Is Pop Culture Increasingly Bleak?

[PatrickG]

I don't know... But it seems to me that tabloid headlines have gone from covering infidelity, contract disputes and celebrities having reckless fun, partying like there's no tomorrow... to covering these increasingly messy mental breakdowns and deaths. Sure, there was always some of the dark stuff but now it seems that there's more of it.

And I listen to music on the radio sometimes. The popular stuff is sounding less and less melodious. I thought the 90s were a kind of bleak "hangover" period for music but today's bubblegum pop sounds darker and more depressed than yesterday's bleak music. Maybe it's the crossover influence of emo on pop but it bothers me when the bands made up of four or five aging metal rockers sound more cheerful than the Clear Channel Mouseketeer set.

Then I was thinking about how sparse and bleak many of the comic book adaptations and genre films are. I really enjoyed SUPERMAN RETURNS but it was a visually very "white" movie. The last Star Trek was visually very angry and stark. And the latest Spider-man seems (at least somewhat comedically) to treat emo and pain as sexy.

I caught the theme for the new Transformers movie by Mute Math:

http://www.myspace.com/mutemath

I'm optimistic about the movie but this cover makes me think, "Transform and down the road, not across the street!" It's just DEPRESSING.

And I also think a lot of times anymore when comic companies tout the need for CONFLICT, they confuse tragedy with pathos and conflict with despair.

Does anybody else get this vibe? I mean, dark can be cool. Angry can be cool. The bad guy winning can be cool. But IMO a story, movie or song that's dark needs to be powerful, to have rage behind it. Not to simply roll over.

I think helplessness and disenfranchisement are being pushed as in vogue and it's just disturbing because I think we're at such a pivotal point in western culture.

I feel as if the decades could be summed up culturally as follows:

60s - Being loud. "Screw the man!"
70s - Being louder. "Screw eachother!"
80s - Being loudest. "Screw the world!"
90s - Clearing your throat. "Screw this. I'm gonna do my own thing."
00s - Sobbing quietly in a corner. "Screw trying."

[Reverend Smooth]

Next decade should be more positive. These things tend to cycle.

[Leslie Lee III]

If you pick a handful of examples you can paint any picture you want of any period you want. I think summing up vast periods of time with one or two lines will prove a hopelessly flawed way to think about this sort of thing.

I mean, I'd say Fergie or Fall Out Boy are a lot more upbeat than The Doors or Hendrix. See how that works?

[The Xenos]

I hate to tell you, that's not the real theme. Or at least that's one of a couple themes. I belive that mutemath one was listed on the soundtrack though. The other one off the offcial site I heard was even stupider with a crappy hip-hop NU-metal Linkin Park knockoff style.

AICN has a direct download off the official site:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32910
fanvideo using it :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYS6vzAeCUw
Oddly, I think Mutemath has a different song on their MySpace page.

We fight for our freedom? We follow our heart? Autobots are watching over you? Autobots will die for you? Ready for die for what we love?

Well, America, f--- yeah! Wait, no, that parody song was better than this one.

Also, if you're as negative about it as I am, stay away from the Transformers thread in the TV board. It seems I turned into too much of a troll naysaying the new Bay movie and I was asked to quit it.

[PatrickG]

I kinda like the version you posted better.

BUT... I think that's for the video game.

Sure, it sounds like Justin Timberlake teaming up for the TMNT "Coming Out of Their Shells" tour...

But I'd rather hear music that's shallow but gets people pumped up as the credits roll than something melancholy.

Besides... This movie is directed by Michael Bay. It's big explosions.

I'd take awful hair metal polka in the closing credits before I'd want to hear the most well done Radiohead track.

This is a kaboom movie. And even though I'm sure there's an obligatory tearjerker death scene, it really has to be the kind of movie that ends with a wink and a nod and the cheesiest, loudest battle anthem you can muster.

I don't even like System of a Down. I do like some techno and trip hop. But this movie's gotta end as a candycoated adrenaline jizzgasm or else it's "Saving Private Ironhide".

[Buzz Dixon]

I am a student of pop culture, and I would say that the pop culture oft he late 19th century to the 1960s/70s was overall positive and upbeat.

There were obvious exceptions: Film noir, gangster movies in the 1930s, the blues, etc., but prior to the late 60s/early 70s out and out nihilism was rare in pop culture, particularly in pop culture like movies and TV shows that depended on large audiences to remain profitable.

Starting in the late 60s/early 70s, the baby boomer generation began creating more and more of the pop culture that mainstream society was exposed to, and this in turn began feeding the generation/s of creators that came next. Whereas breakup songs were not unheard of in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, starting in the late 60s/early 70s they began assuming a much more prominent place on the charts, so much so that a song today about falling in love and staying with that person forever is considered kitschy and unrealistic.

Why did this happen? There's a lot of reasons. WWI, the Depression, and WWII certainly exposed a lot of people to genuine terrible things. The counter culture rebellion of the late 40s through early 60s unfairly lumped what we'll refer to as Middle American ideals in with a lot of what was wrong with American society, and deliberately denigrated the optimism that had marked American culture up to that point.

