The same old story? Huck’s March Newsletter

Are we approach­ing a turn­ing point for cul­tur­al sto­ry­telling? A few signs point to ​‘pos­si­bly.’ After a sol­id decade of reboots, fran­chise repeats, and, most incom­pre­hen­si­bly of all, musi­cal adap­ta­tions, audi­ences have reached their lim­it. Of course peo­ple who sin­cere­ly enjoy things like ​‘watch­ing TV’ and ​‘going to the cin­e­ma’ have been say­ing this for years – the tip­ping point arriv­ing some­where between the release of female Ghost­busters and Shrek 5 – but now execs’ ears might actu­al­ly be open because it’s been con­firmed by mar­ket research.

A recent study com­mis­sioned by the stream­ing ser­vice Tubi found that the vast major­i­ty of Mil­len­ni­als and Gen‑Z want more orig­i­nal TV shows from ​“inde­pen­dent and small-time cre­ators.” This fol­lows box office trends that have seen audi­ences for art house films both grow­ing and skew­ing younger, with tick­et sales for The Iron Claw, Poor Things, and The Holdovers com­ing pre­dom­i­nant­ly from under-35s. The same sur­vey also found that view­ers val­ue lega­cy sit­coms like Friends, which could be seen as con­flict­ing, but prob­a­bly says more about the endurance of shows that have a sin­gu­lar vision and com­mit­ted writ­ing built into them from the start (as opposed to the cur­rent preva­lence of min­i­mum wage mini-rooms and char­ac­ters that are focus-grouped to death). Plus there’s the fact that as long as there are 19-year-olds on come­downs, there will be a demand for easy view­ing with that soft ​‘90s light­ing that slides off your eye­balls like but­ter on a baby potato.

This isn’t just a trend among younger peo­ple. Block­buster orig­i­nals like Bar­bie, Oppen­heimer and Sound of Free­dom are reg­u­lar­ly out­per­form­ing long-run­ning series’ like Mis­sion Impos­si­ble, Indi­ana Jones, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Apple TV+ has ush­ered in a ban­ner era for what GQ has dubbed ​“pres­tige dad TV” with war and espi­onage shows like Mas­ters of the Air, Slow Hors­es, and Hijack. Even acad­e­my judges seem to be reward­ing the unex­pect­ed this year. Da’Vine Joy Ran­dolph took home Best Sup­port­ing Actress for Christ­mas indie The Holdovers at both the Oscars and the BAF­TAS. At the Gold­en Globes, French legal dra­ma Anato­my of a Fall beat Bar­bie and Oppen­heimer for Best Screen­play. In an indus­try afraid to take risks, one of this year’s biggest suc­cess sto­ries has turned out to be Poor Things – a Franken­stein spin about a wacky sex baby. And I think that’s beautiful.

There’s a per­va­sive belief that Gen‑Z and Mil­len­ni­als are hard demo­graph­ics to crack. A large part of it comes down to mon­ey. Strug­gling stu­dios over-strate­gize to make sure they get a bang for their buck, tak­ing a ​‘tick box’ approach that pro­duces noth­ing of res­o­nance but makes big­ots cry that every­thing has ​“gone woke!” because they brought back Glad­i­a­tors with­out the cheer­lead­ers and made the Pow­er Rangers gay. The oth­er side of it is more gen­er­a­tional. Since the upper-ech­e­lons of the enter­tain­ment indus­try are filled with freaks still refus­ing to retire at 80, there’s a seri­ous lack of aware­ness around how peo­ple who grew up with the inter­net con­sume things. Have you ever had a fam­i­ly mem­ber or col­league over the age of 55 catch you lis­ten­ing to Phil Collins or some­thing, and they will fur­row their brow and say to you with gen­uine shock and con­fu­sion – almost accusato­ry – ​“how do you know about this???” It’s like that on a mass scale. Deci­sion-mak­ers still seri­ous­ly under­es­ti­mate how much cul­tur­al infor­ma­tion young peo­ple raised online are exposed to. So while it’s a nice idea to ​‘intro­duce’ new audi­ences to films like The Crow by updat­ing them with mod­ern sig­ni­fiers, it doesn’t work because the zeit­geist – which hasn’t been con­fined to its own time peri­od for decades – has long been flood­ed with ref­er­ences to the 1994 original.

Even if Bran­don Lee as The Crow wasn’t a long-time Tum­blr, Pin­ter­est board and fan­cam sta­ple, the mar­ket­ing for the Rupert Sanders ver­sion is less than com­pelling. The trail­er is being aggres­sive­ly down­vot­ed on YouTube part­ly because it’s coarse to re-do a film that Bran­don Lee famous­ly died mak­ing, and part­ly because they turned Eric Draven into a Sound­cloud rap­per – and very few peo­ple want to root for that guy. The same goes for Doug Liman’s new Road House, which trades ​‘80s fam­i­ly action barbs (“pre­pare to die”) and honky­tonk bar fights for high-speed yacht chas­es and a pro­fes­sion­al UFC ring. It’s also worth remem­ber­ing that nei­ther Road House or The Crow got their cult sta­tus from being good, per se. They’re beloved for their 0 – 100 plot esca­la­tions, sol­id aes­thet­ic (mid­dle-Amer­i­can sleaze and indus­tri­al goth, respec­tive­ly), and stereo­typ­i­cal under­dog leads with bad dia­logue and a com­pelling quest for vengeance. Cut to Patrick Swayze earnest­ly doing Tai-Chi in the whitest pants ever woven, or Draven sooth­ing his pain by epi­cal­ly shred­ding on the roof. Aban­don all that for CGI light­ing and con­tem­po­rary self-aware­ness and all you have is a charm­less action film in 4K.

