Recently, the Washington Post had a story on how vampires have become Hollywood's new leading man characters. While the article has plenty of typical press-release hype over HBO's "True Blood" the story does touch on the popularity of the current "romantic vampire."
Which is scary. Because of what this particular form of vampire shows about what Hollywood is peddling as a romantic fantasy for women and girls, and the market for it. The problem is, the current vampire fantasy is a highly aggressive, violent, testosterone fueled man who will be meekly under the romantic and sexual power of the female lead. This is both a huge departure in the vampire fantasy as it formerly existed, and disturbing in the messages that inevitably push women and girls towards bad choices that they are already prone to make.
First, it's time to review just what the vampire fantasy has been. Almost every culture has vampires as a folklore culture, fear of the undead is a common human fear. What jump started vampires into the modern media era was Bram Stoker's 1897 novel.
The novel dealt with Victorian fears about the stability and endurance of the nuclear family under threat of foreign immigration and contact with the wider world. Fears that were not unfounded, as we can see with today's Britain having 50% of births illegitimate, and not unreasonable either considering the history the Victorian reformers always had in mind. It was not unusual during the Georgian era to encounter 12 year old prostitutes in most major and many minor cities, including their fashionable districts. Most of the cities were hell-holes of drunken behavior, prostitution, thievery, and murder. Gin was the drink of the day, and most English were drunk most of the time. The same Christian reformers who formed the anti-Slavery movement, such as Wililam Wilberforce also endorsed attempts to reduce drunken behavior (encouraging beer consumption instead of gin, limited drinking hours, drinking in pubs instead of the streets, etc.) and public morality to reduce prostitution's acceptability, and encourage the nuclear family, rather than debauchery and patronage of prostitutes.
Thus, when the novel's proper Victorian middle class gentlemen Jonathan Harker, finds his fiancee menaced by Count Dracula, who seeks to turn her into a vampire and make her his bride, the novel's concerns resonated with Victorian reformers who felt several generations of efforts could be undone by menacing foreigners with ways that could corrupt the English back into their old vices. It's interesting that Dracula is presented as smooth, charismatic, attractive to women and able to influence men, but in the end is both revealed to be a monster in his behavior and appearance, and destroyed by a very middle class group who work together, in middle class cooperation and friendship: a doctor (Van Helsing), Harker the lawyer, an American, and a man of minor nobility. Dracula in the end is killed (really) with a Bowie Knife. The symbol of the American frontier. The novel ends with Mina Harker married to Jonathon, and with a child named after a friend who died fighting Dracula.
The stage versions of this novel was a smash, producing a number of films, including notably the 1922 silent German version by F.W. Murnau (name changed from Dracula due to a lawsuit by Stoker's widow) and the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi. It established the Vampire as sexy, but monstrous underneath, though limitations in effects and the Hays Code meant violence and gore had to be implied rather than shown.
This portrayal of the Vampire as sexy but underneath, monstrous, soon changed into the Vampire as a joke. The deepening Depression, and subsequent War Years, led to audiences demanding comedy rather than horror — their own lives were filled with enough during that time, thank you very much. Films such as "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" with Dracula and the Wolf Man along for the ride, and Lugosi once again playing Dracula, were common.
Hammer's 1958 version of Dracula, starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, resurrected the Vampire as both sexy and monstrous, instead of a joke. This particular cycle saw the last "sexy but monstrous" version in 1979's "Dracula" starring Frank Langella, who had also played the role to considerable acclaim on Broadway. The same year, the Vampire was once again, a joke with "Love at First Bite" starring noted champion tanner, George Hamilton.
This cycle has repeated many times: Vampire as monster (to be defeated, by a middle class man, and his wife/girlfriend saved), Vampire as sexy but a monster, Vampire as a joke (Count Chocula, Blackula, etc.). So it was that the somewhat mixed humor and horror versions of this treatment "Fright Night" (1985) and the "Lost Boys" (1987) were succeeded by "Near Dark," a fairly brutal treatment of the Vampire, and 1992's version by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Gary Oldman ("Dracula.")
One thing has always remained the same: Vampires are either straight out monsters who menace middle class men's girlfriends/wives (or, in "Fright Night" and "Lost Boys" their divorced mothers) and must be killed, or they are sexy rivals who are underneath, monstrous, and must be killed, or jokes for our amusement.
The Vampire took a new, somewhat scary turn, with 1997's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." While the movie (fairly unsuccessful) had vampires as somewhat icky jokes, the TV series had the Vampire presented as both monster, and romantic boyfriend, in the same package. Buffy's sexy Vampires, both foreigners (keeping that part of the tradition), were preferable to the middle class, brave, nice, but "boring" men who sought her. Even though her Vampires kept, well slaughtering people, Buffy presented the disturbing fantasy that a beautiful and "special" young woman could, by power of her beauty and sexuality, control a testosterone-driven, violent, aggressive man and domesticate him into her lover and intimidator. Even after one Vampire boyfriend slaughters some of her friends, and another rapes her ("Spike"), the title character keeps coming back for more, even to the point of professing her love for "Spike" and having implied off-screen sex with him.
Following TV's "Buffy," the 2001 "Sookie Stackhouse" series, by Charlaine Harris, and 2005's "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer, continued in that mode, i.e. a beautiful young woman controls a violent, dangerous man, by virtue of her beauty and sexiness, in novel form. The former is now an HBO series, by openly gay writer-producer Alan Ball ("American Beauty") called "True Blood." The latter series has sold 7 million books in the US, and reportedly 50 million world wide. Of course, a gay man understanding, let alone having anything meaningful to say, about the ways in which men and women interact romantically, is about the same probability of my winning the lottery next week.
The success of this type of Vampire character is disturbing. For obvious reasons, the Vampire only appeals to women (and well, gay men). The Vampire is stronger, more violent, more aggressive, older, and longer lived than the "boring" ordinary middle class men he's compared to. He promises immortality, eternal youth and beauty (which has a power, a definite power for women, but does not last). The idea that a woman might extend (even forever) her beauty, sex appeal, power over men, is certainly understandable. The trillion dollar beauty industry caters to this desire, among women, and anyone who's seen an "invisible" woman, i.e. one over age 50, ignored by waiters, waitresses, clerks, and so on knows how cruel a youth-obsessed society can be when women lose their youth and beauty.
[Only "Near Dark" out of all the Vampire Films explores the "relationship" of a female vampire and young man. And there, it's reversed. The young man rejects vampirism, saves his family, and "rescues" the girl from vampirism, restoring her to humanity. Obviously, men only value beauty, intelligence, character, and compassion in women as love-interest fantasies. They don't need power, aggression, and violence in their fantasy partners as women do. They'd also rather be the heroes themselves, and don't see themselves as monsters. For obvious reasons (no children, love, marriage) a female vampire is useless as a romantic fantasy for men, since there is no happily ever after.]
However, this fantasy of young women "controlling" aggressive, violent, hyper-testosterone men, through the power of their beauty comes at a price. While women might like this fantasy, in real life men filled with high levels of testosterone and aggression generally lack control, unless it is directed in careful competition such as football, Mixed Martial Arts competitions, and the like. Which in turn are the result of literally years of training and control. Real life analogues of "Edward" from "Twilight" or "William" from "Dead Until Dark" would resemble Johan Van Der Sloot (suspected by some of killing American tourist Natalee Holloway in Aruba) or Scott Peterson.
If Pornography is bad for men, giving them wildly unrealistic ideas about women, their bodies, and sex, these Vampire fantasies are just as bad for women. Power, status, and above all violent aggression in a fantasy where the woman controls the Byronic Vampire? It's as puerile as the nerdy guy fantasy of the super-heroine who likes blowing up stuff too (see any movie with Milla Jojovich or Kate Beckinsale in black leather). However, that fantasy won't lead to nerdy guys making disastrous choices. At worst they'll waste money on the Special Edition DVD, and the video game.
For women, and particularly younger women, something has been lost. Good judgment about men, including the natural trade-off between intelligence and testosterone. It's true, that there is a correlation between higher IQ and lower levels of testosterone and aggression. Making smarter men who are less aggressive less sexually and romantically desireable for women. But women far too often, in our politically correct society, overestimate their ability to exert control over men with high levels of testosterone and aggression. Writer "Theodore Dalrymple" (his pen name) in "Life at the Bottom" recounts a conversation with one of his patients, in the hospital in London where he worked. A girl of 17, who had her arm broken by her boyfriend. He questioned her, and she admitted she knew the boyfriend was violent and prone to abuse when she started dating him. That was the attraction, the danger, and the excitement. Dalrymple's question was what if that aggression was turned on herself? Her response was that she could look after herself. Dalrymple's reply that men are stronger than women (as her broken arm indicated) produced the retort that such words were "sexist."
This pattern persisted even with Dalrymple's educated, professional nurses. Who chose men who abused them, even at work. They confessed to Dalrymple that they knew the men were violent, they could see it at a glance from the scars from fighting, the tattoos proclaiming a love of violence, and their behavior, dress, and friends. Still they chose them, because ordinary, decent men were in their words, "boring."
These Vampire fantasies are disturbing, because they are both a cultural marker (women have responded to the fantasy of testosterone laden men, with violent pasts and tendencies, as fantasy figures, with sales figures for the books through the roof) and a cultural shaper — it encourages young women to indulge in this fantasy even more. At best this will produce more alienation and distrust between the sexes. The number of men who can meet the criteria of the sexy, brutal, strength and testosterone filled, but controlled, figure of the Vampire is approximately two: Mixed Martial Arts Champion Randy Couture, and Chicago Bears Linebacker Brian Urlacher. No others need apply. At worst, more young women will end up like Natalee Holloway, overestimating their ability to control the aggressive young men around them.
Can't we just move to the Joke phase of vampires now?
...Read more
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Why Is It Always 1968? Part 2
In my prior post, Why Is It Always 1968 Part 1 I discussed some of the factors accounting for the astonishing fact that culturally, from music, to food, to dress, to politics, to entertainment (with some exceptions), twenty year olds from 1968 (that's a full forty years ago folks) share the same tastes as twenty year olds from 2008. [Men and women who are Sixty Years old do not generally play any video games save the Wii sports games. Finding the games too difficult and boring.]
In comparison, a man who was twenty in 1928 would have almost nothing in common with a man of twenty in the year 1968. Those intervening years saw great social and technological change (that drove a lot of the social change). A switch from mostly horse-drawn or electrified street car local transportation and trains for long distance travel, to the private auto for local transportation and cheap jet air travel for long distance transportation. Travel from New York to Los Angeles did not take days but hours. Radio was replaced by Television as the entertainment of choice in the home. Recorded music at home went from expensive, and fairly bad sounding novelties, to cheaply available. Telephones went from novelty to ubiquity. Social attitudes about race, sex, women, and more changed drastically as people moved from cities to suburbs. In 1928 women had the vote (nationally) for only 8 years, by 1968 it was nearly half a century old. In 1928, the world was stable, with no threat of sudden destruction of cities imaginable, the US protected by wide oceans, and the idea of war and destruction visited upon the US simply inconceivable..
Yet the world of 1968 is at least as different from today as 1928 was to it. Computers have gone from corporate data rooms, costing tens of millions of dollars, and the size of refrigerators, to commodities sold in Warehouse stores. Mobile phones capable of recording and playing video are common. The Internet, cable and satellite TV, laptop computers, and free wifi have all made unimaginable amounts of data and media accessible almost anywhere, any time. Jet travel is even cheaper and more available (if far less pleasant). Attitudes about gays (including Gay Marriage) unimaginable in 1968 are routinely discussed today on Daytime Television.
