﻿If you were recently caught scrolling through the endless options
on your myriad assortment of streaming services,
you might have asked yourself: why does everything, well, suck?
“This really sucks.”
There’s never been so much access, ease, sheer quantity,
or niche, tailor-made content.
If you want a show about teenage lesbian vampires
“Where’d you come from?” -well, you got it.
But, we can’t promise it’s any good.
So, if content is like an extensive chain restaurant menu –
that means we should all have so many appealing options
we’ll want to be watching something literally every second of the day, right?
And, yet, both box office and network numbers are down…
plus the streaming titan, Netflix,
has reported its first significant loss in subscribers in over a decade.
The attention economy competition is dialed all the way up.
The chattering class have recently pointed to a post-pandemic world
to explain the decline in streaming numbers -
people want to finally spend time off their couch.
“I have touched grass”
There’s also the question of inflation and a recession -
studios are tightening their belts,
and streamers are rethinking their content strategies.
HBOMax canceling Batgirl
was a bellwether of more discernment from industry brass
on what to greenlight and what to make a giant tax break.
“This is batgirl signing off.”
But none of these economic factors fully answers the burning question
of just why the content sucks.
There’s a bigger quality crisis that’s making many of us
feel less enthusiastic about most of the offerings,
and less satisfied after we finish watching
something we kind of wish we hadn’t.
Maybe it’s the fact that our collective media
has morphed into made for TV movies,
a deluge of half-hour comedies, limited series,
and reality cooking shows into one amorphous blob of suck.
“This is a bowling ball and this is a cake”
So what’s creating this quality crisis and can we come out of it?
Let’s back up a little.
In a time and land far, far away called the 90s,
movie studios would buy scripts that were, gasp, original ideas
“I see dead people” - not based on established IP or or a Superhero.
The way they were able to sell and market the film
was based on two key ingredients: capturing the zeitgeist with quality
plus originality and by attaching a star, or banking on a newcomer
making a star-turn, to put butts in seats.
Sure, you had the usual suspects of genres - comedy, horror, romance -
But there were also even more sub-genres
that could attract movie-goers – like, the sports comedy
“Son of a bitch ball…”, the nanny from hell
“When my husband… it’s my face he sees”
...Or whatever genre has a man sharing his life story on a park bench.
“You never know what you’re gonna get.”
But the streaming model has drastically affected
the quality + movie star equation.
Movies and TV are now categorized into genres, vibes, identities,
and other more micro-tailoring (remember those teen lesbian vampires?)
– that further fractions viewership.
When movies and tv titles are lumped together under a banner that promises,
say, nostalgia, a sub-genre of a sub-genre, identity awareness –
each title doesn’t need to be memorable or specific -
it just needs to check enough boxes
to be considered for a hyper-specific label.
This shift caused a glut in content - something for everyone.
When Netflix’s stock was soaring, they could and would
greenlight almost anything. “Netflix you’re greenlit.”
,even scripts that had been collecting dust in Hollywood for years.
But when there’s something for everyone, quality is often the first to go.
“It’s quantity over…blasting your ass with these”
Not only that, but algorithms were making many of the creative decisions
that creative executives used to make based on taste and gut instincts.
“Why did you even bother watching cuts / if you're just going to let
some machine make all your decisions for you?”
Algorithms told Netflix that people love Ryan Murphy shows.
So they gave Murphy gazillions of bucks,
with little to no guidance or actual creative oversight.
Subsequently, Murphy’s recent offerings
have been considered subpar to his previous shows.
Or take his true crime thriller DAHMER - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story -
a show that stalked out of the gate with mediocre critical fanfare
but has become a massive hit for Netflix.
Does it even matter anymore that top critics hate it
when a show that was panned - and barely marketed in advance -
can be the most-watched series around?
Meanwhile, after the initial buzz passes or if something doesn’t hit,
shows are canceled with equally little thought,
before many have a chance to find their footing or audience.
“The algorithm felt it wasn't hitting the right taste clusters.
T-taste clusters? It's been... hours.”
If we look back at the history of TV, though,
many of the best-ever hits needed a few seasons to really blossom.
You can’t blame bad quality all on the streaming model,
and data-obsessed tech executives.
Social Media has also changed how we consume content exponentially.
First of all - content and viewing have been inspired by social media and memes.
Shorter scenes, less dialogue, more close-ups - sounds a lot like TikTok.
Take Inheritance - a Netflix thriller with Lilly Collins,
now streaming on Netflix.
“There’s something I need to…. for you and you alone.”
The first 5 minutes of the movie is an exposition supercut dump -
rich family, messed up patriarch, dutiful but beleaguered daughter -
like an agent’s elevator pitch version of a set-up.
“Aquaman, It’s Spiderman… BOOM!”
Additionally, the reliance on second screens – smartphones, tablets, laptops
- has turned movies and TV into “background content.”
When it's in the background, it doesn’t have to be too complicated or long -
as long as a viewer gets the gist or the vibe - they’ll keep watching.
What’s more important to this kind of consumer
is the first screen in their hand - the Snapchat or TikTok
that is capturing their attention economy.
To compete in this winner-take-all attention economy,
movies and TV shows now try and create meme-worthy moments
to share on social media, which creates inauthenticity -
like a politician trying to make a viral moment happen with a zinger.
