The Decade

I've been enjoying the many, many "Best of" lists of movies and television and other media that have been circulating, talking up the greats of the past decade. I've resisted, however, from writing my own. A yearly list I understand, especially as the entertainment industry has certain ebbs and flows and production cycles that follow an established calendar. A decade, however, is a much trickier thing to quantify - this past decade in particular.

The 2000s had a very obvious starting point: the 9/11 attacks. The 2010s are less defined, though it's certainly been a tumultuous and transformative era for everyone. You could pick so many inflection points like the 2008 financial crisis, the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, the rise of the alt-right with Gamergate in 2014, or just skip straight to the political upheavals of 2016. Though it feels like Donald Trump has been in office forever, most of the decade was actually spent with the Obama administration.

In the entertainment world, however, I think the big ones are clear: Disney buying Lucasfilm and the success of the first "Avengers" movie in 2012, and the first Netflix original programming and "Game of Thrones" premiering in 2013. This was also roughly around the time that cord-cutting really started taking off, digital media sales and streaming subscriptions were booming, and it was clear that the DVD market was truly dead. International markets became more important, particularly China, which fully emerged as a massive new audience. This all lead to the era of Peak TV, a franchise-dominated box office, and growing globalization.

I've been going back through the early posts I made on this blog, which I coincidentally started in 2010, and the differences in how I consume media are pretty stark. Nearly everything is online now. I barely watch live television or even cable television anymore. Due to certain lifestyle changes, trips to the theater and physical rental stores are rare. Physical media is simply not a big part of my life anymore. I'm consuming more media than ever, but my relationship with media has changed. I hardly rewatch anything anymore. I rarely sit down not knowing exactly what I'm going to be watching in advance, because I have a "To Watch" list a mile long.

And the media itself? Well, it worries me that our celebrated directors seem to go years between projects, and the only ones willing to spend are either the Chinese or the streaming services. I love that television had made such creative leaps, and people are funding really ambitious things like "The Crown," but I'm worried that it's coming at the expense of feature films. It can't be healthy that the entire mid-budget category has almost totally disappeared, or that Disney has turned into a nostalgia repackaging machine that just ate Twentieth Century Fox. And sure, it's nice that all these different streaming services are courting us, but the low prices can't last for long and it's worrying how access to anything online can disappear overnight. Ultimately the streaming revolution doesn't mean "better," but "different."

After 9/11 happened there was a shift toward more conservative and reactionary media. I'm glad that the pendulum is now swinging in the opposite direction, especially after the Weinstein scandal and #Metoo created opportunities for more female creative talent behind the cameras. We've also seen more racial diversity and gains in LGBT representation, especially trans representation. It took far too long for us to get a "Wonder Woman" movie, but it finally arrived in 2017, and it'll have plenty of company in the years to come. So many of the new generation of auteurs are black or Asian or Latino, and there are more women than ever. I can't wait to see how they'll change the film landscape in the 2020s.

Looking ahead, I expect that we'll look back on 2016-2020 as a real turning point, but we're far too close to see the shape of it now, and the reverberations are still being felt. They'll be dramatizing the antics of the Trump administration for decades. With the way things are going, and some of the romanticism of digital media is wearing off, my one big prediction is that physical media might mount a comeback. Television distribution, however, feels like it's permanently changed. I don't know how long the streaming era will last, but remember that the DVD age lasted about 20 years.

I may write those decade "Best of" lists eventually, but not for a long while, until I've got a better sense of the decade itself. I've got to digest 2019 first, and those lists will be out as usual, in July for films and September for television.
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