The above post is something my brothers and I have already been discussing for a while – whether the latter half of the 20th Century will be looked back on as a highpoint of human artistry, right up there with the art of the Italian Renaissance 1400s/1500s. And there are numerous
editorials wondering the same, and pegging the year 2007 as the last year of American entertainment’s globally dominant peak era.
By no coincidence, 2007 is the year Cell Phones became Smart Phones, the internet moved into its Social Media era, Netflix began streaming, and Reality TV went into overdrive as a response to keeping television production going during intensive labor strikes by screenwriters. Although it’s worth pointing out that Peak TV Era extended for another decade, with shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Walking Dead carrying an intellectual torch to the small screen.
This has left Hollywood, the music industry, and book publishing in the position of competing against themselves. Friends and Seinfeld reruns command more devoted audiences than currently produced sitcoms, and are even watched just as much by the younger demographic that all the advertisers chase. That, to me, is one small sign that there was more lasting creative power in the less corporate Hollywood of the 1990s than there is today.
Despite Sturgeon’s Law, I think the case can be made that entertainment was smarter, and more creative and memorable during its latter-century golden age of American entertainment.
