Ease of Use

One thing I thought and talked about this weekend was how society is set up and growing into the Ease of Use society. When just looking at the supermarket industry how the major trend is making everything easy to use. Don't spend time cutting veggies or cheese, just buy it all cut up. Everything should just be ready to open, add water and heat up and done. Don't waste any time cooking. Cooking is becoming a hobby now something rare instead of the necessity is used to be.

So in the same manner that cooking should be easy and doesn't require any thinking or creativity anymore the same is applied to music and movies. I was surprised to learn that the Godfather and Apocalypse Now were considered mainstream movies when they came out in the seventies. If Apocalypse Now a movie where they use Vietnam as a metaphor for a man's decent into his own deep dark thoughts and soul, if this movie was released today it would be seen as a independent movie suitable for Cannes or Berlin, but not a blockbuster to compete with Ghost Rider and Fantastic Four 2. Movies need to be pure entertainment now, no 30 minute dialogue dinner scene where they discuss the effects of French imperialism on the Vietnamese identity, people would get bored with their current short attention span.

Artists like Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder are in no way or shape marketable these days. A record executive ( marketing manager) wouldn't try to sell these guys but would rather hold an audition for a good looking young fresh face that they could teach how to dance and maybe even teach how to sing, never mind about writing or creating their own songs. I think it is very sad that the only criteria for mainstream music is that people should listen to it once or twice and like it. That's is. If people don't like it immediately it is considered a failure. Nobody loves a Boy Dylan song the first time you hear it, but after a while, you get it, you understand the lyrics, you get the choice of notes, it becomes alive. Nowadays lyrics are a joke and hearing 16 year old girls sing about broken hearts is just plain insane. What does a 16 year old know about anything ?

But growing up in this environment is hard. If that is all that seems to be offered, shallow vapid, movies, music then its hard to fight against it. If all the magazines write about Britney, Anna Nicole and Paris then its hard to look for the truly insightful articles written about the current world condition, philosophies about growing with the Internet, art that explains how technology interacts with out daily lives and how out brains have adapted to this.

So this ease of use, throw away, pre-chewed everything will only give us a pretty boring mediocre generation.