The Internet has been awash with stories bemoaning the reboot and sequel addiction that entertainment makes have these days such as this New York Post story: Why nostalgia is ruining television one classic at a time:
Nostalgia is officially out of control.
The recent news that two franchises, “Twilight” and “Harry Potter,” will get TV series adaptations doesn’t mean you’ve time-traveled back to a decade ago.
This still is 2023.
The reboot culture in television has run rampant for a while — “Magnum P.I.,” “True Lies,” “Fantasy Island,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “Queer Eye” and “Cobra Kai,” to name a few.
This month alone will offer upcoming small-screen adaptations of “Dead Ringers,” and “Fatal Attraction,” with A-list stars attached to each project (Rachel Weisz and Joshua Jackson, respectively).
But at least those stories have been lying dormant for 20-odd years (or more) before their resurrection.
You know why creativity is going bankrupt in this country these days? No one reads books.
Well, that’s a bit narrow in focus. More broadly, later generations are not ramping up their imaginations by having to picture what’s happening in their own mind–which could come from reading books, or hearing stories, or probably even a little bit from listening to dramas on the radio (although I guess some audio-only podcasts could take this role, but not podcasts on YouTube with visuals that repeat images to not violate copyright or video of some person talking jump cuts to a camera). They hardly go outside to play with just a stick, or with a toy gun and a bike, or even a bunch of action figures to build their own stories.
Instead, they get screens at an early age and endless hours of children’s shows on television.
They only get shallow stories presented to them through television and games, and when it comes time to produce entertainment of their own, we get facsimiles of what they’ve seen. Much of the time, especially for twenty-somethings and under, they’ve seen reboots and sequels already. They don’t have the depth of imagination and the amount of material from wide-ranging reading to churn in their imaginations, and they’ve not had to develop imaginations at all.
So ever faster the vortex will spin.
Man, remember the good old days when you could see a new movie, but you could pick out what other movies it copied for its elements? Mash-ups? The good old days.
Whippersnappers.
