First, some context. You're familiar with Ricky Gervais's point about religion. If you're not, it's only 90 seconds.
OK, so here's the Gedankenversuch. Suppose that overnight we all lose our memory of which books and movies are acclaimed and/or popular. Everyone in the world, I mean. Those books and movies and TV shows are all still around, we can look at any of them, but we no longer know which were famous and which had been forgotten by history.
Fast forward ten years. Are the famous books and movies of this imaginary 2032 the same as now? Completely different? Or is there some overlap? And if the last, which are the IPs that can make a comeback despite mass amnesia?
Of course, in reality you'd be able to see which stories had had endless sequels and remakes. Frankenstein, for example. But let's not nitpick about how this would work. Let's just postulate that somehow we can access all the stories of the past but we don't know which of them we used to think were best.
Sometimes the first to market gets to be the most popular. That's true of D&D, for example. But just as often it's not the case. If all of entertainment were to reset to Year Zero, would The Books of Magic become more popular than Harry Potter? Would Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth outsell The Sandman? Would Dorothy L Sayers take the crown of Queen of Crime from Agatha Christie? Or would Father Brown be better known than Hercule Poirot? In the field of fantasy, would we still be glued to Lord of the Rings spin-offs or would Jeff Bezos be spending half a billion on Gormenghast or Lord of Light instead? Would SF blockbusters be built around Larry Niven's Known Space instead of Dune and Star Wars? And would our favourite albino swordsman be Elric of Melniboné rather than Geralt of Rivia or all those decadent, pale, white-haired, draconically empowered kings on House of the Dragon?
To sum up: in the evolution of entertainment franchises, how much is in the "fitness" of the concept and how much is down to luck?
Fun thought experiment!
ReplyDeleteI'd wager it would all be quite different. While I feel we'd see the same rough breakdown of genre, I've come to believe that luck, timing, first movers, and distribution method are the majority factors in an individual title's success.
I desperately want to be wrong about this, but fear the cynic (scientist?) inside me has won.
What I think is certain is that, whichever books or movies became popular after the reset, they would be done to death by endless sequels until we needed yet another reset.
DeleteHave our minds been completely wiped as well so that our aesthetic preferences have gone too? Because these preferences have been at least partially formed by the media we have already consumed, which will lean us towards liking stuff which we liked before we forgot all the books and movies.
ReplyDeleteIf faced with a sea of undifferentiated content I am afraid a big factor of what movies and books rise to the top will be what gets money behind them to be marketed effectively. So the publishers of this content will make a call on what they can best sell and they will market this heavily and this will likely come to dominate.
But beyond that, I am inclined to think that a lot of the older material will be forgotten because their previous significance and their influence on later works won't be known. And a lot of older books and movies are much slower paced compared to contemporary fare. In the contemporary media landscape if something doesn't grab you straight away and keep you grabbed people will just move onto the next thing. So honestly something like 'Crime and Punishment' or 'The Godfather' would struggle to be noticed except perhaps by small groups of aficionados.
Entertainment is remarkably similar to religion, when you come to think about it -- which is perhaps why my mind went to Ricky Gervais's argument as a starting point.
DeleteI have asked friends who go to Dune or watch Rings of Power why those interest them. These are people who aren't fans of fantasy or SF normally, so I'm intrigued as to what attracts them. They never seem to be able to give an answer based on aesthetics, though, so I suspect the real formula is that the successful IPs are the ones with lots of marketing behind them and that's pretty much it.
That said, the big successes seem to repeat a set of formulae: saviour stories, chosen ones, mysticism, individualism, royalty... It's a mirror of Western society.
Was going to say that I'd be quite happy to wake up with no memory for anything related to the Tolkeinverse, but actually I think the Hobbit (book obvs) is pretty good, taken for what it is.
ReplyDeleteNot sure that really helps with your question.
I did read The Hobbit when I was a child and I thought it was OK, but it didn't impress me enough to drag my fantasy interests from the Howard/Burroughs/Carter tradition.
DeleteI bought the first Song of Ice & Fire book but couldn't get more than a few pages in. So all that GRRM stuff can go too. And Dune, I'm sick of seeing endless reboots of that.
