Why does everyone overreact to bad swings in entertainment?

[Drtooth]

I'm taking this completely out of another thread because, even I the grand grouch complainer am sick of this...

Why does everyone have to overreact to bad swings in entertainment like they were signs of the Apocalypse when, if that was really true, the world would have ended in the 50's? Don't get me wrong, I hate a grand number of things on television, and I could list all the shows I hate... but trends happen in entertainment and things have historically gotten bad and then better and then worse than better by comparison.

Remember, I'm your friendly neighborhood wanna be cartoon critic. There is no better prime example than what happened with animation in the 70's, that explains things better.

Look at the 1960's. All those great cartoons that came out of that era... Bullwinkle (started in 1959, but I'm counting it), Hanna Barbera's best stuff came out of that decade, Underdog... there were shows that were being written for kids as well as adults (long before Animaniacs did the same)... mid to late 60's there were swings to Super Hero cartoons that alarmed star up parental groups leading to insane regulations that gave us...

The 1970's. Movies, drama series, action shows, sitcoms. Everything grew and improved in this era, except cartoons. We had ripoffs of Archie, Ripoffs of Scooby-Doo (which, while technically in its earliest form WAS an Archie ripoff). Bad band cartoons... a LOT of bad band cartoons. And worst of all, Super heroes had to catch the bad guys by trapping them in things and throwing them into space. That last bit was due to regulations. The 80's were slightly better in quality (at least these shows were fun to watch), but there was a huge muzzle on creativity. Then the 90's came with The Simpsons, Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy, Batman TAS (where Superheroes actually threw punches again!)... that was a revolution. Cartoons today have those cartoons to thank. That's why it doesn't seem like anything groundbreaking has happened. The ground is already broken.

As for reality TV, everyone hates it. People now watch it ironically, which is like buying books to burn them. They don't care what you do to those books if you already pay for them. But on the plus side, we're waking up. More reality TV shows are getting cancelled due to low ratings and interest. I felt there was something wrong in the world when ABC gave us Conveyer Belt of Love. Guess how many episodes that lasted? Like 2 or 3. Canceled quickly. By that matter, we're getting smarter.

So basically, what I'm saying is that there have ALWAYS been bad music groups, bad movies, bad TV shows... we just nostalgically tune them out and forget about them. Same thing will happen 10 years from now when we remember The Office and How I Met Your Mother... we'll forget about Whitney. Trust me. There's NO need to worry.

 

[meepmuppaphones]

Don't forget that even before the 1960s, there were cartoons like Looney Tunes and Tom&Jerry.

 

[D'Snowth]

Waaaahhhh! Everybody's being sooooo pessimistic!!! Waaaahhhhhh! It's ruining this entire forum with negativity! Booooooo-HOOOOOOOO!!!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[meepmuppaphones]

Uh, I wasn't trying to be pessimistic, I was just adding onto Dr. tooth's post. I'm rarely pessimistic!

 

[D'Snowth]

Uh, I wasn't trying to be pessimistic, I was just adding onto Dr. tooth's post. I'm rarely pessimistic!

You ziffeled me, lol.

And I wasn't directing that at you, I was mimicing the behavioral patterns of some people here who think any contradictory post is pessimism and negativity that apparently brings down the very fabric of MC.

 

[Yorick]

So basically, what I'm saying is that there have ALWAYS been bad music groups, bad movies, bad TV shows... we just nostalgically tune them out and forget about them. Same thing will happen 10 years from now when we remember The Office and How I Met Your Mother... we'll forget about Whitney. Trust me. There's NO need to worry.

The worst popular song from the past is better than the best popular song of now, I feel.

I do understand your point - and it's a great point to make - "don't let nostalgia make more of lesser entertainment from the past, or make less of good entertainment of today!" But my take on this is this:

I like certain things from the last 17 years, and if i listed what I liked from this time period, I may have a large list. But from 1995 on, I truly truly feel that movies, tv, and music has gotten worse and worse as time has gone on (if one goes by the popular stuff). And certain phrases enter our culture (and make it to tv, or come from tv and then we say them) and most of them I find annoying. I can only speak what I feel, and this is my reaction.

I also know that not many will agree with me on this, and again, that's fine. I'm glad people can find more to enjoy now than I can. But I'm glad to be able to now see a lot of great things I missed from the past, and re-watch in other cases.

And again, there are things I like that are new...but it's just that the ratio of good to bad is much different for me now. I don't feel that the ratio has remained the same all of these years. I say it started to go in a negative direction around 1995 and take a downward spiral since then that continues to this day. There is a dumbing down in the culture.

Edit: I just want to point out that I didn't read the thread about "Dumbing down" before I said that in my post. I noticed the name, but I had not yet read the thread. (Unless I have an old post in there that I forgot about!)

 

[meepmuppaphones]

Is it because the greatest cartoon minds are dead?

