Friday, October 11, 2024

More (mediocre) content is not better than no content: A rant

Once in a while you’ve got to let off some steam (Bennett). For most, that means punching a heavy bag, screaming into a pillow, maybe going crazy and tearing the tag off a mattress.

For me, it’s … angry blogging! Friday rant incoming.

What’s gotten under my skin?

The incessant need for “more content.”

I’m hearing this in the cries of Rings of Power defenders, many of whom admit that while the show is mediocre at best, and plays fast and loose with Tolkien lore in nonsensical ways, they nevertheless continue to watch. Because “its more Tolkien content, and I need more Middle-Earth. I need more content.” 

Actual quotes.

This chaps my ass.

No one needs “more content.” Not of this sort.

To me it sounds like infantile and babylike cries of, “more food, mama!”

How about, more art, please.

Stop consuming cheap and disposable shit, and begging for more. Find the good stuff that already exists, and enjoy that instead. 

There’s more content right now than anyone can consume in a lifetime.

If everyone stopped producing content tomorrow—if somehow we implemented a worldwide ban, and you could only consume content that’s already been made—you’d have enough for 50 lifetimes.

You’ve got way more than enough. I’m not advocating this, BTW, just making a point.

I hate the need for more, at any cost. I also strongly dislike the word “content” when it comes to media. “Content” is the stuff we expel from our bowels. Probably not what we should be feeding our minds with.

We do need good art. But corporations don’t make art. Corporations make content, on an industrial scale, for undifferentiated masses, in order to make loads of cash. As we see with Star Wars and now (unfortunately) The Lord of the Rings “franchises.” Corporations buy franchises and expect massive ROI on their investments. In Amazon’s case, it’s all about getting more Amazon Prime subscribers, converting to product consumers. The Lord of the Rings becomes a means to an end, a power grab, which is the opposite message of the book.

When you consume poorly made “content” produced by corporations it encourages more of the same behavior. Instead:

Support independent artists and small businesses producing new material. Discuss thoughtful and well-made art. Appreciate it. Encourage creation of more of that sort of art. Or, explore the good, old, time-tested stuff. 

If you adopt these practices worry not, you still have near infinite options.

More “content” comes with a cost.

It devalues the historical wealth of riches we already have. I have a bias here; I’m a historian. I do wonder: Who talks about Fritz Leiber anymore? Clark Ashton Smith, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson? Very few, in comparison to the new and shiny content of the moment. Hell even Ursula LeGuin, once a household name, is starting to slip into the past. 

I worry these men and women will be lost to time under an avalanche of new “content.”

“More content” chokes out the magic of what makes old properties special in the first place. The avaricious need for more content causes every timeline, every side character, every magic item or scroll, every byway, to be fully filled in. Until the magic is gone. 

We no longer need to wonder how the force operates. We no longer need to speculate about the Blue Wizards and what they were doing.

They’ve all been spelled out, like an adult paint by numbers, in the pursuit of feeding the content machine.

We need dark places in the woods, unexplored realms beneath the seas. 

And we need white space on the page. 

Obviously, I enjoy modern adaptations. Obviously, I consume some of them. Perhaps that makes me a hypocrite. But I’m definitely more judicious these days with what I watch and read, because I know that you are what you eat. And I’m not a big fan of eating shit.

I’m not advocating closing off possibilities. What I do advocate is, mindful consumption. Read or watch deeply instead of broadly. Then share that out. Celebrate the good. And stop giving your time and attention to the mediocre. 

16 comments:

  1. Art is business, if they are can keep making 'content' it means that is profitable. You can not support it with your walĺet and/or ignoring it.

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    1. ? Dead wrong. Art is not business. Different fields mate.

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  2. Yeah, I can understand someone wanting more from a genre/franchise that they like, but like you said, there's so much good stuff out there to discover.

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    1. I also understand the impulse, but it always ends in disappointment. When originality becomes a franchise, and passion abandoned for profit, it's over.

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  3. I don't mind things being spelled out, as long as they don't spell out C R A P.

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  4. When I was on the DC Comics message boards, I notice an interesting phenomenon. People would complain about a comic, but keep buying it instead of searching out something new. I asked about this and the answer was they felt they had to support the CHARACTER. They felt loyalty to a fictional character and would keep buying the book even though they hated it. Which is a shame since I've seen good, lesser known comics not last long.

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    1. Yeah, I've seen this a lot. I would literally hand them comics to read, to which they would give excellent reviews, but absolutely not change anything about their buying habits. Just go right back to hate-reading X-Men and Spider-Man stories (it's really kind of terrifying how lousy those franchises have been for so long...they've been awful for far longer than they were ever good).

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  5. Could not agree more. The paradox of choice is real. I treasured my beat up Star Wars VHS trilogy. Fellowship of The Ring blew my young mind. Not knowing everything was part of the mystery and appeal.

    Now I hate Star Wars and I hate that I hate it. It's not because of some beef with the story or lore, it's just been shoved down our throats so much that all the magic is gone for me.

    Same with the new LOTR show. I didn't stop watching in anger or some type of fandom rage - I just forgot about it after the second episode. It was lost in the flotsam of a million other mediocre shows.

    You made me think about how part of the appeal of Sword & Sorcery for me is that because it's a niche sub-genre a lot of my favorite characters have been less susceptible to corporate monetization and tinkering and still remain passion projects of their creators. Maybe? But I'm sure some of those creators would love to be more monetized as well! I guess it's about finding the balance.

    Thanks for the article!

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    1. Now thinking about how I camped out at the movie theater for Phantom Menace in 1999. At that point, it had been 16 years since the release of Return of the Jedi (1983) and 14 years since ANY Star Wars related show if we count the ABC Ewoks movies (but why would we). Can you imagine waiting even 1 year for more Star Wars content today?!

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    2. Great comment... probably explains my love for S&S also, which is far more concerned with story than character, and doesn't require the huge apparatus of high fantasy world building or intricate shared universe to support or sustain. Howard created a shared universe, but it was lightly done and left plenty of room for interpretation.

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  6. Amen. Keep fighting the good fight.

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  7. Amin hiraetha, Brian. Stands need to be taken against hateful commercialization.

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  8. One of the problems is that entertainment no longer is based on selling to "end users" (i.e., actual people), but on selling to other businesses. All these big corporations make billion dollar deals with each other to make stuff that hardly anyone actually likes, but nothing changes because on paper it's already made money. The NFL doesn't make money based on attracting and sustaining fan interest, it makes money through its network TV and streaming deals. The fans are just a minor bit of gravy on top of everything else.

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