Author JD Cowan wrote a post yesterday that shed new light on elements of Cultural Ground Zero and the Pop Cult and showed how they’re interrelated.
So it was of course fitting that he prominently featured this now-ubiquitous image by retro artist Rachid Lotf.
We’ve been plumbing the riddle of the Pop Cult for years. As always, the answer was staring us right in the face.
Look at that nostalgia pastiche above. Can you spot a common thread running through many of the pictured entertainment products?
Don’t get discouraged. It’s subtle.
Here are some hints …
The Zelda canon of the day established that Link was Catholic. At least according to A Link to the Past‘s official concept art.
So was Robocop.
In Back to the Future, Doc Brown expressed interest in seeing Jesus’ birth. Even if he got the year wrong.
Even Ghostbusters, which is based on Dan Aykroyd’s weird materialist spiritualism, paid respect to the Bible.
And George Lucas himself has identified the Force with God.
Lucas used the term the Force to “echo” its use by Canadian cinematographer Roman Kroitor in Arthur Lipsett’s 21-87 (1963), a National Film Board production, in which Kroitor says, “Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God”. Although Lucas had Kroitor’s line in mind specifically, Lucas said the underlying sentiment is universal and that “similar phrases have been used extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years”
Now ask yourself if you would find such prominent references to Christianity in Current Year Marvel and Disney corporate death phase product.
The 80s & 90s were the last IP explosion phase fueled by Christian culture. And Cultural Ground Zero is nothing more or less than the exhaustion of that fuel.
The mistake was seeing CGZ itself as the cultural crisis. Those last works of Christendom had been inviting Gen Y to look deeper for the Truth & Beauty that inspired those media. So the real crisis was Gen Y missing that invitation.
Instead of illumination, Gen Y were benighted with geekdom. Instead of entering into the true Mysteries of which their beloved pastimes were shadows, they fell into the Pop Cult.
Now, like abusive exes, the Pop Cult high priests don’t want their aging supplicants anymore.
Geekdom is dead.
It’s been dead for years; it just wasn’t broke yet.
The media megacorps behind Pop Cult IPs have known the ship was sinking since the middle of the last decade.
They just wanted to squeeze the last few drops of milk from the cattle before bringing in your replacements and leaving you to rot.
Reality is giving you a wake up call.
The 1980s creators who still had an artistic vision to share have long since been replaced by corporatist bugmen who hold you in contempt.
But the postwar artificial bottleneck has been circumvented.
Newpub and indie film and gaming have made end runs around the old gatekeepers.
And many are drawing inspiration from the pre-1980 classics that retained healthy Christian themes.
I for one have been producing that kind of morally grounded but not preachy; action-packed but not gratuitously brutal entertainment for years.
Now you can get first access to my works in progress each month. Join my elite neopatrons now to read the first draft of The Burned Book as it’s written.
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I am of two minds about it. I hate to see Hollywood destroy things people love. On the other hand, great masses of people have grown fat and lazy on spiritual Twinkies. The collective waddle around Disney World is only the physical manifestation of that reality. What people love about almost any IP will have to do with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit and Christian teaching, even if a little bent out of shape. It might be best if they went to go find some real food.
That’s just it, isn’t it. Nothing is made for younger generations anymore. The average age of Cartoon Network viewers is 29. Disney World is filled with single wine aunts and their friends. Comic Books are made for urban bugmen that live off dehumanization of the other. Video games are glorified movies for people who can’t watch films (or play games) made before 1995. Even YouTube is filled with modern junk criticism of pop entertainment that these middle-aged folks grew up with. And that’s without even getting to the endless dead IP rehash of the past decade+ we’ve been trapped in.
Not only have we been selfishly worshiping at the altar of something that shouldn’t be worshiped, we can’t even let the younger ones have anything to themselves. We like to call Baby Boomers locusts and rave about the day of the pillow, but we’re just as bad at hogging resources. As Rich Evans said, say what you want about Boomers, but they aren’t standing in line and raving about the new Howdy Doody reboot. They could let things end and move on.
The only thing I wonder is how Zoomers (and younger) who grew up without any shared culture at all are going to think when they look back at their own youth in the future. What exactly are they going to remember fondly? Because I’m sure it won’t be us.
“As Rich Evans said, say what you want about Boomers, but they aren’t standing in line and raving about the new Howdy Doody reboot. They could let things end and move on.”
I think the thing that brought this home to me the most was Mattel’s release of a 40th Anniversary He-Man figure.
“As Rich Evans said, say what you want about Boomers, but they aren’t standing in line and raving about the new Howdy Doody reboot. ”
I am all in for the criticism of Gen X here. My generation especially knows how to criticize Boomers, but it’s not very good at figuring out an alternate path to them. I’m not sure what sort of judgement is reserved for those who know something is wrong but do it anyway. *yikes*
I also agree on the YouTube pop culture channels. In fairness, though, the best of them are reasonably self aware that a middle age man with endless action figures behind him is not the best of themselves or culture.