“America doesn’t want a food fight… food on their table”
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum
to the ultra-fragmented streaming environment,
the rise of IP-driven tentpole blockbusters has squeezed out quality,
mid-budget adult-oriented drama at the movie theaters.
Today, for any theatrical release to actually be seen
by a big proportion of people,
it needs major marketing dollars – which typically only go to safe,
established IP that studios know will draw pre-existing audiences.
The end result of all this is today’s few major shared cultural touchstones
in fictional film and TV rarely get that status through being good —
but are catapulted into the zeitgeist thanks to major marketing spends
and/or being heavily meme-able.
And even if not everything is terrible or even bad,
so much of it is mediocre, forgettable,
and quickly canceled after one or two seasons.
“No, we are done here.”
Cultural cachet is far less derived than it once was
from elite artistic gatekeepers, awards or influential critics;
now, whatever platform you’re talking about,
it’s all about the bottom-line number of views.
So what even is “success” in this environment?
No longer do you have most content producers
even primarily aiming for “good” — just for eyeballs, however fleeting.
Netflix’s clear quantity over quality approach has worked for them
– they have the most subscribers of any streamer,
and (despite a dip in early 2022), was back to gaining subscribers in Q3,
even though the 45 films it released this year averaged not fresh
on rotten tomatoes with either critics or audiences.
Adding to this whole problem: who needs fiction anyway
when real life is way more interesting?
When it comes to today’s entertainment,
it’s harder than ever to tell the difference between the two.
Take the Kardashians –– a case study in blurring the lines.
“You don’t get an award because you watch less TV.”
The family’s pre-season headlines over dramas, romances,
and dust-ups provide fodder for the show –
what you read about in TMZ months prior becomes a season arc.
It’s almost as if their “real” lives have become a kind of performance art,
and their show is just one way to view the content.
Meanwhile, the true ratings juggernaut of 2022 wasn’t a new Netflix series.
It was a defamation trial held in the Fairfax County Circuit Court.
Let’s look at the viewership of the Depp/Heard trial
“my side of the bed was human fecal matter”
- one staggering stat: In six weeks, the broadcast has amassed
a total of 83.9 million hours watched with 3.5 million peak viewers
during the announcement of the verdict.
Now, let’s look at the reception and box office numbers
of one of Depp’s last films:
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald was panned by critics and,
while it made nearly $655 million at the box office –
it had the lowest ratings of any movie in the Harry Potter Universe
and pulled in the second lowest profit for the big-budget franchise.
Let’s also take a look at the Don’t Worry Darling box office,
versus the much larger flurry of social media engagement
around the movie’s off-screen drama.
“I think this might be a bit of a wake up call for miss flo”
Right now, reality, and the content surrounding reality,
is more potent content than anything streaming or in the theater.
This goes for celebrities’ impact as well.
Certain celebs have massive online followings
and generate countless tabloid clicks,
but that doesn’t necessarily translate into big box office numbers. Why?
Many of us are far more interested in celebrity’s at-home make-up tutorial
than a movie or show they’ve made. “Okay, so I like to overline.”
Even when audiences do turn out for fictions,
they often go for scripts inspired by reality
– see: the celebrity biopic,
which often gets views these days by being especially exploitative
“I’ve played Marilyn Monroe…to Marilyn Monroe” or over-the-top sensational.
“I subscribe to.. unconventional punishment”
Voyeurism and the commentary around it is the cultural conversation.
It doesn’t really matter if Don’t Worry Darling is good or not
because the content surrounding the film is engaging, and often the memes,
gossip, and general online conversation is all people want anyway.
The Behind-the-Scenes gossip did seem to help Don’t Worry Darling open strong
at the box office despite its middling reviews,
but ticket sales plummeted quickly after that initial scandal-driven interest,
and the surrounding buzz didn’t really translate
into sustained audience engagement with the film.
Speaking of reality, we’re living in a fractured one,
where to some people Yellowstone is the biggest show going,
but (as the New York Post bemoaned)
the critics could care less and only want to write about Succession -
which has a fraction of Yellowstone’s viewership.
“And the Emmy goes to….Succession”
It’s hard to create quality universal content
when people’s realities are influenced by their niche content consumption,
identities, political views, and more.
When content only has to speak to a chosen few,
it’s less worried about being… well, universally good.
There are so many contributing factors to the crisis of content.
Still, maybe everyone is evaluating all this content through an… outdated lens?
Yes, movies aren’t what they once were.
But more of the memes of the last two years
have been way funnier than anything on Late Night TV,
and young people especially are finding authentic viewing experiences
on platforms like Tiktok and Youtube that speak to them
in ways that more polished, scripted offerings often don’t.
Sure, there’s something depressing and diminishing
about even the word “content”
as a catch-all for what entertainment is becoming.
“But look I made you some content.”
But perhaps all this content is experiencing growing pains,
in that awkward phase between establishment modes -
like the in-theater movie experience and network comedies -
and the new modules of content creation living on Twitch, memes or Snapchat.
Let’s hope for a future emergence of more inventive,
better, realer content, whatever form that takes.
Anything is more worthwhile than
“So we need to ask one question, is it cake”