OBVIOUSLY I JUST FULLY BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE CAN HAVE DIFFERENT TASTE AND THAT’S OKAY!! It’s more than okay, its essential

I don’t want everyone to like the same stuff, i don’t want to like the same stuff as everyone!

Do i have STRONG feelings about how it’s a shame that Yellowjackets got insane buzz and the Wilds, a far gayer, far more nuanced show got quietly cancelled. I sure do!

I think the reason i hate it is not because of taste but because usually the exposure for one i is VASTLY larger than the the other, and so much of what media succeeds is not based on quality, but visibility (and how that visibility translates to money)

This is especially true of television but it’s also true of most creative mediums. Why one thing fails and another doesn’t is sometimes ephemeral and often times marketing, whether extremely public or orchestrated quietly

Of course things sometimes transcend plans and becomes smash hits without a lot of money being poured in...I think someone mentioned in another plurk recently Our Flag Means Death as a REALLY good example

Media buzz these days is, more often than not, anticipated and cultivated (often with the intent of seeming like it happened organically).

OFMD is a rare example where it seems like the buzz really did spontaneously outperform what they anticipated

Which is VERY COOL, if exceptionally rare.

It’s funny because i do often see blame laid squarely on marketing when a piece of media fails, but often a preference to sweep under the rug the role of marketing in a piece of media succeeding. It’s a strange double standard that doens’t really make sense?

Ie/ A movie like The Woman King comes out, does pretty poorly and fails to really motivate a widespread cultural moment....marketing. Which most certainly DID play a role!

At the exact same time, Wakanda Forever comes out, is HIGHLY successful and now the conversation is “it succeeded because fans love it and want to see more like it”, which is true, but, I think it’s a good case study of...WF has a billion dollar marketing powerhouse behind it, and absolutely marketed and marketed and MARKETED

Both things can be true, also untrue.

Imo good or bad, marketing IS the big cultural taste maker in our society, and ignoring that fact isn’t subversive or making it go away. We know about movies now because someone is paid to make us know.

Marketing for films in the modern era is less about posters and commercials and more about, social media conversation and tiktokers

it always HAS been but those tools are more powerful than they’ve ever been

The Last of Us is such a powerful example of this, in my opinion. As someone who works in the arts, I’m really fascinated by what clicks with society on a very large scale

There are one hundred thousand think pieces about why The Last of Us is good, why people like it, etc. But at a certain point, do franchises take on their own momentum, and become familiar, carrying their own weight forward with minimal work on part of the marketing?

MAYBE!

Maybe there’s just a human need for collectivism in art...like, are there a hundred stories telling the same narrative of The Last of Us, from both before and after it? Yes!

But none of them are something everyone you know (and dont know) i also watching

So you read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and you talk to...who? The one person you maybe know who read it? Maybe that water cooler element really is key

Which is something that is both, fascinating and compelling, and also disheartening? But everything in art is like that.

I know a lot of people would be like “Damn bitch, it’s just a good show”

To which i say ‘I’m gonna be in art school debt for the rest of my life, and talking about this stuff is WHAT I HAVE’

Your extensive overthinking is a major charm point okay

Also why is it a good show? IS it? And if it is, who decides? what about the hundred other good shows that come out every year and immediately fall into obscurity?

Is prestige TV just the gallery art of television

Extremely good and appealing

(Not that prestige tv is real any more...it’s all prestige TV)

safelybeds: LMAO YOU GET ME, you have to get me

The only way to channel anxiety about being a creator in 2023 is to think about this stuff. Or not think about it at all. I DONT KNOW. Lots of people probably live rich and happy lives not thinking about it

And like, to be fair i don’t think everyone has to care about this stuff or it is a moral or intellectual failing to just...wanna watch stuff. That’s what art is for too