Is Humanity Running Out Of Ideas? - Teshale's (late) Comment

There is a joke made in a novel by author Jasper Fforde regarding novel (you see what I did there) ideas; it is that Flatland, by Edwin Abbot, was the last original idea for a book. This is, again, a joke. Even assuming this were true, and from the late 1800s onwards every book could be described as the plot of another book, we've hardly seen a subsequent death of interesting ideas; here's one and here's another (note the medium). There are less of them, true, but they're still out there.

I wouldn’t say that the glut of sequels currently flooding Hollywood today represent a malaise in the creative classes. I suspect the reason that there are so many sequels out is one of simple economics, and the way technology has changed how people view entertainment. Films, television and even novels are far less profitable than they were in the days of double features, Must-See TV, and so on. There was once a time when a dime-store novel literally meant that. But today, with the internet providing so many ways to obtain entertainment, let us say, democratically, less people are going to see films in the theater or TV on their TV because of all the options avaliable. It's a catch-22; there are few films out "worth" a $10.50 ticket, so nobody goes to the theater, and then theaters charge even more to make up the difference. Even taking inflation into account, in 1979 I could easily take a chance on some weird sci-fi horror movie nobody knew anything about because, at the absolute worst, I'd be out $4; the average cost of a ticket 30 years ago was $2.50. Less people are going to bother watching a TV show right when it airs, since they could record it on their DVR and skip all the commercials-- commercials, ironically, that give that TV show the funding it needs to stay on the air.

I think Stanek's right that there's a growing tide of laziness. I don't think it's through the creative class, however, but rather it's seeping through the producers and executives that greenlight films. There's always been a struggle between the financial side of making a film and the creative side, but it appears, by the sort of films that are getting a lot of advertising dollars, that nobody wants to take a chance on a film bombing. So nobody wants to try doing something new that audiences might like because the studio literally cannot afford it. This doesn't mean that nobody's coming up with new ideas, but merely that it's much harder for new ideas to get heard. Let The Right One In, for instance, is a recent Swedish film about a young boy who befriends a not-so-young vampire. It's been getting a lot of buzz, and audiences and critics who've seen it seem to enjoy it. Well, guess what some Hollywood producer's instinct is, upon hearing of this foreign film being successful in America? An American remake with the guy who did Cloverfield, of course! To, I quote, "make it a little bit more thrilling", because of course the problem with a vampire suspense film is that it isn't thrilling enough.

Why the film needs to be remade at all, only the studio making it could say. Perhaps they think that nobody'll see a subtitled film, because reading subtitles is Hard, or that Americans couldn't possibly be interested in seeing a film made outside of the American industry. Studios, finding themselves making less money, decide to go for the "sure thing" of a sequel to a blockbuster, even if the film isn't that good. On the whole, big stupid films (or even small, depressingly simple ones) draw in people who feel like seeing something where they know what they're getting. We should also note that August is usually the graveyard for blockbusters, and all the more "original" films are usually released during the latter months of the year as Oscar bait, also to get more people to see the film. (Whether this works is up for debate.)

Anyway, the idea that everything that could be thought has already been thought seems to me like a bit of a fallacy. Perhaps literally original thoughts, the sort of thing George Carlin was talking about, will become ever more rarer. But there will always be variations on a theme to provide a potential spur for new ideas; to me the Final New Idea is a bit like one of Xeno's paradoxes. A piano, as the saying goes, only has 88 keys, yet millions of different combinations can be made to create millions of different types of melodies, even excluding songs that are "technically" different. A lot of new ideas can stem from, for instance, combining two vastly different ideas that nobody had thought to combine before, for instance. We'll probably see the days of true geniuses grow even fewer than they already are, but I think the creative spark is strong enough that humanity will still come up with some truly original ideas. Probably not intentionally, though.