Slow­ly but sure­ly we’re remem­ber­ing that authen­tic­i­ty is some­thing peo­ple can feel, and its absence is over­whelm­ing. You can’t just chuck it about as a mar­ket­ing tool and expect audi­ences to respond like they’ve just seen The Craft for the first time. Peo­ple don’t want remakes with women and minori­ties shoe­horned into some­one else’s sto­ry. They want things they can believe in. They want shit that feels hon­est, even if it’s not that great, see: The Crow (1994). There’s a sim­i­lar ethos emerg­ing in music, with James Blake rail­ing against the way the indus­try is organ­ised around tech plat­forms rather than artists that pop­u­late them. In response, he’s push­ing for a mod­el dri­ven less by viral moments and stream­ing num­bers – some­thing anti-algorithmic.

Redis­cov­er­ing the organ­ic means mak­ing room for the risk of fail­ure again, which is bad news for big busi­ness­es but feels like an inevitabil­i­ty. Real authen­tic­i­ty will be reward­ed, and become an even more valu­able cur­ren­cy, the more we’re force-fed the algo­rith­mi­cal­ly dom­i­nant and AI-gen­er­at­ed. In fact, I think that’s already start­ing to hap­pen. Anec­do­tal­ly, The Zone of Inter­est is doing so well it’s prompt­ing art house cin­e­mas to do extend­ed runs. The usu­al­ly paint-by-num­bers BRITs threw a curve­ball this year when CASIS­DEAD (who we’ve shout­ed out on this newslet­ter before) won Best Hip-Hop / Rap / Grime Act. This comes despite his delib­er­ate avoid­ance of press and hav­ing way low­er stream­ing num­bers than oth­er acts in his cat­e­go­ry (which includ­ed Dave and Cen­tral Cee), instead gear­ing his mar­ket­ing towards music videos, satir­i­cal web­sites and immer­sive events that play into his album’s world­build­ing. In short: it’s a strat­e­gy that caters to the fans, not the indus­try. Since the BRITs intro­duced audi­ence vot­ing in cer­tain cat­e­gories this year, some have tak­en CAS’s win as proof that even in an age of ​“stats” hard­core fan­bas­es still hold the true pow­er.

I’m inclined to agree. Indeed, what bet­ter exam­ple of this than the fact that Cri­te­ri­on, after a long and hard-won cam­paign by film enthu­si­asts, has just added Fred­dy Got Fin­gered to its collection.

I’ve been bang­ing on about the cul­ture indus­tries in this newslet­ter, but arguably the sec­tor most in need of orig­i­nal sto­ry­telling right now is jour­nal­ism. In that spir­it, I want to shout out three inde­pen­dent media plat­forms that are doing great work in spite of, you know, fuck­ing every­thing. The first is 404 Media, a work­er-owned pub­li­ca­tion focussed on tech­nol­o­gy and the inter­net. It deliv­ers the kind of whip-smart, anti-sen­sa­tion­al report­ing on things like porn and e‑commerce that you sim­ply won’t get from broad­sheets cater­ing to boomers who still text with their index fin­ger. The sec­ond is Away Days, a docu-series cov­er­ing under­ground sub­cul­tures and fringe com­mu­ni­ties around the world – no rules bare knuck­le fight clubs, drug gangs in Brazil’s fave­las, that sort of thing. It doesn’t launch until the sum­mer but it’s from the team behind the influ­en­tial mod­ern war­fare plat­form Pop­u­lar Front, so I feel con­fi­dent in say­ing that it will slap. The third is film­mak­er Abubakar Fini­in, who moved back to Soma­liland from Lon­don ear­li­er this year where he’s pro­duc­ing a docu-series about life on the ground in ​“Africa’s hid­den nation” – the first is about the grow­ing foot­ball scene.

So there you go. Less com­plain­ing about how The Main­stream Media Isn’t Talk­ing About This, more sup­port­ing the grass­roots jour­nal­ists who lit­er­al­ly are.

We want our Artist-in-Res­i­dence to expand your minds, so here are some cul­tur­al things Blind­boy Boat­club rec­om­mends you should explore:

Film: There’s a film on YouTube called The Grass­er. It’s an ama­teur action film, made in my home town of Lim­er­ick some time in the ear­ly 2000s. It’s effec­tive­ly a load of mid­dle-aged men, com­plete­ly unscript­ed, play­ing with toy guns in a for­est. I wouldn’t say it’s enjoy­able. But it has the ener­gy I look for in Har­mo­ny Korine’s films or Wern­er Her­zog.

Music: The last song that real­ly blew my head off was this one called ​‘Attach­ment Style’ by an artist called Kavari, who is from Scot­land I think. It’s like jun­gle music played through a pig’s arse. It sounds like some­one who is ter­ri­fied of jun­gle music, describ­ing what jun­gle music sounds like. I love it.

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