Why is it, then, that our culture remains stuck in 1968?
One reason might be the men who shape it, versus the men who shaped culture previously. Using IMDB.com, I used the data to construct the following tables. First, the culture that was replaced by the Youth Culture of 1968, the major cultural creators from roughly 1935-1954:
There are some interesting things about this table. First, you'll note how Old these key movie makers were. The Average Age was 56, they were on average, born in 1898 and had twenty years before the end of WWI (when the public found out just how bad the debacle in the trenches was, and how many were lost).
For the most part, these men were men of the Nineteenth Century, not the Twentieth. It showed in the movies they made. More leisurely, with more adult content, less desire to use shock to cover up lack of ideas, and a focus on making films for all ages, older (past 20, anyway) and young alike. Remember, back in the era of 1935-54, as Ed Driscoll points out, men were supposed to act (in public at least) like adults. Not overgrown boys. And women, well acted like women. Not overgrown girls.
Therefore, even men of 21 were expected to conduct themselves as adult men. Not as lightly supervised boys. It's hard for people to understand, that in that era, it was common for men to wear hats, and jacket and suit pants, for nearly everything at hand save hard manual labor. Women wore dresses unless out on some picnic or working at manual labor. This included young men and women as well those in their forties.
While some might quibble with a name or two, in the list above, I think it's fairly representative. There are one-hit wonders (but what a wonder) like Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and those who churned out film after film, like Howard Hawks or John Ford.
Compare with those of today:
An average of nine years younger, and the birth age of 1969. Instead of the formative years in the Nineteenth Century, today's movie and television producers and directors and writers came of age in the 1970's and 1980's. Is it any wonder that the attitudes of those eras still persist.
In some ways, it's not always 1968. It's always 1979. Carter, Disco, and the depressing "certainties" of the late 1970's reign supreme. In film, the collective efforts of the men above seem mostly to want to remake "the China Syndrome" or "All the Presidents Men" instead of creating something new, or at least adult and mature. Middle aged men avoid risk, and that these men largely do. Without, sadly, making entertainment that is truly adult. There is nothing more pathetic than powerful and middle aged men engaging in posturing against the man when they are, in fact, the man.
The creative class of today, if the table above is any use at all, is neither adult and mature enough to create timeless entertainment, for adults of all ages, nor young enough to challenge the status quo and create something exciting and new. Instead movies and television recycle the entertainment of their youth. Which wasn't new then, and has gotten more dated since. If past history is any guide, we're in for at least ten to fifteen more years of this rot. Until the above group is simply too old to make movies and television any more.
Thus, the reasons why it's always 1968. Or perhaps, 1979.
...Read more
In comparison, a man who was twenty in 1928 would have almost nothing in common with a man of twenty in the year 1968. Those intervening years saw great social and technological change (that drove a lot of the social change). A switch from mostly horse-drawn or electrified street car local transportation and trains for long distance travel, to the private auto for local transportation and cheap jet air travel for long distance transportation. Travel from New York to Los Angeles did not take days but hours. Radio was replaced by Television as the entertainment of choice in the home. Recorded music at home went from expensive, and fairly bad sounding novelties, to cheaply available. Telephones went from novelty to ubiquity. Social attitudes about race, sex, women, and more changed drastically as people moved from cities to suburbs. In 1928 women had the vote (nationally) for only 8 years, by 1968 it was nearly half a century old. In 1928, the world was stable, with no threat of sudden destruction of cities imaginable, the US protected by wide oceans, and the idea of war and destruction visited upon the US simply inconceivable..
Yet the world of 1968 is at least as different from today as 1928 was to it. Computers have gone from corporate data rooms, costing tens of millions of dollars, and the size of refrigerators, to commodities sold in Warehouse stores. Mobile phones capable of recording and playing video are common. The Internet, cable and satellite TV, laptop computers, and free wifi have all made unimaginable amounts of data and media accessible almost anywhere, any time. Jet travel is even cheaper and more available (if far less pleasant). Attitudes about gays (including Gay Marriage) unimaginable in 1968 are routinely discussed today on Daytime Television.
Why is it, then, that our culture remains stuck in 1968?
One reason might be the men who shape it, versus the men who shaped culture previously. Using IMDB.com, I used the data to construct the following tables. First, the culture that was replaced by the Youth Culture of 1968, the major cultural creators from roughly 1935-1954:
| Previous (1935-54) | Age in 1954 | Year of Birth | Years before WWI End |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Ford | 60 | 1894 | 24 |
| Samuel Goldwyn | 75 | 1879 | 24 |
| Louis Mayer | 70 | 1884 | 34 |
| Jack Warner | 62 | 1892 | 26 |
| Orson Welles | 39 | 1915 | 3 |
| Preston Sturges | 56 | 189 | 20 |
| Howard Hawks | 58 | 1896 | 22 |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 55 | 1899 | 15 |
| Frank Capra | 57 | 1897 | 21 |
| Anthony Mann | 48 | 1906 | 12 |
| Charles Laughton | 55 | 1899 | 19 |
| J Lee Thompson | 40 | 1914 | 4 |
| John Huston | 48 | 1906 | 12 |
| Average | 56 | 1898 | 20 |
There are some interesting things about this table. First, you'll note how Old these key movie makers were. The Average Age was 56, they were on average, born in 1898 and had twenty years before the end of WWI (when the public found out just how bad the debacle in the trenches was, and how many were lost).
For the most part, these men were men of the Nineteenth Century, not the Twentieth. It showed in the movies they made. More leisurely, with more adult content, less desire to use shock to cover up lack of ideas, and a focus on making films for all ages, older (past 20, anyway) and young alike. Remember, back in the era of 1935-54, as Ed Driscoll points out, men were supposed to act (in public at least) like adults. Not overgrown boys. And women, well acted like women. Not overgrown girls.
Therefore, even men of 21 were expected to conduct themselves as adult men. Not as lightly supervised boys. It's hard for people to understand, that in that era, it was common for men to wear hats, and jacket and suit pants, for nearly everything at hand save hard manual labor. Women wore dresses unless out on some picnic or working at manual labor. This included young men and women as well those in their forties.
While some might quibble with a name or two, in the list above, I think it's fairly representative. There are one-hit wonders (but what a wonder) like Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and those who churned out film after film, like Howard Hawks or John Ford.
Compare with those of today:
| Person | Age in 2008 | Year of Birth |
|---|---|---|
| JJ Abrams | 42 | 1964 |
| Joss Whedon | 44 | 1964 | Steve Soderberg | 45 | 1963 |
| Jerry Bruckheimer | 63 | 1945 |
| Josh Schwartz | 32 | 1976 |
| Chris Nolan | 38 | 1970 |
| Sam Raimi | 49 | 1959 |
| Alan Ball | 51 | 1957 |
| Seth Rogen | 26 | 1982 |
| Judd Apatow | 41 | 1967 |
| Kevin Williamson | 43 | 1965 |
| John Hughes | 58 | 1950 |
| George Lucas | 62 | 1946 |
| Steven Spielberg | 64 | 1944 |
| Tim Burton | 50 | 1958 |
| Average | 47 | 1969 |
An average of nine years younger, and the birth age of 1969. Instead of the formative years in the Nineteenth Century, today's movie and television producers and directors and writers came of age in the 1970's and 1980's. Is it any wonder that the attitudes of those eras still persist.
In some ways, it's not always 1968. It's always 1979. Carter, Disco, and the depressing "certainties" of the late 1970's reign supreme. In film, the collective efforts of the men above seem mostly to want to remake "the China Syndrome" or "All the Presidents Men" instead of creating something new, or at least adult and mature. Middle aged men avoid risk, and that these men largely do. Without, sadly, making entertainment that is truly adult. There is nothing more pathetic than powerful and middle aged men engaging in posturing against the man when they are, in fact, the man.
The creative class of today, if the table above is any use at all, is neither adult and mature enough to create timeless entertainment, for adults of all ages, nor young enough to challenge the status quo and create something exciting and new. Instead movies and television recycle the entertainment of their youth. Which wasn't new then, and has gotten more dated since. If past history is any guide, we're in for at least ten to fifteen more years of this rot. Until the above group is simply too old to make movies and television any more.
Thus, the reasons why it's always 1968. Or perhaps, 1979.
...Read more
Why Is It Always 1968? Part 1
Recently , Ed Driscoll linked to my post, Comic Books Dirty Little Secret, noting that:
Which got me thinking. Why is it always 1968?
The answer is complex, but as always, depends on demographics. The Demographics of the Youth Culture, and the creators of culture in general. The short version is that America ran out of young people. The long version is that technological stasis and a frozen ideology have put popular culture in amber. Though there are signs that might be changing.
In the short version, Americans stopped having kids, in sufficient numbers, to sustain a critical mass of young people. The Census Bureau provides enough data from the online 2000 and 1990 census to produce the following graphs.
First, the number of 20 year olds between 1955 and 2000:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
As you can see, there's a story there. The Depression made children expensive, and the war years removed most young men at home, with the remainder in great uncertainty. Not until 1947 did people have kids in greater numbers, which is why the huge jump in 20 year olds from 1966 to 1967. Lost in the nostalgia for the Sixties is the demographic reality that underpinned most of it (and it's predecessor the 1950's). First the shadow of the Depression, which produced understandably relatively few children, and then the uncertainty and chaos of the War years. People started having more and more kids, steadily, until 1960. At which point, birth rates declined. There is a big drop from 1965 to 1966, and bottoming out in 1969.
My hunch is that this temporary drop in babies, which recovered somewhat in 1970, and thereafter dropped even lower in the following decade with only a slight recovery in 1979, was due to social changes (likely the widespread availability and effectiveness of the pill and condom, along with lack of social stigma associated with same), combined with bad economics. Regardless, people had fewer kids in the late 1960's and 1970's, compared to the peak years of 1947-1965. About half a million less, never really recovering, and the cumulative effect of the decreasing birth rate had a huge effect.
Fewer young people hungering for a different Youth Culture than that of 1968.
The graph below (with data from the 2000 and 1990 Census) show more graphically the trend:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
[Yes, the numbers don't agree in the two graphs. I assume it's due to mortality, the 2000 Census is used for the Year 2000 20-year olds, while the 1990 Census was used for the # of 20-year olds in 1990, 1980, 1970, and 1960. Mortality tends to increase after age 50 or so, so the older census is probably more accurate. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not have older Census online, but the important thing is that the trends in both graphs agree. Not the absolute numbers. For convenience, I used the 2000 Census to produce the year-by-year graph of 20-year olds. Since it plugged into Open Office Calc easily.]
For whatever reason, around 1966, people stopped having children, in America. Without an ever increasing number of Youth, there is much more risk in the Youth Culture. This makes the popular culture stagnant. Since there's no ability to gamble, as there was in the late 1960's, when the number of Youth just kept increasing year by year. It's telling that very few new products for kids have been introduced since the 1950's-60's, no Hula-Hoops (1957), no Frisbees (1957), or Slinkies (1948), or Superball (1965), or Silly Putty (1957). All notably introduced when there were lots and lots of ten year olds around, increasing every year. There's been nothing like them since, sadly.
