Yes, I really did just quote Joe Dirt, and no, you’re not in the middle of bad movie night. But on the entertainment front, you have to wonder exactly where movies are heading.Over the past few months we’ve seen a steady decline in ticket sales for true-to-life and art-house movies, simply because people don’t want to spend hard-earned money to see something they themselves may be experiencing. They want an escape. They want something happy, uplifting, and transforming.
We put a blog up a few weeks ago headlining this idea, and the concept of embracing the age of “light entertainment” we’re slowly walking into. But it’s not just movies; it seems everything is bouncing into an era of “stay positive” these days. Pop music hasn’t been this sugar sweet since TRL, and hero and underdog films are starting to pop up in theaters along with family films (of which we’ll see plenty blossoming this spring).
You also have to look at retro-ism when thinking of this. The relaunch and reboot of ’70s and ’80s film franchises and toys hearken back to a better day, and put smiles on faces that haven’t smiled at toys in two decades. All of this seems to be coming together as a nationwide form of escapism. And while we track these ideas separately in different Waves in CultureWaves®, it is interesting to see it form its own spectrum.
Safety, Belonging, and Esteem all have escapist tendencies that change based on human behavior and show themselves in different ways. In Safety, we find people simply wanting to escape the pressures of their lives. In Belonging, we see the polar opposite, with people willing to embrace something that connects them to who they were more than ever. And finally, in Esteem we see that being an insider on retro-ism, as opposed to a first-timer, definitely has its perks.
So while we’re all checking blogs like “Once Upon a Win,” browsing toy stores to look at our favorite imagination-time friends from the ’80s, or telling our friends about a coveted pair of Air Jordan’s or where you can buy the Thriller jacket, we’re all embracing and evolving nostalgia. From the point where it’s no longer nostalgic, it’s current.
It’s in this vein of human behavior that our theory of “trends recycle themselves” is at its strongest. Culture is a monster that eats at its own tail, and if we’re not willing to take a bite, we might as well starve and face reality.
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