That said, within the last 6 months, my Boomer Father was very excited to tell me about the “latest” Beatles release. It appear to involve a sketchy demo cassette tape that AI could finally fill in to studio quality. He gushed on about it like it mattered or something.
I don’t know if you’ve watched any recent episodes (within the last 10 years) of PBS’s Antiques Jackpot, er Antiques Roadshow. I remember it being interesting in the early years with much randomness and people learning about fakes. The later years reveal a pattern of “spontaneously” finding at every single stop: a real item from Tiffanies, some previous unheard of minority artist’s modern/ugly painting that was now worth a billion dollars (estimated), a piece of 50’s furniture, a piece of classic furniture, an “Asian” piece, and a sportsball collector’s item. Nobody ever loses money other than in the fill in spots anymore. It’s a rerun on steroids.
Also comics, guitar collecting, and baseball card collecting are all rough equivalents to action figures from the 80’s and 90’s. So yes, the Boomers do keep resurrecting their childhood. And in fairness to Gen X, nobody is collecting Sesame Street junk either.
If I can misquote a PSA from the era, Gen X learned their behavior by watching the Boomers. They just picked a few different items from their own teens and late childhood.
Very good points!
“And in fairness to Gen X, nobody is collecting Sesame Street junk either.”
Not to harp on this, but I do not suggest looking up Wil Wheaton’s meltdown over Larry David “assaulting” Elmo or the pro-vax ads airing on TV being used to sell it to kids years after the pandemic ended, if you have a weak stomach. It’s fairly disgusting stuff that is being weaponized against people only because they refuse to let it go.
Nothing is made for younger generations anymore? You mean you wouldn’t plop your children down for an episode of HAZBIN HOTEL?
That would be about the only way to grow the audience for Theater Kids: The Animated Series.
I don’t know; from what I’ve heard, it hits all the notes to be made Mandatory Viewing under the reign of the Antichrist. 😀
“The only thing I wonder is how Zoomers (and younger) who grew up without any shared culture at all are going to think when they look back at their own youth in the future. What exactly are they going to remember fondly? Because I’m sure it won’t be us.”
As a millennial who tends to end up befriending gen z, it would seem that the things they remember most fondly right now are usually minecraft, or minecraft youtubers.
An example of this is the youtuber DanTDM. His heyday was when he would roleplay showcasing mods with a librarian villager dr Trayoruos. (I don’t remember if that’s how its spelled.) if one scrolls into hte comments of any of those old videos, you will see a rather insane number of commenters who are waxing nostalgic about how Dan was his childhood, or how sad they are that those good old days are gone. and that’s just one Youtuber, there’s at least a dozen others that younger folks were infatuated with when they were in kindergarten, and remember fondly now.
A big reason that most Zoomers tend to have this fondness for blocky strangers on a screen over their own relatives, (with commendable exceptions.) is the simple reason that when they were children, their parents, usually neglectful boomers or underage and inexperienced millennials, would simply hand them a tablet or phone to ensure that they would just shut up. the end result was these youtubers becoming the surrogate parents to Zoomers, much like how various pop-culture icons of yor were parental figures to gen Y.
Interestingly, youtube seems to have gone into a ground zero phase at some point, and now with several longstanding and beloved youtubers leaving, including the aforementioned DanTDM, with many giving the reason that could be summarized as, “I must go, my family needs me, and I am not as young as I once was. Thanks for the support, and farewell to you all.” many Zoomers that are not eternally obsessed with the men or women on their screens respond rather positively to the news, with some even stating that they hope to raise and prioritize raising families of their own.
That isn’t to say that there are not a good number of angry SM slobs howling in selfish fury, there are, but the point is, they are few in number, and most get downvoted to the bottom of the comment section, where hardly anyone will see them bellyaching.
I suspect that you are right though on the majority of zoomers not remembering the majority of the older generations fondly, but if I have learned anything, its that they never forget exceptions to the rule. If anything, an older person who treats them as human beings, blinking in confusion whenever they make references you don’t understand, but in the process, introducing them to something funny you discovered yourself, and not making too many comparisons between your generations to form an artificial divide, then you will probably be remembered as an exceptional older person. (most will call you a boomer anyway, but that is largely out of ignorance on how generations work, and ease of communication with one another.)
A good example of this is the Indy movies. The first three have significant religious overtones despite Indy’s professed agnosticism. The last two have aliens and Aristotle, and are much worse for it.