This is particularly important when even the cheapest movie, or hit song, costs a lot to market. Lack of a payoff will guarantee risk avoidance. Which coincidentally, is just what we have.
As Ed Driscoll points out, in 1968, the world of 1928 was forty years old and far distant. No twenty year olds shared the musical tastes of the generation of 1928. A twenty year old and a sixty year old that year would have little in common. They would not dress alike, they would not listen to the same songs (indeed music from 1928 would rapidly propel a twenty year old in 1968 as rapidly outside of hearing range of said song as possible). They would not eat the same food. They would certainly not hold the same social attitudes, on much of anything.
Yet as Ed Driscoll points out, consider how a twenty year old and sixty year old today would share almost all the same attitudes. A twenty year old would listen to the Rolling Stones, just like a sixty year old would. Or the Beatles. They would dress alike, in Jeans and T-shirts, mostly. They'd eat the same food, and share the same social attitudes. Far from repelling a twenty year old out of hearing range, the music of 1968 would not seem "old fashioned."
Moreover, a sixty year old fan of say, Louis Armstrong or Al Jolson in 1968, would have difficulty even comprehending the music of the Beatles, or Rolling Stones, much less enjoy them both as simple continuation of the music of his youth. No such adjustment need be made by today's sixty year old, who can listen to say, Arctic Monkeys or the Killers and enjoy both as natural progressions of the music of his youth.
In some ways, this heralds a return to the Nineteenth Century. A twenty year old in 1828, and a twenty year old in 1868, would probably share the same attitudes, manner of dress, taste in food, and music, in 1868. It's tempting to pencil in the rapid social changes of the Twentieth Century as "normal" but History suggests that century was atypical. It's quite possible the frozen in amber nature of our culture, with all it's negatives will remain with us for a long time.
What stands out in the Twentieth Century is the role of technology in "breaking" the popular culture of the past. Radio enabled youth to stay up late, even in rural towns, and be connected to the Swing Bands of the 1920's and 1930's, even up through the 1940's. Including bands that were all Black. There was no color line in the radio broadcasts, and bands like Duke Ellington, to artists like Miles Davis found fans around the nation based on their radio broadcasts. To say nothing of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw.
This was followed by Television, which allowed people to skip the movies, and cheap recorded music, first on 45 rpm singles, and then 33 and a third rpm "long playing" records. Playable on cheap phonographs that produced acceptable, to later excellent stereo sound. FM "College" Radio helped promote unknown bands, and the availability of cheap electric guitars, sound systems, and crucially, cassette tapes (to pass the music along from friend to friend, of unknown bands) helped form an infrastructure that allowed fringe acts to play cheap dives to polish their performance skills, if for little pay. Gain exposure in better clubs with tapes passed around and College Radio taking the place of the late night AM Radio broadcasts. Get featured on major radio and television programs, to reach a mass audience (of young people) who could be relied upon to buy the records in large numbers.
For a while, cheap "youth exploitation" movies from AIP and other outfits allowed directors and writers like say, Steven Spielberg to hone their craft and progress up the same ladder or experimentation to mass market appeal in movies. Sam Raimi, for example, was a director in the horror ghetto before he moved up to Spider-Man. Sadly, that path is gone now.
While the lack of an upwards path for movies is understandable, given the expense of making movies, that of music is not. After all, today's modern technology allows bands to make their own MP3s, freely available, on their own website. There are still plenty of clubs to play in, College Radio, with ever-new DJs, looking for new bands and sounds to make their mark with listeners. Equipment has become cheaper than ever. One might even argue that the availability of ITunes on nearly every computer makes it the equivalent of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965. With cheap video compression and greater availability of high-speed internet, one wonders why more people like Felicia Day are not constructing their own websites to sell their own productions, made cheap and fast and good, like AIP or Hammer Horror films, on DVD or ITunes (since Apple will sell videos as well as music). [Check out the link, her project "the Guild" is hilarious and free.] Heck YouTube allows "free samples" in the way that radio airplay on AM radio drove the hit singles of Elvis ,the Beach Boys, and the Beatles.
My guess is that it's due to a culture that avoids risk. This culture, like the minor aristocracy of Jane Austen's day, is obsessed with protecting status and prestige against any downward spiral. Ever present in Austen's books is the looming threat that all could come crashing down, to catastrophic poverty. For much of today's culture, that same fear, animates most everything creative people do. It's not as if there are enough opportunities in a huge pool of young people to overcome that stasis anymore. No reward to make the risk worthwhile. There's also something about the men who create popular culture in and of themselves that makes them risk averse, something for my next post.
Risk avoidance is made worse, of course, by a culture of Politically Correct Multiculturalism. If American creativity, among Whites and Blacks, was animated by huge amounts of cultural borrowing, today's insistence on separateness, makes that impossible, and a violation of the cultural aristocracy's unwritten but powerful rules of etiquette. Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, and Little Richard all borrowed across racial and ethnic lines. Particularly in places like along the Mississippi River, or New Orleans, or Chicago, Kansas City, and New York, with exposure to different people using different concepts and tools, musicians, writers, and artists would borrow all the time from people of vastly different races and backgrounds, simply because they saw the devices and tools working, effectively and sought to combine them with their own tools for their own uses. Popular music has particularly suffered, as Black artists no longer borrow freely from White artists, as say Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding did (from Frank Sinatra), and White artists no longer find anything of value in the sterile grounds of uber-macho Rap.
But possibly the most influential factor in accounting for why it's always 1968 is who are the key culture shapers, and just when they came of age. A subject for my next post.
...Read more
Much has been made by any number of commenters, from Steve Sailer, to John Derbyshire, to Spengler, to Mark Steyn, to in particular, Ed Driscoll, about the pathetic state of popular culture. Blogger Ed Driscoll in particular is fond of reminding us that in popular culture it's always 1968.
Which got me thinking. Why is it always 1968?
The answer is complex, but as always, depends on demographics. The Demographics of the Youth Culture, and the creators of culture in general. The short version is that America ran out of young people. The long version is that technological stasis and a frozen ideology have put popular culture in amber. Though there are signs that might be changing.
In the short version, Americans stopped having kids, in sufficient numbers, to sustain a critical mass of young people. The Census Bureau provides enough data from the online 2000 and 1990 census to produce the following graphs.
First, the number of 20 year olds between 1955 and 2000:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
As you can see, there's a story there. The Depression made children expensive, and the war years removed most young men at home, with the remainder in great uncertainty. Not until 1947 did people have kids in greater numbers, which is why the huge jump in 20 year olds from 1966 to 1967. Lost in the nostalgia for the Sixties is the demographic reality that underpinned most of it (and it's predecessor the 1950's). First the shadow of the Depression, which produced understandably relatively few children, and then the uncertainty and chaos of the War years. People started having more and more kids, steadily, until 1960. At which point, birth rates declined. There is a big drop from 1965 to 1966, and bottoming out in 1969.
My hunch is that this temporary drop in babies, which recovered somewhat in 1970, and thereafter dropped even lower in the following decade with only a slight recovery in 1979, was due to social changes (likely the widespread availability and effectiveness of the pill and condom, along with lack of social stigma associated with same), combined with bad economics. Regardless, people had fewer kids in the late 1960's and 1970's, compared to the peak years of 1947-1965. About half a million less, never really recovering, and the cumulative effect of the decreasing birth rate had a huge effect.
Fewer young people hungering for a different Youth Culture than that of 1968.
The graph below (with data from the 2000 and 1990 Census) show more graphically the trend:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
[Yes, the numbers don't agree in the two graphs. I assume it's due to mortality, the 2000 Census is used for the Year 2000 20-year olds, while the 1990 Census was used for the # of 20-year olds in 1990, 1980, 1970, and 1960. Mortality tends to increase after age 50 or so, so the older census is probably more accurate. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not have older Census online, but the important thing is that the trends in both graphs agree. Not the absolute numbers. For convenience, I used the 2000 Census to produce the year-by-year graph of 20-year olds. Since it plugged into Open Office Calc easily.]
For whatever reason, around 1966, people stopped having children, in America. Without an ever increasing number of Youth, there is much more risk in the Youth Culture. This makes the popular culture stagnant. Since there's no ability to gamble, as there was in the late 1960's, when the number of Youth just kept increasing year by year. It's telling that very few new products for kids have been introduced since the 1950's-60's, no Hula-Hoops (1957), no Frisbees (1957), or Slinkies (1948), or Superball (1965), or Silly Putty (1957). All notably introduced when there were lots and lots of ten year olds around, increasing every year. There's been nothing like them since, sadly.
This is particularly important when even the cheapest movie, or hit song, costs a lot to market. Lack of a payoff will guarantee risk avoidance. Which coincidentally, is just what we have.
As Ed Driscoll points out, in 1968, the world of 1928 was forty years old and far distant. No twenty year olds shared the musical tastes of the generation of 1928. A twenty year old and a sixty year old that year would have little in common. They would not dress alike, they would not listen to the same songs (indeed music from 1928 would rapidly propel a twenty year old in 1968 as rapidly outside of hearing range of said song as possible). They would not eat the same food. They would certainly not hold the same social attitudes, on much of anything.
Yet as Ed Driscoll points out, consider how a twenty year old and sixty year old today would share almost all the same attitudes. A twenty year old would listen to the Rolling Stones, just like a sixty year old would. Or the Beatles. They would dress alike, in Jeans and T-shirts, mostly. They'd eat the same food, and share the same social attitudes. Far from repelling a twenty year old out of hearing range, the music of 1968 would not seem "old fashioned."
Moreover, a sixty year old fan of say, Louis Armstrong or Al Jolson in 1968, would have difficulty even comprehending the music of the Beatles, or Rolling Stones, much less enjoy them both as simple continuation of the music of his youth. No such adjustment need be made by today's sixty year old, who can listen to say, Arctic Monkeys or the Killers and enjoy both as natural progressions of the music of his youth.
In some ways, this heralds a return to the Nineteenth Century. A twenty year old in 1828, and a twenty year old in 1868, would probably share the same attitudes, manner of dress, taste in food, and music, in 1868. It's tempting to pencil in the rapid social changes of the Twentieth Century as "normal" but History suggests that century was atypical. It's quite possible the frozen in amber nature of our culture, with all it's negatives will remain with us for a long time.
What stands out in the Twentieth Century is the role of technology in "breaking" the popular culture of the past. Radio enabled youth to stay up late, even in rural towns, and be connected to the Swing Bands of the 1920's and 1930's, even up through the 1940's. Including bands that were all Black. There was no color line in the radio broadcasts, and bands like Duke Ellington, to artists like Miles Davis found fans around the nation based on their radio broadcasts. To say nothing of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw.
This was followed by Television, which allowed people to skip the movies, and cheap recorded music, first on 45 rpm singles, and then 33 and a third rpm "long playing" records. Playable on cheap phonographs that produced acceptable, to later excellent stereo sound. FM "College" Radio helped promote unknown bands, and the availability of cheap electric guitars, sound systems, and crucially, cassette tapes (to pass the music along from friend to friend, of unknown bands) helped form an infrastructure that allowed fringe acts to play cheap dives to polish their performance skills, if for little pay. Gain exposure in better clubs with tapes passed around and College Radio taking the place of the late night AM Radio broadcasts. Get featured on major radio and television programs, to reach a mass audience (of young people) who could be relied upon to buy the records in large numbers.