It has been suggested that the proper way for any culture to be passed from generation to generation is for the adolescents to rebel against the adults and for the adolescents to be defeated in their rebellion and thus initiated by the adults into the true values of the culture, and that when the baby boomers "summer of love" hit, the cycle was broken and the adolescents won, thus disrupting the very culture that made their decadence possible.

What used to be unthinkable in public and/or tolerated only on the fringes of society is now not merely being accepted as mainstream but in some quarters being promulgated as superior to less extreme behavior and expression.

It used to be that Judeo-Christian values were accepted as the foundation of which our culture was based. No American citizen was ever required to adopt the Jewish or Christian faiths as a condition of citizenship, but all were expected to know what those values were and why they were worth preserving.

We have pushed individual freedom ahead of social responsibility, and in doing so have created legions of narcissistic personalities who are incapable of/unwilling to commit to long term interpersonal relationship, particular marriage and families, not to mention cultural and national. These people are hurt and in trouble and confused and they don't know why, yet whenever someone suggests the problem might be in the worship and celebration of the self above all else, the person making that suggestion is decried as a facist, a hypocrite, a Bible-banger, or worse.

As will happen to this post...

[Inkpot1965]

Bang on, Buzz. Bang on.....;)

[Charles RB]

Nothing I've heard about pop culture in the seventies and eighties makes it sound less bleak than this decade - and nothing from the pop culture I've seen from there either, nor the tabloids. Let's face it, the previous decades had their fair share of crap and bleakness. That's why the seventies spawned Judge Dredd & the Punisher, the Sweeney, hordes of violent and nasty horror films.

And you know what? I'd say this decade is a much better time to be alive than the seventies from where I'm standing - Britain's not in a period of severe civil unrest and economic instability, and Europe is full of democracies instead of dictatorships. I've regularly been to Portugal on holiday and a mere twelve years before my birth, that was a dictatorship; hell, I've been to Germany and half of that was still a dictatorship four years after my birth.

You can't tell me things were less bleak back then.


Besides... This movie is directed by Michael Bay.

Which is why I'm ignore it coz I hate Bay films. If I want Transformers and big explosions, I've got the current comics and Beast Wars DVDs to have fun with and they've got better plots & acting. Plus Waspinator.

[Inkpot1965]

Sorry, Charles. You're talking about politics and countries [the situations you pointed out are wonderful, BTW]. This thread is based on negativity in culture [music, TV, movies, comics, etc]. And as someone who remembers the 70's quite well, the culture of today is noticeably darker in tone than it used to be. Probably why I prefer the older stuff in general [with some exceptions].

[Night Swordsman]

I like the idea that pop culture has now been clearly defined to that pristine form that is WASPINATOR!(Giggling ALOT)


(Sorry Charles! But that image JUST stuck in my head and had to come out! I know it is not what you meant,but i just LOVE the idea of pop culture being defined forever as WASPINATOR! Please forgive!)

(Giggling WAY too much. Must decrease skittle intake.). :p

[Charles RB]

Waspinator should be in all products of pop culture and you know it.

He has plans, you know.

[Night Swordsman]

Waspinator should be in all products of pop culture and you know it.

He has plans, you know.

ZOMG! Waspinator for President?

[Charles RB]

You can't deny he'd have a strong anti-war platform. ("War blow Wazzzpinator up:( !")

[The Xenos]

Eeeeeeeeeeh, I'm more of a Rattrap fan myself.

(Heh heh. I have been to cons with Scott McNeil and he's carried on one man convrersations between Rattrap, Waspinator and other voices he did on the show. Quite a thing to see.)

[mgs]

I agree with Charles. I like to think of it as growing up. The 80's and 60's were a highly touted drug culture in which the consequences of things were not thought out very well. People can have a good time and sing about it and all, if they don't think about what their actions have on families, or what's really going on in the world.

Nowadays, I feel that yes, there may seem to be a more permanent seriousness geared towards the youth and their pop culture, but I think this reflects well in that they are not mindlessly producing culture with a feel good attitude that is empty in substance, but a culture that is reflected in the fact that it is so easy to get a general knowledge about the world around you that it is very hard to have the grand old times of old, when you really know how much crappiness there is in the world that needs to be changed.

[wishlish]

There's an element of 9/11 still infecting our pop culture. Every time I read book reviews, someone's written their "9/11 novel". Civil War is the post-9/11 comic. Special effects in movies have to be bigger and flashier to compete with the visual images of 9/11 (which, sadly, had more spectacular visuals than any other event in human history). Combine that with the lack of faith in our government (a government that is so far away from the ideals of "by the people, for the people" that it's not funny), and you end up with dark culture.

[Alan Lynch]

Also, if you're as negative about it as I am, stay away from the Transformers thread in the TV board. It seems I turned into too much of a troll naysaying the new Bay movie and I was asked to quit it.
I think it's going to be brilliant. Bay does car chases and explosions really well - that's pretty much all i want from a Transformers movie, to be honest.

[MartinRedmond]

Here's some bands that are creative, catchy and cheerful / can write songs that convery more than one mood:

http://www.myspace.com/thegoteam
http://www.myspace.com/officialpatrickwolf
http://www.myspace.com/letigre
http://www.myspace.com/thebravery

Personally, after Kid A, Radiohead makes my eyes glaze over. I like M83 better.