The use of the Castlevania review image brings some points to mind. Symphony of the Night has some of the most overt Christian elements in the series–a Chapel stage with a confessional, numerous ‘holy’ subweapons (not just water and the Grand Cross but ‘holy ashes’), and characters quoting Scripture. But it’s also where the “Dracula’s wife/Alucard’s mother was burned as a witch” element gets started, although the Church is not explicitly blamed (at least in the US documentation).
I never played Castlevania 64, but it sounds like it did at least include some positive religious elements as well. But after this, at least in the 2-D line of the series (I never played 3-D), things start going off into strange directions, and then we get the Netflix series, which IMO has poisoned the brand to the point where I wouldn’t want a revival.
SOTN retconned Castlevania, which in turn lead to the series slide into irrelevancy and eventual bottoming out with the Netflix trainwreck that had “anti-woke” people praising its awful lore and spitting on the foundations of what built the series in the first place. Just look at Simon Belmont’s design in the Wii fighting game–it’s a complete contradiction of his original design. It’s not for nothing that no one who created Castlevania has been involved with it since Rondo of Blood, which is why no one alive now seems to realize how much it was already warped before Warren Ellis got his hands on it.
The original series was based off Vampire Hunter D, which in turn was based on Hammer Horror movies. There is absolutely nothing in the mainstream today that even remotely touches any of that in its attempt to get Christian-based horror right. It’s all subversive junk.
Yes, Symphony of the Night is a great game in itself, but it’s where the subversion and rot start to set in as well. (Notwithstanding a couple of bits in Rondo‘s dialog.) Simon’s crazy design actually goes back to the remastered mode in the obscure Castlevania Chronicles for the PS1. And you can see the progression from there, with the “you are Dracula” revelation in Aria of Sorrow, the “absolute good requires absolute evil” silliness in Dawn of Sorrow, and the “Ecclesia is evil” plot of the last 2D game, Order of Ecclesia.
Also, the 3D reboot headed by Kojima starred Gabriel Belmont who ended the game becoming Dracula. The second game, which flopped and killed the series, has you basically playing as Dracula.
I always hated how they screwed up both this and Contra’s very simple themes (Contra being about humanity flourishing despite intense odds against them) into the opposite of what they started as. Neither were improved by it.
As an aside, I always thought it would have been cool to have Castlevania end with Dracula being vanquished so terribly that demon worshiping aliens from space were raised up to do his dirty work, which would then lead to Contra in the future. Bill and Lance would also, of course, be Belmont descendants fighting on the front lines of the invasion.
Whatever happened with Hammer’s attempted return in the mid-aughts?
They put out some movies, but I haven’t heard anything about them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions#Brand-name_resurrection_(2007%E2%80%93present)
eh. Entertainment-as-identity is icky. Possibly a form of possession. It’s the difference between “Oh yeah, I *like* Spiderman/anime/whatever” and “I *am* a Spiderman/anime/whatever fan”. The last couple decades has been a full-on campaign to get people from that first one, to the second (oddly, the exact same thing happened with legitimizing homosexuality– it used to be a thing people *did* and now it’s a thing they *are*). Because if you just like the thing, you read it, you move on. And if you *are* the thing, you can be merchandised to forever, and you have to kill some part of yourself to move on from it.
When did that start? 80s? 90s? It was in full swing by the early aughts. I think it started with “self-esteem” education, which was so much more insidious than its happy be-who-you-are flap copy implied. At its heart, there are a couple of catastrophically bad assumptions:
1) You should accept yourself just exactly as you are now: with the implication that striving to change is a rejection of self, and bad, and…
2) You are your thoughts.
I mean, out here in real life, unless you’re a very advanced monk or yogi or desert ascetic or have spent a lot of time in prayer and contemplation or something, your thoughts are the busiest intersection in town– a buzzing, honking, screeching thoroughfare full of advertising jingles, crap you read somewhere, dumb things on the internet, stuff your parents told you, demons whispering in your ear, your friends’ opinions, to-do lists, school stuff, work stuff… sure there’re a few things in there that might be just yours, but holy cow are they small compared to the rest, and without considerable practice, it’s nearly impossible to tell which ones they are.
But sure, let’s say *all* those thoughts are you. And also, that if you reject any part of you, that’s bad.
You see where this ends up, right? Any asinine chop-edited flashy thing that ever caught your eye on a screen is you, no? Trying to detach from it is self-hatred. You can’t judge or condemn anything that floats through your head because it’s all you. And we *love* ourselves right?
The result is crazy unstable easily manipulated people who are crap human beings, but AMAZING customers.
I think all Hell broke loose when Steve Jobs used, “Don’t Create Customers, Create Fans,” as a Marketing Strategy… and it worked. Which means everyone since then has been scrambling to leverage Fandom to rake in the cash.
As if I needed another reason to detest Steve Jobs.