For a while, cheap "youth exploitation" movies from AIP and other outfits allowed directors and writers like say, Steven Spielberg to hone their craft and progress up the same ladder or experimentation to mass market appeal in movies. Sam Raimi, for example, was a director in the horror ghetto before he moved up to Spider-Man. Sadly, that path is gone now.
While the lack of an upwards path for movies is understandable, given the expense of making movies, that of music is not. After all, today's modern technology allows bands to make their own MP3s, freely available, on their own website. There are still plenty of clubs to play in, College Radio, with ever-new DJs, looking for new bands and sounds to make their mark with listeners. Equipment has become cheaper than ever. One might even argue that the availability of ITunes on nearly every computer makes it the equivalent of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965. With cheap video compression and greater availability of high-speed internet, one wonders why more people like Felicia Day are not constructing their own websites to sell their own productions, made cheap and fast and good, like AIP or Hammer Horror films, on DVD or ITunes (since Apple will sell videos as well as music). [Check out the link, her project "the Guild" is hilarious and free.] Heck YouTube allows "free samples" in the way that radio airplay on AM radio drove the hit singles of Elvis ,the Beach Boys, and the Beatles.
My guess is that it's due to a culture that avoids risk. This culture, like the minor aristocracy of Jane Austen's day, is obsessed with protecting status and prestige against any downward spiral. Ever present in Austen's books is the looming threat that all could come crashing down, to catastrophic poverty. For much of today's culture, that same fear, animates most everything creative people do. It's not as if there are enough opportunities in a huge pool of young people to overcome that stasis anymore. No reward to make the risk worthwhile. There's also something about the men who create popular culture in and of themselves that makes them risk averse, something for my next post.
Risk avoidance is made worse, of course, by a culture of Politically Correct Multiculturalism. If American creativity, among Whites and Blacks, was animated by huge amounts of cultural borrowing, today's insistence on separateness, makes that impossible, and a violation of the cultural aristocracy's unwritten but powerful rules of etiquette. Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, and Little Richard all borrowed across racial and ethnic lines. Particularly in places like along the Mississippi River, or New Orleans, or Chicago, Kansas City, and New York, with exposure to different people using different concepts and tools, musicians, writers, and artists would borrow all the time from people of vastly different races and backgrounds, simply because they saw the devices and tools working, effectively and sought to combine them with their own tools for their own uses. Popular music has particularly suffered, as Black artists no longer borrow freely from White artists, as say Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding did (from Frank Sinatra), and White artists no longer find anything of value in the sterile grounds of uber-macho Rap.
But possibly the most influential factor in accounting for why it's always 1968 is who are the key culture shapers, and just when they came of age. A subject for my next post.
...Read more
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Chemistry.com's Big Gay Blunder
Recently, Chemistry.com ran the following commercial, on various cable networks. I've seen it on Discovery, BBC America, History Channel, and Food Network.
Now, color me surprised when this ad got pulled fairly quickly.
Do women generally like this sort of thing? Yes. Go check the comments at the Youtube site, see for yourself. I'm sure it's "cool" with the trendy set as well.
Do men who are likely to want to use Chemistry.com like this sort of thing? No. They'll hate it. Desperate, lonely guys wanting a girlfriend get ... gays on the screen?
Chemistry.com just killed their brand. Since men make up the paying customers. Women don't need and don't form the majority of the customers of dating sites.
Dating sites generally fail, because it's like that "nude beach scene" in "Eurotrip." A total "sausage fest." Far too many men, not very many women. Men can need dating sites, it's hard for some to meet women, particularly those shy, without much of a social network, and new in town. Women don't need dating sites and therefore mostly don't use them, except occasionally as either an ego booster, or more often as a screening device (and that only for income, really).
This stands as another monument to the lack of competence in the creative class. It should be a simple task: sell lonely, desperate guys that Chemistry.com will solve their romance problem. Instead, the ad agency made a "statement" which no doubt made all their ad buddies proud and boosted their own status in the ad business.
But now, for every guy who saw that ad, Chemistry.com is not for them. It's for gay men. Not straight guys looking for a date. Made worse of course by the choice of the actors, who resemble the target market of cube dwellers too much.
More evidence of lack of simple competence among the creative class. Even simple things can't get done right, because no one has a clue about the social realities beyond the terminally trendy.
...Read more
Now, color me surprised when this ad got pulled fairly quickly.
Do women generally like this sort of thing? Yes. Go check the comments at the Youtube site, see for yourself. I'm sure it's "cool" with the trendy set as well.
Do men who are likely to want to use Chemistry.com like this sort of thing? No. They'll hate it. Desperate, lonely guys wanting a girlfriend get ... gays on the screen?
Chemistry.com just killed their brand. Since men make up the paying customers. Women don't need and don't form the majority of the customers of dating sites.
Dating sites generally fail, because it's like that "nude beach scene" in "Eurotrip." A total "sausage fest." Far too many men, not very many women. Men can need dating sites, it's hard for some to meet women, particularly those shy, without much of a social network, and new in town. Women don't need dating sites and therefore mostly don't use them, except occasionally as either an ego booster, or more often as a screening device (and that only for income, really).
This stands as another monument to the lack of competence in the creative class. It should be a simple task: sell lonely, desperate guys that Chemistry.com will solve their romance problem. Instead, the ad agency made a "statement" which no doubt made all their ad buddies proud and boosted their own status in the ad business.
But now, for every guy who saw that ad, Chemistry.com is not for them. It's for gay men. Not straight guys looking for a date. Made worse of course by the choice of the actors, who resemble the target market of cube dwellers too much.
More evidence of lack of simple competence among the creative class. Even simple things can't get done right, because no one has a clue about the social realities beyond the terminally trendy.
...Read more
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Comics Books Dirty Little Secret: They Don't Make (Much) Money
Everyone is interested in Comic Book movies these days. The Batman movie's domestic box office of $480 million dollars and rising will do that. But what people don't understand is the dirty little secret of Comics Books. They don't make much money. And the success of the movies is based on work done in some cases, more than fifty years ago.
First, you can get a sense of the Comics industry by going to the SEC and using their EDGAR search engine to read the Marvel Entertainment reports. You can find the most recent 10-Q (Quarterly Report) here.
Marvel's management states that their target market is 13-18, but concedes their readership can consist of men into their mid thirties. The probable readership is likely even older. If you look at their operating information for Publishing, their operating income is 12% to 16%, over the six month periods June 30, 2007, and June 30, 2008. Clearly, Comic Book publishing is not a big money maker, compared to the Licensing (Toys and Movies) and direct movie making lines.
This is because of the unique nature of the Comic Book business. Around 2001, there were 3,000 Comic Book shops. That number is believed to be less than 2,000 nationally, in 2008. This is a huge blow, because of how Comic Books get to readers. Most "monthly" Comic Books, which can now retail around $5 or so (more evidence they are not aimed at teenagers, when you consider many readers buy 6 or 7 comics at a time, totalling $36-$42 a week), are sold in Comic Book shops. They are mostly distributed by Diamond Distributing, which has a lock on most comic books distributed to Comic Book shops. If you want to know, why the heck can't you find Comic Books in Drug Stores, Supermarkets, and Bookstores, this is why. It's true even for DC Comics, which is owned by Time-Warner. You can buy Time Magazine almost anywhere, including your local Supermarket. You can't buy "the Adventures of Superman" there.
Even if Comics appealed to younger readers (they don't) they couldn't buy them in places where it's convenient.
"Trade Paperbacks" which are collected arcs of comics are available in Bookstores, like Barnes and Noble. But, they depend on the comics that originally were sold in Comic Book Shops. You see the problem here? The Trade Paperbacks are not original work.
There are even more problems for Comic Books. The number of younger readers potentially available, is declining year after year. Because of the birth dearth. The bulk of the population, is in their 30's to 40's.
Unfortunately for Comics, most writers don't write for mass audience success. Instead they write for acclaim and admiration of their peers. For being "daring" and "edgy" and above all PC and Multicultural. Roughly half the voters in the 2000 and 2004 elections voted for George W. Bush. One would think it would not be good business sense to routinely insult the values and deeply held beliefs of half the potential customers, but Comics writers do this all the time. America is often the villain, Republicans and Christians the main villains, and Muslims put-upon innocents.
DC's Editor in Chief, Dan Didio, has a habit of killing off beloved characters with generations of fans, to replace them with gay, or hispanic, or other multicultural variations of the character that worked for in some cases 40 years or more. This is just poor business, since there are not many gay, or hispanic readers. Mexican boys have their own comics, produced in Mexico, by Mexican writers and artists, about Mexican themes, in Spanish. They won't be reading any DC comics.
What accounts for such poor business practices, the politicizing of Comic Books to the point where half the potential customers are alienated, the emphasis on PC and Multiculturalism to a slavish degree, the dependence on Comic Book shops and Diamond Distributing? When for DC Comics at least, the existing Time-Warner infrastructure can be used to get Superman comics out with Time Magazine?
Several factors. Both Marvel and DC Comics don't really expect to make any money at all with Comic Book Publishing (and Marvel's SEC filings confirm that). DC seems to publish a few titles like Wonder Woman just to keep the rights (which would otherwise revert back to the estate of the creator). Thus it's a playground for PC and Multiculturalists, the same way "Independent" movies like "TransAmerica" (about transvestites) are a playground for the same thing. No one expects to make any money, just show how "cool" one is. It's just status-displays among a hothouse of "creative" people playing with other people's money. Like Independent Films, a situation not likely to last forever.
The real money is in films and licensing. Everything from major movies, to toys, to the series "Smallville" on first the WB and now CW network, and of course video games create streams of revenue, on work done decades ago. All bring in money with no real requirement to invent new characters and universes. DC is rolled up into the Time-Warner behemoth, but there is no reason not to think that their own internal balance sheet would not look like Marvel's public one on the SEC EDGAR system. On a lesser scale, that would be replicated by independent and privately held smaller comics publishers, including Dark Horse, Top Cow, and London Knights.
My own thinking is that Demographics is playing a part in this. The following chart, from the US Census Bureau 2006 survey, shows the population breakdowns:
[Click on the image to see the full size.]
Much has been made by any number of commenters, from Steve Sailer, to John Derbyshire, to Spengler, to Mark Steyn, to in particular, Ed Driscoll, about the pathetic state of popular culture. Blogger Ed Driscoll in particular is fond of reminding us that in popular culture it's always 1968. In many ways, at best, popular culture only made advances into the 1980's. A time when innovation and new genres last appeared in rock music, movies, television, and in particular, Comic Books.
While many praise, justly, Christopher Nolan's two Batman movies, and how they rebooted that moribund franchise after the campiness of Joel Schumacher's versions, the two Nolan movies built on the work first done by Batman writer Dennis O'Neil in the late 1970's, and the follow-up work done by Frank Miller in his immortal "The Dark Knight Returns" in the early 1980's. The Frank Miller version of Marvel's Daredevil also dates from this period, where the character was taken from light-hearted "joke" to the current, dark, brooding, Catholic-Irish sin and redemption character that he's known as today.
Comic Books are probably a good a model as any to examine what happens ... when you start running out of young people. Without a constant turnover of new, younger readers, demanding imagination, novelty, and above all, fun, in their entertainment, creative people end up all too often appealing to an ever more "selective" (in the Spinal Tap sense) audience. Who will be older, and will consume entertainment as a status symbol.
