You're Just A Copy of an Imitation: The Decades Long Music & Movie Drought

As most people know, I am about as cynical and annoying about this topic as it gets, and I have a firm stance and opinion that is based on being constantly let down by the movies and albums coming out in recent years. I think up until 2005, music was constantly evolving, and new ideas were flooding the radio. Every decade from the 1960s to the 1990s had something innovative about it. However, since 2005, I cannot think of a single band that has pushed the envelope on what can be done, and Marilyn Manson said it best: “You’re just a copy of an imitation."

Anything that comes out nowadays just sounds like something I’ve heard from a band that was making music 20-some odd years ago, and so why would I listen to this new band when I could listen to the people who originally pioneered this sound? That is the larger question to be thought about. This also applies to film as well, which is a field in which no one seems hungry to create, and much of what I have seen has been, simply put, complacent. The only exception to this statement is if an artist (director or musician) who was making music or movies in the span of time before 2005 starts coming out with stuff after that year, then I am more than likely to enjoy it. However, I cannot think of a single artist that has started after that year that is remarkable in any way besides the one-off good song or movie. While I could probably mention all the great movies and songs of the past, this blog is mostly complaining because it just needs to be done.

List of Movies from 1990-2010:

https://boxd.it/pWyOQ

For movies, I can’t think of a single director in recent years that has done anything worth discussing even 5 years from now (i.e., it’s all so very forgettable and unremarkable). This is in stark contrast to the 80s, 90s, and even early 2000s, where we were lucky enough to have such figures as Vincent Gallo, David Cronenberg, Daren Aronofsky, Dario Argento, Gregg Araki, and Michael Haneke, all of whom have films that are able to stand the test of time and will never even be touched by modern-day cinema. This isn’t to say there aren’t a few decent flicks that have come out, but an overwhelming majority just seem like the copy-pasted version of a director’s previous film. The largest culprit of this is none other than Mr. Jordan Peele. His debut film Get Out was a promising start to a career; it was a unique take on the horror genre, but then his second film Us seemed like it was written solely around the plot twist that happened in the final act of the movie, and the rest lacked any substance, as well as piggybacking off the success of Get Out. It is incredibly discouraging to constantly go to see new movies, and you can immediately tell that they were created with little to no artistic integrity and were made with the sole purpose of getting as many people to watch them as possible.

The biggest bone to pick with modern cinema that I have is with the absolute garbage production company, that is, A24. There are not enough words in the English language that can describe or even come close to getting across the hatred that I have for this company. I would like to add that up until mid-2017, the movies that they produced weren’t even that bad; they generally had pretty great movies that all had their own unique voice, style, direction, etc. Some of my favorite movies of the 2010s were produced by A24, like The Lobster, Spring Breakers, and Good Time. However, the largest thing to note about that is that 2/3 of those directors were making movies in either the 90s or 2000s. The movies that they’ve produced over the last 6 years somehow all feel, look, and are written the exact same, even though they generally have different directors. I don’t understand how this is possible at all. You could put on any given A24 film, and I wouldn’t be able to tell which is which, and none of them are creative enough to be watched a second time or even discussed several years from now.

Playlist for songs between 1990-2005:

Now onto music. The oh-so-horrible state of music is somehow slightly better than the state of modern-day cinema. I would like to start by saying that there are a few artists from post-2005 that are wildly unique (largely contained in the pop genre), such as Die Antwoord, Lana Del Rey, Sohodolls, and Lady Gaga, but the thing about these four is that they all started making music between ’07 and ’12. I don’t have much to say about music. Besides these few artists, there are few bands that have innovated anything at all. I’m not saying bands need to reinvent the wheel, but every new album I’ve listened to over the last 10 years just feels or sounds like something that came out earlier that was unique and innovative at the time. Every new indie band sounds like some wannabe Pavement/Flaming Lips/Mojave 3, every female rage artist is a poor copy of PJ Harvey/Hole/Fiona Apple, and each new metal group sounds like a boring version of Deftones/Snot/Marilyn Manson. The list goes on and on and on. This issue I have with music is much harder to describe than with movies because, truly, everything I listen to that has come out recently sounds like some blended-up garbage from a person who was “inspired” by other bands, and when I say inspired, I mean, “couldn’t be bothered to come up with their own creative idea."

There will never be an era where we have movies like The Brown Bunny, The Piano Teacher, Requiem for a Dream, Wings of Desire, and Mysterious Skin, nor an era where bands like Blonde Redhead, Deftones, Sparklehorse, Black Box Recorder, and Portishead exist at the same time, and this is such a grim future that is ahead. Here’s to several more decades of painful mediocrity and unremarkable art being produced at inhuman rates with little to no artistic integrity or creative direction.