The Death of Imagination

 Christopher Booker famously theorized that there are only 7 basic stories that we tell, and the variation is in how we tell them. One question raised by this is, at some point do we run out of new ways to tell them? Some of the "easy" ways to tread new ground are getting herder for sure. Once upon a time you could just work some taboo act or theme into your story and it was guaranteed to shock and titillate an audience into existence. But these days such horrors as rape, incest, child murder, spousal infidelity, etc.., are so played out that you'll often see them referred to as tired tropes. But we lie in an ever changing world, which should provide creative minds with ever new twists and turns for their stories. So why does it feel like we're seeing the same old things, or at best very ham fisted silly attempts to "subvert our expectations" of the same old things? Some would argue that there is simply a dearth of imagination and creativity. Is that really the case though?

First let's look at some reasons why imagination might be on the decline. Imagination happens in the brain, and like most bodily processes needs to be exercised to make it stronger. There was a time (I am just barely old enough to remember the tail end of it) when you saw a movie in the theater and might not ever see it again. The only way you saw movies other than the theater was on television. I lived in a rural redneck area, so I never saw things like Hammer horror movies on television. I would see things like Two Mules For Sister Sara. Don't get me wrong, I like that movie, but what I'm saying is the options were very varied. SO you didn't sit and watch your favorite movie over and over. Which meant if you were movie obsessed (or t.v. obsessed, the same principles hold true for t.v. shows of the era) you would recreate the movie in your mind. You'd think about all the little details you could remember. You might recreate scenes using action figures or other toys. After a while you'd start making your own deviations to the story, or making up you own stories altogether. You'd get together with your friends in the schoolyard and act out scenarios playing the parts of your favorite characters. Every kid was part writer, part actor, part director. But these days kids don't have to imagine about their favorite movie. The can watch it any time, over and over. Instead of creating fantasies with their friends in the yard, they are playing through someone else's fantasy on a video game console. Yes, I'm aware of the old man yelling "You kids get off my lawn" vibe of this line of thought, but it doesn't make it less accurate.

The other factor that might be a contributor to the atrophying of the imagination muscle requires a slight caveat of the point I just made. While it's true you couldn't watch a movie any time you wanted, there were plenty of tie in records, comics and books available. The tie-in novel is one of my favorite pieces of pop culture ephemera, especially the ones that stray far afield of the property they're tying into. But you could often read the story of your favorite movie. You could and can read millions of stories, most of which have never had filmed versions. And while reading does give you the story without any needed mental work on your part, it still exercises imagination when you create the images of what is happening in your mind. People tend to be very visual. When you say to them "The dark haired man in the blue jacket sat in the backseat of the yellow taxi ad closed the door", they tend to create a visual image in their mind of this action. So while reading may not have the writer/actor/director elements of play, it has instead the elements of designer, of painter, of artist. Of course, the issue is that with the advent of home media, streaming, and video games, reading has dropped off severely in popularity as a pastime. And honestly, I do get it. When I think of how I'd love to reread The Lord of the Rings, I'll inevitably think to myself that it would be slightly faster to watch the movies instead. (Of course then I miss out on great things like To Bombadil, but that's another discussion.) But movies and video games don't stimulate the mind in the same way a book does.

Now, to the part where I cast aside the arguments I just made. You see, I have no doubt the things I have written here are true to an extent. But I don't think imagination is as dead as the current entertainment landscape would suggest. I think there are still imaginative and creative people out there. I believe the problem lies with the companies that control the ways that entertainment gets to us. All of the movie and t.v. studios have been gobbled up by corporations. While it's true that studios were always money making enterprises, there was a time when they wanted to make money by making art. At least many of them did. They were willing to take risks. The corporations that currently own most of the studios are not about taking risks. They don't care about art or storytelling, they care about the bottom line. As such, they want to make products that has as broad an appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Now your instinct may say "What's wrong with that?" There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. The problem lies in the fact that this approach lends itself to bland fare that all seems very similar. There's little variety, there's little chance to do something different. An example that I use for this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At one point they were talking about how each of their movies were going to be different, but connected. You'd have a wacky comedy, then a heist flick, then a tense political thriller, then a horror movie. Captain America: Winter Soldier was an example of what this was going to look like, as is in my opinion the best movie Marvel has ever made. But before the public could be given this cornucopia of cinema styles, two things happened. First, Disney bought out the company. Now instead of a scrappy little studio beating the odds, they were part of a major corporate conglomerate. Budgets went up, and so did expectations. The next thing that happened was Guardians of the Galaxy. 

Now, this line of reasoning may seem weird on the face of it. GotG was a risk. It was a quirky movie with characters most people had never heard of. And this was true when the movie first came out. But then it was a hit. It has mass appeal. And suddenly heist movies and horror movies and such were out the window. Set pieces and wisecracks were expected of every movie. Thor lost it's fantasy patina and was suddenly colorful and goofy. The Dr. Strange multiverse movie had some remnants of the horror flick it began life as, but very watered down remnants. Instead of trying to find the next thing that would catch fire, they keep making the same sort of thing over and over. And that is corporate movie making in a nutshell. What is my evidence for this? Simply the fact that we keep getting good things from independent studios, filmmakers, and occasionally even from the big studios themselves. Everything Everywhere All At Once was the multiverse movie the Dr. Strange sequel should have been and was promised to be. Studios like A24 put out smaller budgeted movies knowing they only need a couple of them to really hit to bankroll the others. And there is a renaissance in local indy filmmaking going on. I live in what most people would think of as rural shitkicker country. I know someone who made a movie and it is up on Tubi to stream. (It's a horror movie called Forest Through The Trees if you're interested.) So while creativity and imagination may have been atrophied to some small extent through disuse, I think the real problem lies in corporations owning too much of our entertainment space, and the culture they force on it.