Yes, in short, Comic Books became too much like Jazz. Once the music for the young to dance and romance to, now ... exemplified by the Riverside CA concerts featuring Branford Marsalis. Tickets available in the "cheap seats" for $100 a person. Not exactly a young man's music. Certainly not a young man's price.
When Comics were great, when as (one wag put it, Marvel got the characters right the first time) the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and other great characters were created, there was a whole new generation of comic book readers, young geeky boys in their early teens. Who wanted cheap, fast, and new entertainment. The virtues of this on creative people was obvious. There was no time to create uber-angsty characters and storylines designed to promote status within the creative community. Being cheap meant lots of risks could be taken, and rapid feedback from readers (who would write letters to the Comic Book companies explaining what characters they liked and hated, and why) helped creative people understand what worked and what did not for their readers.
Stan Lee and his counterparts at DC would have laughed at the idea that a multi-arc storyline would take all year, with frequent delays, and sometimes never finish at all, because artists and writers went on to other projects. Let alone replacing existing, popular characters with gay or latino versions. Lee and his compatriots knew their audience. They had enough letters from them. The writers and editors back then knew the innate conservatism (in some senses) of young, geeky boys. Boys who wanted to uphold the traditional values of heroism, monogamy, and the nuclear family. Because while they had no real ability to envision themselves as "players" they could see themselves as getting the girl through traditional heroism. If they just got bit by a radioactive spider. Or got a power ring from a dying Alien. Or got exposed to Gamma Radiation from a "Gamma Ray Bomb." All variations of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone (or Siegfried and the Branstock Oak) and playing to the deep cultural impulse in Western civilization to point boys to the "proper" way to get the girl. Which is be the brave and good hero. Stan Lee just updated him, and made him modernly weird. So he might crawl up walls like a spider. Or shout, "Flame On" and turn into living flame and fly about, hurling fireballs at bad guys. Or nerdily create a high-tech suit of armor.
Youth culture has it's own energy (and among young men, innate conservatism in gender/sex matters). Among it's principal benefits, is the ability to take these risks and still keep going. It's not an accident that Comic Book's greatest characters and the versions audiences in movies love, result from the flowering of that youth culture in the 1940's, the 1960's, and the last gasp in the 1980's. Along with pop music, movies, television, and much else. Quite a bit of our cultural stagnation can be traced to the lack of ... young people.
...Read more
First, you can get a sense of the Comics industry by going to the SEC and using their EDGAR search engine to read the Marvel Entertainment reports. You can find the most recent 10-Q (Quarterly Report) here.
Marvel's management states that their target market is 13-18, but concedes their readership can consist of men into their mid thirties. The probable readership is likely even older. If you look at their operating information for Publishing, their operating income is 12% to 16%, over the six month periods June 30, 2007, and June 30, 2008. Clearly, Comic Book publishing is not a big money maker, compared to the Licensing (Toys and Movies) and direct movie making lines.
This is because of the unique nature of the Comic Book business. Around 2001, there were 3,000 Comic Book shops. That number is believed to be less than 2,000 nationally, in 2008. This is a huge blow, because of how Comic Books get to readers. Most "monthly" Comic Books, which can now retail around $5 or so (more evidence they are not aimed at teenagers, when you consider many readers buy 6 or 7 comics at a time, totalling $36-$42 a week), are sold in Comic Book shops. They are mostly distributed by Diamond Distributing, which has a lock on most comic books distributed to Comic Book shops. If you want to know, why the heck can't you find Comic Books in Drug Stores, Supermarkets, and Bookstores, this is why. It's true even for DC Comics, which is owned by Time-Warner. You can buy Time Magazine almost anywhere, including your local Supermarket. You can't buy "the Adventures of Superman" there.
Even if Comics appealed to younger readers (they don't) they couldn't buy them in places where it's convenient.
"Trade Paperbacks" which are collected arcs of comics are available in Bookstores, like Barnes and Noble. But, they depend on the comics that originally were sold in Comic Book Shops. You see the problem here? The Trade Paperbacks are not original work.
There are even more problems for Comic Books. The number of younger readers potentially available, is declining year after year. Because of the birth dearth. The bulk of the population, is in their 30's to 40's.
Unfortunately for Comics, most writers don't write for mass audience success. Instead they write for acclaim and admiration of their peers. For being "daring" and "edgy" and above all PC and Multicultural. Roughly half the voters in the 2000 and 2004 elections voted for George W. Bush. One would think it would not be good business sense to routinely insult the values and deeply held beliefs of half the potential customers, but Comics writers do this all the time. America is often the villain, Republicans and Christians the main villains, and Muslims put-upon innocents.
DC's Editor in Chief, Dan Didio, has a habit of killing off beloved characters with generations of fans, to replace them with gay, or hispanic, or other multicultural variations of the character that worked for in some cases 40 years or more. This is just poor business, since there are not many gay, or hispanic readers. Mexican boys have their own comics, produced in Mexico, by Mexican writers and artists, about Mexican themes, in Spanish. They won't be reading any DC comics.
What accounts for such poor business practices, the politicizing of Comic Books to the point where half the potential customers are alienated, the emphasis on PC and Multiculturalism to a slavish degree, the dependence on Comic Book shops and Diamond Distributing? When for DC Comics at least, the existing Time-Warner infrastructure can be used to get Superman comics out with Time Magazine?
Several factors. Both Marvel and DC Comics don't really expect to make any money at all with Comic Book Publishing (and Marvel's SEC filings confirm that). DC seems to publish a few titles like Wonder Woman just to keep the rights (which would otherwise revert back to the estate of the creator). Thus it's a playground for PC and Multiculturalists, the same way "Independent" movies like "TransAmerica" (about transvestites) are a playground for the same thing. No one expects to make any money, just show how "cool" one is. It's just status-displays among a hothouse of "creative" people playing with other people's money. Like Independent Films, a situation not likely to last forever.
The real money is in films and licensing. Everything from major movies, to toys, to the series "Smallville" on first the WB and now CW network, and of course video games create streams of revenue, on work done decades ago. All bring in money with no real requirement to invent new characters and universes. DC is rolled up into the Time-Warner behemoth, but there is no reason not to think that their own internal balance sheet would not look like Marvel's public one on the SEC EDGAR system. On a lesser scale, that would be replicated by independent and privately held smaller comics publishers, including Dark Horse, Top Cow, and London Knights.
My own thinking is that Demographics is playing a part in this. The following chart, from the US Census Bureau 2006 survey, shows the population breakdowns:
[Click on the image to see the full size.]
Much has been made by any number of commenters, from Steve Sailer, to John Derbyshire, to Spengler, to Mark Steyn, to in particular, Ed Driscoll, about the pathetic state of popular culture. Blogger Ed Driscoll in particular is fond of reminding us that in popular culture it's always 1968. In many ways, at best, popular culture only made advances into the 1980's. A time when innovation and new genres last appeared in rock music, movies, television, and in particular, Comic Books.
While many praise, justly, Christopher Nolan's two Batman movies, and how they rebooted that moribund franchise after the campiness of Joel Schumacher's versions, the two Nolan movies built on the work first done by Batman writer Dennis O'Neil in the late 1970's, and the follow-up work done by Frank Miller in his immortal "The Dark Knight Returns" in the early 1980's. The Frank Miller version of Marvel's Daredevil also dates from this period, where the character was taken from light-hearted "joke" to the current, dark, brooding, Catholic-Irish sin and redemption character that he's known as today.
Comic Books are probably a good a model as any to examine what happens ... when you start running out of young people. Without a constant turnover of new, younger readers, demanding imagination, novelty, and above all, fun, in their entertainment, creative people end up all too often appealing to an ever more "selective" (in the Spinal Tap sense) audience. Who will be older, and will consume entertainment as a status symbol.
Yes, in short, Comic Books became too much like Jazz. Once the music for the young to dance and romance to, now ... exemplified by the Riverside CA concerts featuring Branford Marsalis. Tickets available in the "cheap seats" for $100 a person. Not exactly a young man's music. Certainly not a young man's price.
When Comics were great, when as (one wag put it, Marvel got the characters right the first time) the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and other great characters were created, there was a whole new generation of comic book readers, young geeky boys in their early teens. Who wanted cheap, fast, and new entertainment. The virtues of this on creative people was obvious. There was no time to create uber-angsty characters and storylines designed to promote status within the creative community. Being cheap meant lots of risks could be taken, and rapid feedback from readers (who would write letters to the Comic Book companies explaining what characters they liked and hated, and why) helped creative people understand what worked and what did not for their readers.
Stan Lee and his counterparts at DC would have laughed at the idea that a multi-arc storyline would take all year, with frequent delays, and sometimes never finish at all, because artists and writers went on to other projects. Let alone replacing existing, popular characters with gay or latino versions. Lee and his compatriots knew their audience. They had enough letters from them. The writers and editors back then knew the innate conservatism (in some senses) of young, geeky boys. Boys who wanted to uphold the traditional values of heroism, monogamy, and the nuclear family. Because while they had no real ability to envision themselves as "players" they could see themselves as getting the girl through traditional heroism. If they just got bit by a radioactive spider. Or got a power ring from a dying Alien. Or got exposed to Gamma Radiation from a "Gamma Ray Bomb." All variations of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone (or Siegfried and the Branstock Oak) and playing to the deep cultural impulse in Western civilization to point boys to the "proper" way to get the girl. Which is be the brave and good hero. Stan Lee just updated him, and made him modernly weird. So he might crawl up walls like a spider. Or shout, "Flame On" and turn into living flame and fly about, hurling fireballs at bad guys. Or nerdily create a high-tech suit of armor.
Youth culture has it's own energy (and among young men, innate conservatism in gender/sex matters). Among it's principal benefits, is the ability to take these risks and still keep going. It's not an accident that Comic Book's greatest characters and the versions audiences in movies love, result from the flowering of that youth culture in the 1940's, the 1960's, and the last gasp in the 1980's. Along with pop music, movies, television, and much else. Quite a bit of our cultural stagnation can be traced to the lack of ... young people.
...Read more
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Secret of Superhero Movies
Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran an article detailing Warner Brother's new strategy for Superhero movies. Make them dark, "just like Batman." More proof if any was needed that Hollywood lives in a bubble and just does not understand their audience. Much less, the secret to Superhero movies.
"The Dark Knight" made $478 million as of Friday, August 22, 2008, not because it was "dark" or "edgy." Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov believes:
The correct term for this is stupidity. "The Dark Knight" was successful because it hit the emotional and story core of the character, when he was created back in 1939. Which was and is, the "moral revenge" story, with a character who takes revenge (and action) within strict moral limits. That's why Batman does not kill, even though he might have good reason to do so. Moreover, Batman is an ordinary man. Unlike the other Superheroes, he has no powers whatsoever other than what an intelligent and highly motivated and disciplined man could potentially have, with the aid of money and technology. He's the direct descendant of Edmund Dantes, and Sherlock Holmes, with a dash of Zorro. Batman, lacking any superpowers, pretty much has to be intimidating and ruthless (right up to the strict moral lines he'll never cross).
Batman in the comics and movies consistently beats, dangles over great heights, and otherwise terrifies the worst and least of crooks, but never, ever kills anyone.
Why?
Because Batman is a power-fantasy for guys.
