Time after Time (after time after time after time): Serials, Series, and Pop Culture (Index)

Back here, in one of my articles on the decline and fall of television, I had the following to say:

Of course, it may be that we live in an already coarse and unforgiving age, and we just get the television we deserve.  That is depressingly possible.  Still, the popularity of reality TV, in my mind, is just one more instance not only of the debased state of public entertainment and discourse in our society, but of the exhaustion of creativity in pop culture in general.  That’s a broader topic that I’ll be visiting soon.

Well, it’s not that soon, as it’s turned out; but I do want to revisit it.  It’s going to take a series of posts to do so, though, so I’m setting this as an index page.

My basic thesis, which I’ll be examining in posts to come is this:  Repetition, in the form of series, serials, remakes, and quotation of various tropes is at one and the same time the most characteristic feature of modern pop culture (all genres) and also the sign of its decadence and creative decline.  I first thought about this in relation to comics.  Later, though, reading Joss Whedon’s execrable comic book continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I managed to shake myself out of the stupor at how the mighty had fallen long enough to apply the same ideas I had to TV.  Still later I thought the same notions were applicable to literature, and probably all of pop culture.  I have thought about this for few years and am now firmly of the opinion that less is more, and more is–well, more, but also that more is less, artistically, aesthetically, and even morally.

I will be looking at the issue from different angles and in reference to different genres.  I’ll be putting posts up sporadically, and it will be a little while in getting to the core of what I’m after; but I hope to make some interesting points, at least.  Stay tuned!

Do It Again! Pop Culture Prologue