find, is all–but mass culture is still alive and kicking! Look how weird it feels when you talk to someone who doesn’t know much about it.
Niche interests didn’t–and probably won’t–kill our shared enjoyment of big, mass-market entertainment. Because you can have both! You can do obscure things and popular things at once! You do not need to live two lives to do those things! I mean, do you have any idea how much money the Hunger Games made? Do you really believe that, out of all the people who went to see that movie, there isn’t at least one person in that group who doesn’t collect handmade erotic thimbles, just to pick a hobby at random? Of course there is! Of course!
I’m no sociologist. And I know that human culture is varied and changes over time. But it seems like there will always be a few big things, and a whole lot of little things, to be interested in. Or, at the very least, we’re probably going to be stuck with that arrangement for rather a long while yet. I mean… probably. I don’t know. I’m pretty obscure myself, after all.