The secret to comics is who created and read them, back when they were popular, first in the late 1930's and early 1940's, and again in the 1960's (the "Golden" and "Silver" age respectively). The Comics creators were mostly Jewish, nerdy-smart guys, who liked the pretty girls who had no time for them, and preferred the wealthy athletes in High School and College. In wish fulfillment, these mostly Jewish artists and writers, who in the 1930s and early 1940s lived at a time when actual, real Nazis were active in America (the German-American Bund), created (almost exclusively male) characters that provided wish fulfillment to every young man and boy who was not a high-status, wealthy athlete, liked by guys and pursued by girls.
Which is about 90% of the male population, at one time or another. That's what comics were, and the reason for the characters success. Superman is the most globally recognized fictional character. Because of that secret.
Yes, it's really that simple. Male wish fulfillment is the secret to Superhero success.
Spider-Man's nerdy guy element of suddenly having a superpower, and winning the girl, harkens directly back to Superman, and Shuster and Siegel's empowerment fantasy. Complete with High School Jock foil to defeat and beat for the girl's affection. Even Iron Man fits this mode. While Tony Stark may be a wealthy, billionaire playboy, at heart he is a nerd, and is happiest playing and building and experimenting with technology. He builds his own superpower. No wonder nerdy guys love him. He's one of them, as a Superhero.
The problem for Studio execs, and in particular Robinov, is that comics today are not what they once were. Kids and nerdy young men mostly don't read them. Comics can cost in excess of $5 each, and are available only in Comic Book shops, which are few in number. They are written for a much older audience, median age of 40, the hipster crowd. An audience seeking not male empowerment fantasies, but uber-PC, ultra-liberal critiques of average people (and their politicians and values). There is either the grim-and-gritty ultraviolent superhero only marginally distinct from the villain (if at all). Or superteams of politically correct gay, addict, lesbian, latina, etc. superbeings who rule America to protect "the world" from un-PC Americans. Such as DC/Wildstorm's "The Authority". Remember them?
There is a reason you don't.
The dirty little secret behind comics and comic book writers today is that the writers have completely repudiated the male empowerment fantasy, where the hero has some power and gets the girl or at least defeats the bad guy (within acceptable moral limits) and saves ordinary people. "The Authority" is merely the dream of the hipster and what he/she would do if they ruled America and/or the world. Very importantly, the male empowerment Superhero does not want to rule the world (that's the Supervillain's department). He wants to save it, and do so within the kinds of rules that ordinary men and boys set for themselves. No sadism. Mostly no killing. Protecting innocents. Following all the rules.
Because, in the world of the original Golden and Silver age empowerment fantasies, the rules were quite explicit, and the reason for the characters success. Superman's been popular since 1938 for a reason. And it's not being "dark," "hip," or "edgy." Certainly not identifying with an evil side, or the villain. Lex Luthor is Superman's main villain, and other than being bald, his persona can be extremely variable. Superman is always the same. The Ultimate American (along with Captain America).
Here are the rules:
1. A character with great power must show great restraint, lest he fall into villain territory. The amount of restraint and humanity a Superhero shows is directly proportional to his power. Superman must be everyman empathetic to even the villains, whereas ordinary Batman can do pretty much anything but kill people.
2. The character must be someone the male audience can identify with and reasonably project themselves into, because the character is a male empowerment fantasy. Villains and characters indistinguishable from villains won't work, no matter how "edgy" and hip they might be among the creative class and upper-income urbanites.
3. The character must actively defend the conventional morality and beliefs of the average person, who after all forms the audience/readership for the Superhero. This means, among other things, the assimilationist Patriotism of the Golden/Silver age, mostly Jewish creators, which most ordinary Americans still hold today. Captain America, punching out Hitler in 1940, a year before America's entry into the War, at a time of deep isolationism and pro-Hitler sentiment, from Charles Lindbergh to Woody Guthrie to the Daughters of the American Revolution, is a superhero, because he embodies the values and beliefs of the average guy. "Apollo" and "the Midnighter," openly gay Super-couple (and thinly disguised Superman/Batman clones) who believe themselves better than the average guy and act accordingly as dictators, are not Superheroes.
4. The Superhero is the enemy of PC, and the embodiment of doing the right thing, even at the cost of social isolation. What hipsters and the cool people don't understand, is that the average male audience is often socially isolated, particularly in High School, where social cliques abound and a strict social hierarchy rules. For the hipster, secure at or near the top of the urban social hierarchy, there is nothing worse than being cast out from the glitterati. The average guy who read comics, felt it was acceptable since that social reality already informed their existence.
5. The Superhero must have a sense of wonder. The Superhero is not merely a hero like Indiana Jones or John McClane. He is above all else, a sense of possibility, of wonder, excitement, and strangeness. The villains are scared of this wonder.
6. The Superhero's costume must reinforce the sense of wonder. The costume is important, it visually distinguishes the hero from a two-fisted ordinary man, into a sense of possibility and wonder, or terror and menace (to villains), or awesome power, or any combination thereof.
7. The Superhero must embody a deep emotional truth or sense of aspiration in their audience/readership. Superman and Captain America embody the optimism and power of American patriotism at it's best. Batman the moral revenge fantasy, Spider-Man the power of puberty and it's body changing effects, Iron Man the ability to make world-changing tools through technology as an uber-nerd, Captain Marvel and the Hulk every little boy's fantasy of being big and strong. Through either a magic word or massive temper tantrum. Green Lantern is a cop with a power-ring, and the Flash is speed personified, able to save many by being just fast enough. There are many, many possibilities, but each has to appeal to some part or aspect of the readership and audience.
8. The villain defines the hero, in what the hero will not allow, and will fight to stop. For Superman, it's Robber Baron greed in Lex Luthor. For Batman, it's the insane desire of the criminal to inflict sadistic pain for the purpose of inflicting pain and misery (the Joker). For Green Lantern, it's Sinestro who wants to rule the world with a power ring the opposite of his own, to create chaos and war instead of law and order. The villain might be the complete opposite of the hero (Lex Luthor to Clark Kent) or similar but with a huge difference (Sinestro and Green Lantern). But the hero must always fight the villain's plans and his morality (or often, lack of it). That's why he's the hero. And why the audience loves him.
9. The hero must win, and the villain lose. This is a male empowerment fantasy, after all, not an art-film for hipsters in Greenwich Village or Santa Monica.
Hollywood bubble figures like Robinov don't get it. Today's Comic book writers don't make stories or characters who appeal to much of anyone beyond the tiny, hipster and aging crowd of today's comic book readers. Comics today circulate at a fraction of the readership they held as recently as the speculation boom of the early 1990's, let alone WWII or the Silver Age. Some marginal comics circulate at 30,000 copies a week. Superman in the early 1990's sold 2 million copies a week, and had several titles a month, to boot! Most of the new characters (or PC-updated ones) created in the last few years have failed to catch on in any meaningful way. Nearly all the iconic, widely recognized, or even popular Superheroes were created at least forty years ago, by pulp-energy, fringe writers and artists seeking to connect with socially isolated, nerdy young men. The cool and the hip crowd did not read comics. Which is why these characters, even relatively unknown to the general public characters like Iron Man, are popular.
And why "The Authority" or "Watchmen" are not. "Watchmen" will be a flop.
My suggestion to Robinov, to make DC Superhero movies that will make money:
1. Yes, follow Marvel's plan of introducing Superheros in solo adventures with cameo cross-overs to create anticipation and excitement for a team movie.
2. Don't hire any DC Comics writer or editor, in fact keep them far away from your movies with no input.
3. Don't use anything story-wise done in the last fifteen years or so, because it will violate the secret of Superheroes -- the stories will be about how cool and hip and edgy the writers are, not male empowerment fantasies.
4. Repeat constantly, "male empowerment fantasy" to understand what your movies will be and what they won't (everything else).
5. Understand that demographics means that your male audience will be older than 17, by a large margin. They'll be in their twenties, thirties, and forties, but will still want stories that provide "male empowerment," see #4. This means themes that are mature, while still delivering the "male empowerment fantasy" such as Iron Man. With it's forty-plus lead and adult (but light) story.
6. Use writers and directors who understand the core of the character (and his villains), as originally conceived and proved by time to be popular. This means no Bryan Singer tributes to Richard Donner. Or inserting of any "cool" and PC subtext that subverts the male empowerment fantasy. You may need to search outside of who you thought would be appropriate, and should beware of those seeking to make an art movie instead of a well-crafted male empowerment fantasy (Angst Lee would be a good example of who not to hire).
7. The right casting is critical, and as shown by both the Batman and Iron Man movies, the audience is older, so an older and more experienced actor is certainly appropriate, and no barrier but rather often a critical element to success.
8. Don't rush the movies. The Punisher, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, and Hulk movies all show what happens: the stories move away from the core of the character's male empowerment fantasy and changes into star vehicles, special effects seminars, or arty angst fests.
9. Understand, not every character is Batman, and don't be afraid to sparingly use Batman to show that many DC characters are unlike Batman. The Flash is a sunny optimist, as befits a speedster. Green Lantern is a conservative, "right-stuff" supercop with a power ring that can do nearly anything. Captain Marvel is an eleven year old boy literally inside "Earth's Mightiest Mortal" and possessed of magical super-strength and speed and invincibility. Green Arrow is a notorious womanizer (Batman is a semi-monk) with a personal life beyond messy.
10. The villain is important, but only so far as he makes the hero the hero. Die Hard was not about Hans Gruber, but John McClane. Don't make the mistake that too many writers, particularly current comic book writers make and fall in love with the villain. He's there to be defeated in the end, after all.
...Read more
"The Dark Knight" made $478 million as of Friday, August 22, 2008, not because it was "dark" or "edgy." Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov believes:
Creatively, he sees exploring the evil side to characters as the key to unlocking some of Warner Bros.' DC properties. "We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it," he says. That goes for the company's Superman franchise as well.
The correct term for this is stupidity. "The Dark Knight" was successful because it hit the emotional and story core of the character, when he was created back in 1939. Which was and is, the "moral revenge" story, with a character who takes revenge (and action) within strict moral limits. That's why Batman does not kill, even though he might have good reason to do so. Moreover, Batman is an ordinary man. Unlike the other Superheroes, he has no powers whatsoever other than what an intelligent and highly motivated and disciplined man could potentially have, with the aid of money and technology. He's the direct descendant of Edmund Dantes, and Sherlock Holmes, with a dash of Zorro. Batman, lacking any superpowers, pretty much has to be intimidating and ruthless (right up to the strict moral lines he'll never cross).
Batman in the comics and movies consistently beats, dangles over great heights, and otherwise terrifies the worst and least of crooks, but never, ever kills anyone.
Why?
Because Batman is a power-fantasy for guys.
The secret to comics is who created and read them, back when they were popular, first in the late 1930's and early 1940's, and again in the 1960's (the "Golden" and "Silver" age respectively). The Comics creators were mostly Jewish, nerdy-smart guys, who liked the pretty girls who had no time for them, and preferred the wealthy athletes in High School and College. In wish fulfillment, these mostly Jewish artists and writers, who in the 1930s and early 1940s lived at a time when actual, real Nazis were active in America (the German-American Bund), created (almost exclusively male) characters that provided wish fulfillment to every young man and boy who was not a high-status, wealthy athlete, liked by guys and pursued by girls.
Which is about 90% of the male population, at one time or another. That's what comics were, and the reason for the characters success. Superman is the most globally recognized fictional character. Because of that secret.