It's who you know, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure, Andy. Oliver Johnson runs the fantasy & SF imprint at Hachette and knows everybody in the business, but when he wrote his own fantasy novel A Knight of the Fields(which I think is one of the best I've ever read) he couldn't find a publisher.
DeleteI would love an entertainment reset to give the English fantasy/horror crown to John Whitbourn as he deserves. Wouldn't it be something to put on the TV for episodes of Binscombe Tales or the miniseries of A Dangerous Energy?
It's a shame about Oliver's book, Dave. Perhaps he's too nice and just needs to crack some heads together to make it happen! I seem to remember you saying previously he has no plans to self-publish. Is there anything we can do to try and persuade him otherwise?
DeleteI agree, a lot of Mr Whitbourn's work would lend itself well to TV. I'd love to see the Downs-Lord books on screen! I've just brought Doppleganger lady the Amy-Faith books as a thank you for helping out at work, what with her and her Doppleganger husband having enjoyed John's short stories so much.
I think the honest truth is Oliver's book was just too good, Andy. I did eventually talk John into self-publishing, so I haven't given up on Oliver yet.
DeletePerhaps it's all part of Oliver's marketing masterplan, Dave. Let you build it up for 20 years, then release it to the expectant thousands!
DeleteWith my social media reach, Andy? It's more like expectant dozens...
DeleteIt's certainly an interesting question, though as David and Andy have already noted above, I suspect the dreaded "Discoverability" will probably be the biggest factor. Would we still know the lineage of books?
ReplyDeleteI think as a reading experience I prefer The Dragonlance Chronicles to the Lord of the Rings. I was nine when I read Dragonlance and about fifteen when I read Lord of the Rings, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I just feel like the characters in Dragonlance feel more like characters rather than archetypes. Even re-reading them now, I'm not sure I could separate my ingrained nine-year old reaction to them. I was very invested in the characters!
Mind you, I read the Earthsea Trilogy (as it was then) at a similar age, and loved it - but I struggled with a lot of those big epic fantasies. The Belgariad and the books of Shannara. Just couldn't get interested in them at all. I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings a lot more, but now I think about it, I had read the Hobbit at a similar age to Dragonlance and remember enjoying it a lot, so perhaps that influenced my take on Lord of the Rings, as I already had an emotional stake in Bilbo and Gollum?
Likewise, I'm reading The Last Wish (the Witcher collection) at the moment, and really enjoying it. But I can't tell how much I enjoy it in itself, and how much because it evokes the Sword and Sorcery of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser that I so enjoyed and feel like I don't get enough of. I *feel* like it's better written, or at least has better characterisation. But it's also a bit more derivative. For all their archetypal sword and sorcery, the Lankhmar stories still feel fresher than a lot of the other fantasy books I've read. Perhaps precisely because they aren't riffing on Tolkien.
I enjoy Cugel's Saga and Eyes of the Overworld for the same reason: they feel so different from post-Tolkien heroic fantasy, and even though you can see their influence on D&D, I feel like the nearest setting to the Dying Earth is really Numenera.
In a world where we didn't know Tolkien and didn't know how huge an influence he'd had, I wonder if I'd feel the same?
For my money, though, I'd really like to see Chaz Brenchley's Outremer novels get the recognition they deserve. Also, I'd like to think Algernon Blackwood would get more recognition, particularly for The Willows and The Wendigo.
Oh, and as regards a Bincsombe Tales TV Series? Shut up and Take My Money!
Good points, Ray. I wonder how much of my enjoyment of Marvel movies was the extent that they reworked stories I remembered from when I was 10. Now that the MCU has moved on to drawing most of its inspiration from Bronze Age comics, which I read a lot later if I read them at all, I don't really bother watching anymore.
DeleteI haven't tried the same thing so much with old books. Jamie and I maintain that REH was a great writer but is that just because we read Conan in our formative years? I did reread one of Lin Carter's Thongor novels which I loved when I was about 12 but that nowadays just seemed to drag. Vance still has pride of place on my shelves though I didn't come to most of his work till my 20s...
In a parallel universe Blackwood's John Silence stories probably got turned into a supernatural-style TV show. But is that a good or a bad thing? Maybe we're better off in the plane of reality where they and Binscombe stayed on the page, where the pictures are better!