 

[Drtooth]

Waaaahhhh! Everybody's being sooooo pessimistic!!! Waaaahhhhhh! It's ruining this entire forum with negativity! Booooooo-HOOOOOOOO!!!

It's not this forum. It's EVERYWHERE. Every doofus that thinks their cartoons are better than everyone elses, and they comment on the WORST cartoons out there (Maxies World? Really? That's our crowing achievement?) There are things I'll agree to as a matter of taste. Some things are not for everyone. I'll admit it. There's a lot of shows I personally don't like, but understand the audience of. Then there's a lot of stuff that looks like a horse crapped out on a sheet of paper and someone said "Film it!" In most cases the bad stuff actually does fail. It sucks when it succeeds, but there's a lot of fail worthy stuff out there that does indeed disappear quickly from view (Charlies Angels remake and Conveyor of love specifically).

All I'm saying is we're actually getting a little better as an audience. Sure, Survivor's still on the air, I'm sure it's ratings aren't what they used to be, but they're well enough to keep the thing running like a roach after the Apocalypse... but so isn't America's Funniest home Videos and that was 80's or 90's. meanwhile NO ONE remembers America's Funniest People. The show where people actually intended to look foolish on camera, and they're in on the joke. of course, that could also be that I liked Uncle Joey a million times more than Bob Sagat on that show.

But above all, TRENDS. Trends happen. There's so many cheap clones of something. TMNT had cheap, pathetic clones even before it was a TV show. And those all ended up in the quarter bin, waterlogged, since no one wanted them. Bieber sucks, but so didn't most disco. We've had crap all along, we just chose to ignore it unless it was so bad, we incorporated it ironically (again, MST3k). If the 1950's ONLY made A-quality Shakespearean movies, we wouldn't have one of the greatest shows of all time. Meaning... GASP... sometimes terrible stuff gets better over time as well.

Don't forget that even before the 1960s, there were cartoons like Looney Tunes and Tom&Jerry.

I swear... My Frog... those were the greatest cartoons of all time. I hate to be an animation snob, but those were like Renaissance art. Especially the 40's and early 50's period. I don't think anything can compete with that, nor should I think they need to. Sure, there will always be some weird forms of art I'll question, but I respect different forms of art. But still... anyone who wants to claim "Everything made after 19XX sucks" it's those guys.

 

[Drtooth]

I do understand your point - and it's a great point in theory! But my take on this is this:

I like certain things from the last 17 years, and if i listed what I liked from this time period, I may have a large list. But from 1995 on, I truly truly feel that movies, tv, and music has gotten worse and worse as time has gone on (if one goes by the popular stuff). And certain phrases enter our culture (and make it to tv, or come from tv and then we say them) and most of them I find annoying. I can only speak what I feel, and this is my reaction.

I also know that not many will agree with me on this, and again, that's fine. I'm glad people can find more to enjoy now than I can. But I'm glad to be able to now see a lot of great things I missed from the past, and re-watch in other cases.

And again, there are things I like that are new...but it's just that the ratio of good to bad is much different for me now. I don't feel that the ratio has remained the same all of these years. I say it started to go in a negative direction around 1995 and take a downward spiral since then that continues to this day. There is a dumbing down in the culture.

There's a lot of garbage out there... but try and tell me that the Chris Nolan Batman movies aren't proof a Super Hero movie can be good, and certainly a lot better than those Joel Shumacker jokes. I mean, I can sort of enjoy Batman Forever, but I hate how they portrayed Harvey Dent/Two-Face.

But here's something else. 1995 saw the start of those awful parody movies... we've had them up until Epic Movie. That was the last one. It was universally panned, treated like garbage, and they stopped making them. Actually, we also have the writer's strike to thank. There was talk of a Bad Sci-Fi movie parody that was basically based off of trailers to Star Trek. That strike killed Heroes, but it also killed a LOT of terrible films.

There is a dumbing down, though... just not where you're looking. The Instant Gratification Culture that needs everything on phones and refuses to go to theaters. That does contribute, via making films more low budget and studios refusing to take risks. But the internet saves as many TV shows as it destroys if you can believe that. We got Firefly back as a movie, Futurama's on Comedy Central, Community was in danger of getting canceled like 3 times this season, and fans got angry and whined about it.

The thing is, people are just as sick of movies and TV sucking as we are, and it helps to cancel TV shows and force movies to bomb. If the culture really was as stupid as everyone says, Marmaduke would have been a hit. It's all about perspective.

 

[Yorick]

Bieber sucks, but so didn't most disco. We've had crap all along, we just chose to ignore it

Music on the radio (regular radio) these days is so bland. Any music from the start of recording until the mid 1990's had more going for it...in my opinion.

But still... anyone who wants to claim "Everything made after 19XX sucks" it's those guys.

Hey, at least I didn't say "everything"
But a bigger crop of crap vs good than in the past? For me, absolutely.