Yes, it's really that simple. Male wish fulfillment is the secret to Superhero success.
Spider-Man's nerdy guy element of suddenly having a superpower, and winning the girl, harkens directly back to Superman, and Shuster and Siegel's empowerment fantasy. Complete with High School Jock foil to defeat and beat for the girl's affection. Even Iron Man fits this mode. While Tony Stark may be a wealthy, billionaire playboy, at heart he is a nerd, and is happiest playing and building and experimenting with technology. He builds his own superpower. No wonder nerdy guys love him. He's one of them, as a Superhero.
The problem for Studio execs, and in particular Robinov, is that comics today are not what they once were. Kids and nerdy young men mostly don't read them. Comics can cost in excess of $5 each, and are available only in Comic Book shops, which are few in number. They are written for a much older audience, median age of 40, the hipster crowd. An audience seeking not male empowerment fantasies, but uber-PC, ultra-liberal critiques of average people (and their politicians and values). There is either the grim-and-gritty ultraviolent superhero only marginally distinct from the villain (if at all). Or superteams of politically correct gay, addict, lesbian, latina, etc. superbeings who rule America to protect "the world" from un-PC Americans. Such as DC/Wildstorm's "The Authority". Remember them?
There is a reason you don't.
The dirty little secret behind comics and comic book writers today is that the writers have completely repudiated the male empowerment fantasy, where the hero has some power and gets the girl or at least defeats the bad guy (within acceptable moral limits) and saves ordinary people. "The Authority" is merely the dream of the hipster and what he/she would do if they ruled America and/or the world. Very importantly, the male empowerment Superhero does not want to rule the world (that's the Supervillain's department). He wants to save it, and do so within the kinds of rules that ordinary men and boys set for themselves. No sadism. Mostly no killing. Protecting innocents. Following all the rules.
Because, in the world of the original Golden and Silver age empowerment fantasies, the rules were quite explicit, and the reason for the characters success. Superman's been popular since 1938 for a reason. And it's not being "dark," "hip," or "edgy." Certainly not identifying with an evil side, or the villain. Lex Luthor is Superman's main villain, and other than being bald, his persona can be extremely variable. Superman is always the same. The Ultimate American (along with Captain America).
Here are the rules:
1. A character with great power must show great restraint, lest he fall into villain territory. The amount of restraint and humanity a Superhero shows is directly proportional to his power. Superman must be everyman empathetic to even the villains, whereas ordinary Batman can do pretty much anything but kill people.
2. The character must be someone the male audience can identify with and reasonably project themselves into, because the character is a male empowerment fantasy. Villains and characters indistinguishable from villains won't work, no matter how "edgy" and hip they might be among the creative class and upper-income urbanites.
3. The character must actively defend the conventional morality and beliefs of the average person, who after all forms the audience/readership for the Superhero. This means, among other things, the assimilationist Patriotism of the Golden/Silver age, mostly Jewish creators, which most ordinary Americans still hold today. Captain America, punching out Hitler in 1940, a year before America's entry into the War, at a time of deep isolationism and pro-Hitler sentiment, from Charles Lindbergh to Woody Guthrie to the Daughters of the American Revolution, is a superhero, because he embodies the values and beliefs of the average guy. "Apollo" and "the Midnighter," openly gay Super-couple (and thinly disguised Superman/Batman clones) who believe themselves better than the average guy and act accordingly as dictators, are not Superheroes.
4. The Superhero is the enemy of PC, and the embodiment of doing the right thing, even at the cost of social isolation. What hipsters and the cool people don't understand, is that the average male audience is often socially isolated, particularly in High School, where social cliques abound and a strict social hierarchy rules. For the hipster, secure at or near the top of the urban social hierarchy, there is nothing worse than being cast out from the glitterati. The average guy who read comics, felt it was acceptable since that social reality already informed their existence.
5. The Superhero must have a sense of wonder. The Superhero is not merely a hero like Indiana Jones or John McClane. He is above all else, a sense of possibility, of wonder, excitement, and strangeness. The villains are scared of this wonder.
6. The Superhero's costume must reinforce the sense of wonder. The costume is important, it visually distinguishes the hero from a two-fisted ordinary man, into a sense of possibility and wonder, or terror and menace (to villains), or awesome power, or any combination thereof.
7. The Superhero must embody a deep emotional truth or sense of aspiration in their audience/readership. Superman and Captain America embody the optimism and power of American patriotism at it's best. Batman the moral revenge fantasy, Spider-Man the power of puberty and it's body changing effects, Iron Man the ability to make world-changing tools through technology as an uber-nerd, Captain Marvel and the Hulk every little boy's fantasy of being big and strong. Through either a magic word or massive temper tantrum. Green Lantern is a cop with a power-ring, and the Flash is speed personified, able to save many by being just fast enough. There are many, many possibilities, but each has to appeal to some part or aspect of the readership and audience.
8. The villain defines the hero, in what the hero will not allow, and will fight to stop. For Superman, it's Robber Baron greed in Lex Luthor. For Batman, it's the insane desire of the criminal to inflict sadistic pain for the purpose of inflicting pain and misery (the Joker). For Green Lantern, it's Sinestro who wants to rule the world with a power ring the opposite of his own, to create chaos and war instead of law and order. The villain might be the complete opposite of the hero (Lex Luthor to Clark Kent) or similar but with a huge difference (Sinestro and Green Lantern). But the hero must always fight the villain's plans and his morality (or often, lack of it). That's why he's the hero. And why the audience loves him.
9. The hero must win, and the villain lose. This is a male empowerment fantasy, after all, not an art-film for hipsters in Greenwich Village or Santa Monica.
Hollywood bubble figures like Robinov don't get it. Today's Comic book writers don't make stories or characters who appeal to much of anyone beyond the tiny, hipster and aging crowd of today's comic book readers. Comics today circulate at a fraction of the readership they held as recently as the speculation boom of the early 1990's, let alone WWII or the Silver Age. Some marginal comics circulate at 30,000 copies a week. Superman in the early 1990's sold 2 million copies a week, and had several titles a month, to boot! Most of the new characters (or PC-updated ones) created in the last few years have failed to catch on in any meaningful way. Nearly all the iconic, widely recognized, or even popular Superheroes were created at least forty years ago, by pulp-energy, fringe writers and artists seeking to connect with socially isolated, nerdy young men. The cool and the hip crowd did not read comics. Which is why these characters, even relatively unknown to the general public characters like Iron Man, are popular.
And why "The Authority" or "Watchmen" are not. "Watchmen" will be a flop.
My suggestion to Robinov, to make DC Superhero movies that will make money:
1. Yes, follow Marvel's plan of introducing Superheros in solo adventures with cameo cross-overs to create anticipation and excitement for a team movie.
2. Don't hire any DC Comics writer or editor, in fact keep them far away from your movies with no input.
3. Don't use anything story-wise done in the last fifteen years or so, because it will violate the secret of Superheroes -- the stories will be about how cool and hip and edgy the writers are, not male empowerment fantasies.
4. Repeat constantly, "male empowerment fantasy" to understand what your movies will be and what they won't (everything else).
5. Understand that demographics means that your male audience will be older than 17, by a large margin. They'll be in their twenties, thirties, and forties, but will still want stories that provide "male empowerment," see #4. This means themes that are mature, while still delivering the "male empowerment fantasy" such as Iron Man. With it's forty-plus lead and adult (but light) story.
6. Use writers and directors who understand the core of the character (and his villains), as originally conceived and proved by time to be popular. This means no Bryan Singer tributes to Richard Donner. Or inserting of any "cool" and PC subtext that subverts the male empowerment fantasy. You may need to search outside of who you thought would be appropriate, and should beware of those seeking to make an art movie instead of a well-crafted male empowerment fantasy (Angst Lee would be a good example of who not to hire).
7. The right casting is critical, and as shown by both the Batman and Iron Man movies, the audience is older, so an older and more experienced actor is certainly appropriate, and no barrier but rather often a critical element to success.
8. Don't rush the movies. The Punisher, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, and Hulk movies all show what happens: the stories move away from the core of the character's male empowerment fantasy and changes into star vehicles, special effects seminars, or arty angst fests.
9. Understand, not every character is Batman, and don't be afraid to sparingly use Batman to show that many DC characters are unlike Batman. The Flash is a sunny optimist, as befits a speedster. Green Lantern is a conservative, "right-stuff" supercop with a power ring that can do nearly anything. Captain Marvel is an eleven year old boy literally inside "Earth's Mightiest Mortal" and possessed of magical super-strength and speed and invincibility. Green Arrow is a notorious womanizer (Batman is a semi-monk) with a personal life beyond messy.
10. The villain is important, but only so far as he makes the hero the hero. Die Hard was not about Hans Gruber, but John McClane. Don't make the mistake that too many writers, particularly current comic book writers make and fall in love with the villain. He's there to be defeated in the end, after all.
...Read more
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Hollywood's Romantic Comedies for Men: Demographic Reality?
Recently, Hollywood has found a lot of success in Romantic Comedies. But not with women, rather with men. Films like "the Wedding Crashers," ($209 million domestic box office) or "Knocked Up," ($148 million domestic box office) or "the Forty Year Old Virgin" ($109 million domestic box office) have done well, featuring men as the Romantic Comedy stars, not women. By contrast, "27 Dresses" ($76 million domestic box office), and "P.S. I Love You" ($53 million domestically), featuring female stars like Katherine Heigl and Hillary Swank, respectively, have not done as well.
Hollywood may be stumbling upon a demographic reality: in the marriage (and relationship market), it's women not men who are in control, and due to demographics, there are more men seeking to marry women than there are available and willing women. Creating a buyer's market for romantic fantasies aimed at men. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, in that women seek commitment and men wish to play the field. But demographics don't lie, and the US Census Bureau (again) has some fascinating data to back this up.
First, a word of caution. The Census Bureau no longer collects data on marriages and divorces every year, and makes it very difficult to tease out marriage data for men and women. Whenever a government agency conceals statistics and numbers like this, it's wise to assume that the bureaucracy wishes to hide something. The Bureau of Justice Statistical Reporting, available here, for example, goes through contortions to conceal the relative crime rates for Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians, as well as the absolute number of crimes committed by each, and cross-racial crimes, although the rates and numbers can be teased out by careful analysis. The reason for this obfuscation is obvious -- no one inside the Justice Department wants the statistics to be part of public discussion. My instinct would be to assume that a similar dynamic is occurring with marriage rates among men and women, and the increasing ages of first-time marriages, which would be embarrassing to career-ending to disclose to the general public. Who might well demand action that conflicts with political correctness and powerful interest groups that effectively sponsor career advancement.
Be that as it may, the Census Bureau has conducted what it calls the "Survey of Income and Program Participation," which provides a 2001 snapshot of marriage and divorce among men and women. You may find (the 2001 Survey) here.
One of the fascinating things is the number of men and women who were ever married. The 2001 SIPP survey queried birth cohorts, that is men and women born in four year ranges, starting in 1935-1939 (i.e. the men and women were born in those years), and ending in 1975-1979. Bear in mind, the data from this survey is seven years old, dating to 2001. Nevertheless, it paints an interesting picture. Men in the various cohorts at age 20, who were ever married, formed a small percentage, around 20% or so, until the 1955-59 cohort, where it steadily declined to about 10%. Which makes sense, early marriage for men became less socially acceptable, and less affordable as well as incomes for blue collar work declined starting around the 1970's (when the 1955-59 cohort reached twenty, around 1975 or so).
Here's a graph produced from the report (sadly, PDF only for Excel/Open Office Calc jockeys):
[Click on the Image to Enlarge it.]
Women ever married at age 20, interestingly, show up at the first cohort, 1935-1939, at around 50%. Yes in the mid 1950's, about 50% or so of women had been married by age 20! That number steadily declines to slightly under 20% for the 1975-1979 cohort (who would have been twenty around the mid 1990's). Certainly the social effect of women marrying later is obvious here. Also, you can see the preference for older men in women's marriage pattern for this (ever married at age 20) group. Their male peers are significantly lower in marriage rates (ever married at age 20) for each cohort, so obviously the women in each cohort were marrying mostly older men. Various surveys have put the age gap in most marriages at around six years, with the man being that much older than the woman.
Men at 25 years ever married peaked at the 1940-1944 birth cohort (in the mid to late 1960's) at around 70%, and began a slow decline to slightly under 40%. Men ever married at age 30 peaked in the 1935-1939 age group (in the mid to late 1960's) at an astonishing 85% !!! Yes, folks, most men by age thirty, had overwhelming been married at least once (even if they did not stay married).
The extended adolescence and delayed marriage of men well into their thirties is a recent development. Very likely, an unhealthy one as well. By the 1965-1969 cohort, men ever married by age 30 had declined (this would be in the mid 1990's) to 65%, only slightly more than half.
Extended bachelorhood went from something only 15% of men past 30 would experience, in 1965, to 35% by 1995 or so. This is a huge change. Driven partly by economics (declining real wages for young men in their twenties pushing marriage ages for men upwards). But there are other factors involved as well.
Women ever married by age 25, in contrast, comprised 82% of the 1935-1939 cohort (again, around 1965 to 1969), and began a long, slow decline to about 53% of the 1970-74 cohort (around 1995 to 1999). [Note, for every cohort, women marry at higher rates for each category, i.e. married at age 20, age 25, or age 30.] Women ever married by age 30, have the highest rates at all, starting in the 1935-1939 cohort (again, from 1965-1969) with 88% of women by age thirty being married at least once, and declining to 74% in the 1965-1969 cohort (from 1995-1999).
What can we say about this data? A few things. One, the mid to late 1960's were an optimal time for pretty much all groups to get married, men and women, but especially men by age 30. Second, women got married and still get married at much higher rates than their same-cohort male counterparts, even if those rates have declined. More evidence (as if any were needed) that women do prefer men as husbands who are older.
Is this a problem? Yes. It is not just declining real wages for men in their twenties, which forces them to postpone marriage (renting rather than owning one's own home puts a man at a disadvantage in the marriage market). [Tthings like electronic toys are much cheaper than in the 1960's, however back then, the average man in his twenties could and did purchase a home before he reached age 30, significantly improving his chances of marriage.]
This graph shows it all:
[Click on the Image to enlarge it.]
The problem with men besides declining real income is demographics. The baby boom peaked in 1960-1964 when around 11 million men and 11 million women were born. Men and women both (marriage is consensual thankfully in the West) prefer an age gap of about 6 years or so between men and women (the woman being on average 6 years younger than her husband). Can you see the problem? For each successive cohort starting at 1935-1939, the increasing birth rate means there are more women around four to six years younger for men to choose from, and fewer older men for women to choose from. Thus, women who want to get married must compete with others, making it a man's market, allowing much higher rates of marriage for men. It's an example of supply (women four to six years younger significantly outnumbering the older male cohort) and demand (which we will assume will remain constant for men). This is admittedly an oversimplification, as noted economics, real wage declines, changing social attitudes among women towards marriage, and many other factors will affect marriage rates.
However, no matter how you slice it, declining birth rates means more older men competing for the fewer younger women each cohort. Leaving inevitably, an ever increasing amount of men out in the cold. Unmarried.
Back to Hollywood. Recall the box office numbers for the male and female romantic comedies? Even allowing for better, and worse execution of movies, Hollywood is facing a reality that it's only slowly comprehending. Women have a lot of male suitors, due to ever-declining demographics. They don't need a Romantic Comedy fantasy since they only need to look around them. This is likely why, Romantic Comedies for women started a slow but significant decline around the 1990's, when women started to realize their power in the marriage marketplace and take advantage of it.
Meanwhile, men likely need the fantasy of romance and marriage. It's no accident that good and merely pedestrian films covering the theme of "ordinary guy" meets, and after struggles, marries, his "Dream Girl" (usually orders of magnitude more attractive than himself) have done very well indeed in the box office. Any studio that recognizes this reality, and consistently implements it, is likely to be a big winner. Those that cling to outmoded demographic ideas are likely to fail just as consistently.
...Read more
Hollywood may be stumbling upon a demographic reality: in the marriage (and relationship market), it's women not men who are in control, and due to demographics, there are more men seeking to marry women than there are available and willing women. Creating a buyer's market for romantic fantasies aimed at men. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, in that women seek commitment and men wish to play the field. But demographics don't lie, and the US Census Bureau (again) has some fascinating data to back this up.
First, a word of caution. The Census Bureau no longer collects data on marriages and divorces every year, and makes it very difficult to tease out marriage data for men and women. Whenever a government agency conceals statistics and numbers like this, it's wise to assume that the bureaucracy wishes to hide something. The Bureau of Justice Statistical Reporting, available here, for example, goes through contortions to conceal the relative crime rates for Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians, as well as the absolute number of crimes committed by each, and cross-racial crimes, although the rates and numbers can be teased out by careful analysis. The reason for this obfuscation is obvious -- no one inside the Justice Department wants the statistics to be part of public discussion. My instinct would be to assume that a similar dynamic is occurring with marriage rates among men and women, and the increasing ages of first-time marriages, which would be embarrassing to career-ending to disclose to the general public. Who might well demand action that conflicts with political correctness and powerful interest groups that effectively sponsor career advancement.
Be that as it may, the Census Bureau has conducted what it calls the "Survey of Income and Program Participation," which provides a 2001 snapshot of marriage and divorce among men and women. You may find (the 2001 Survey) here.
One of the fascinating things is the number of men and women who were ever married. The 2001 SIPP survey queried birth cohorts, that is men and women born in four year ranges, starting in 1935-1939 (i.e. the men and women were born in those years), and ending in 1975-1979. Bear in mind, the data from this survey is seven years old, dating to 2001. Nevertheless, it paints an interesting picture. Men in the various cohorts at age 20, who were ever married, formed a small percentage, around 20% or so, until the 1955-59 cohort, where it steadily declined to about 10%. Which makes sense, early marriage for men became less socially acceptable, and less affordable as well as incomes for blue collar work declined starting around the 1970's (when the 1955-59 cohort reached twenty, around 1975 or so).
Here's a graph produced from the report (sadly, PDF only for Excel/Open Office Calc jockeys):
[Click on the Image to Enlarge it.]
Women ever married at age 20, interestingly, show up at the first cohort, 1935-1939, at around 50%. Yes in the mid 1950's, about 50% or so of women had been married by age 20! That number steadily declines to slightly under 20% for the 1975-1979 cohort (who would have been twenty around the mid 1990's). Certainly the social effect of women marrying later is obvious here. Also, you can see the preference for older men in women's marriage pattern for this (ever married at age 20) group. Their male peers are significantly lower in marriage rates (ever married at age 20) for each cohort, so obviously the women in each cohort were marrying mostly older men. Various surveys have put the age gap in most marriages at around six years, with the man being that much older than the woman.
Men at 25 years ever married peaked at the 1940-1944 birth cohort (in the mid to late 1960's) at around 70%, and began a slow decline to slightly under 40%. Men ever married at age 30 peaked in the 1935-1939 age group (in the mid to late 1960's) at an astonishing 85% !!! Yes, folks, most men by age thirty, had overwhelming been married at least once (even if they did not stay married).
The extended adolescence and delayed marriage of men well into their thirties is a recent development. Very likely, an unhealthy one as well. By the 1965-1969 cohort, men ever married by age 30 had declined (this would be in the mid 1990's) to 65%, only slightly more than half.
Extended bachelorhood went from something only 15% of men past 30 would experience, in 1965, to 35% by 1995 or so. This is a huge change. Driven partly by economics (declining real wages for young men in their twenties pushing marriage ages for men upwards). But there are other factors involved as well.
Women ever married by age 25, in contrast, comprised 82% of the 1935-1939 cohort (again, around 1965 to 1969), and began a long, slow decline to about 53% of the 1970-74 cohort (around 1995 to 1999). [Note, for every cohort, women marry at higher rates for each category, i.e. married at age 20, age 25, or age 30.] Women ever married by age 30, have the highest rates at all, starting in the 1935-1939 cohort (again, from 1965-1969) with 88% of women by age thirty being married at least once, and declining to 74% in the 1965-1969 cohort (from 1995-1999).
What can we say about this data? A few things. One, the mid to late 1960's were an optimal time for pretty much all groups to get married, men and women, but especially men by age 30. Second, women got married and still get married at much higher rates than their same-cohort male counterparts, even if those rates have declined. More evidence (as if any were needed) that women do prefer men as husbands who are older.
Is this a problem? Yes. It is not just declining real wages for men in their twenties, which forces them to postpone marriage (renting rather than owning one's own home puts a man at a disadvantage in the marriage market). [Tthings like electronic toys are much cheaper than in the 1960's, however back then, the average man in his twenties could and did purchase a home before he reached age 30, significantly improving his chances of marriage.]
This graph shows it all:
[Click on the Image to enlarge it.]
The problem with men besides declining real income is demographics. The baby boom peaked in 1960-1964 when around 11 million men and 11 million women were born. Men and women both (marriage is consensual thankfully in the West) prefer an age gap of about 6 years or so between men and women (the woman being on average 6 years younger than her husband). Can you see the problem? For each successive cohort starting at 1935-1939, the increasing birth rate means there are more women around four to six years younger for men to choose from, and fewer older men for women to choose from. Thus, women who want to get married must compete with others, making it a man's market, allowing much higher rates of marriage for men. It's an example of supply (women four to six years younger significantly outnumbering the older male cohort) and demand (which we will assume will remain constant for men). This is admittedly an oversimplification, as noted economics, real wage declines, changing social attitudes among women towards marriage, and many other factors will affect marriage rates.
However, no matter how you slice it, declining birth rates means more older men competing for the fewer younger women each cohort. Leaving inevitably, an ever increasing amount of men out in the cold. Unmarried.
Back to Hollywood. Recall the box office numbers for the male and female romantic comedies? Even allowing for better, and worse execution of movies, Hollywood is facing a reality that it's only slowly comprehending. Women have a lot of male suitors, due to ever-declining demographics. They don't need a Romantic Comedy fantasy since they only need to look around them. This is likely why, Romantic Comedies for women started a slow but significant decline around the 1990's, when women started to realize their power in the marriage marketplace and take advantage of it.
Meanwhile, men likely need the fantasy of romance and marriage. It's no accident that good and merely pedestrian films covering the theme of "ordinary guy" meets, and after struggles, marries, his "Dream Girl" (usually orders of magnitude more attractive than himself) have done very well indeed in the box office. Any studio that recognizes this reality, and consistently implements it, is likely to be a big winner. Those that cling to outmoded demographic ideas are likely to fail just as consistently.
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