Cultural oversaturation

IS OUR CULTURE BECOMING OVERSATURATED? HENRY BISHOP (UPPER SIXTH)

Intense aesthetic appreciation has never been so chimerical.

Extinct are those moments in which we are truly taken aback by art, music or literature – a gripping sense of amazement has been usurped by “that’s nice”.

The commodification of culture has much blame for this – if you can’t make money from shoving people in front of it, then what value does it have? As the archetype of this, which is more appealing to a film studio, the divergent film from an unproven, eclectic new filmmaker, or the reiterations and spin-offs of the same “property” which have burrowed their way into popular agreeableness?

The observation of Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto that:

Capital “has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies […] of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation”

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

is expressing itself in increasingly novel and insidious ways. We are all instantiations of Mark Fisher’s neologistic concept of the “consumer-spectator”, having artistic products/output (the language of capitalist production has invaded its next territory) placed before us, for our monetary approval. These products have to compete with each other (neoliberal logic in a realm previously untainted) in a technologically driven attention lottery to be delivered en masse on the shovels of platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, the new instigators of fleeting cultural trends.

Once again, content that has been proven to pacify viewers for the most milliseconds is that which is deemed best for the chosen end of retaining the stultified punters. The worth of (to use a loose term) content is now determined by how many people have seen it and for how long, as opposed to whether they actually enjoyed it or gained anything from it. The more

time taken absorbing this content, the more targeted it becomes.

Just as any distinctions over the quality of content have evaporated, so have any geographical impediments to the flow of cultural merchandise. Not only can you have paraded in front of you dissected and packaged memes from your own culture, but also cherrypicked and distilled granules from others.

You are no longer learning about other enriched ways of life, but you are instead shown the trinkets of past and present which can most easily be cloned, packed, and sold. The return of a bronze cockerel to Benin by Jesus College, Cambridge made clear, by sheer contrast, the standard attitude that even unique artefacts have no special status, but are simply prize assets to be hoarded at all costs, just like a car or wads of cash.

The oversaturation of our spatiotemporal worlds with the most unrealistic, amped up, shiny distractions means there can no longer be any room for the truly aesthetic – anything genuinely beautiful or aweinspiring drowns in the sea of colours. It is even questionable whether we could identify the truly aesthetic anymore. Our standards are slipping away from our grasp, if we even have any, and we are irrecoverably heading towards the end of culture.

The above comes across as a satirical and dystopian hyper-critique of our society. We may no longer experience intense moments of aesthetic appreciation as frequently as previously but, if they are only sparse highlights in a barren landscape, then it isn’t

unreasonable to not desire this.

We instead inhabit a vast and varied cultural plane which allows for more consistent enjoyment. We may not be taken aback by, for example, landscape panoramas or space photography anymore, but that is because there are so many beautiful and rich examples of these to which we now have access at any time of our choosing.

Whilst big-budget franchise movies may be more predictable, they are part of a broader tapestry of content on which spending reached a record high in 2020, thanks in no small part to subscription streaming services. Because there are simply so many artistic ideas being represented, franchises and live-action remakes can afford to do some recycling, but it is also disingenuous to suggest that this is all they manage, as even the most

financially successful franchises can

evolve and be vehicles for novel expression, as exemplified by the changing roles of female characters in the James Bond franchise or the increasingly diverse and allegedy realistic roster of characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The same social media platforms which vie for attention also make it incredibly easy for new creatives to release their content to wider audiences, but the hosting of this content is expensive, which means it requires advertisement revenue, which requires more viewing hours.

Current cross-cultural dialogue and sharing are not tokenistic, but are appropriate bearing in mind they can only be enjoyed to the extent to which cultural hegemony does not result – unique forms of life are to be respected and maintained rather than aped. ‘Exploring’ a culture to the fullest extent would just be to become a copy of that culture, so sharing (put more positively than copying) is the only feasible approach which ensures diversity but also mutual gain.

Depending on the weight and success afforded to these arguments, pessimism or optimism may seem more appropriate. Nevertheless, all facets of our culture are increasingly at the whim of ‘market forces’, which certainly financially benefits burgeoning new services and types of content but risks too quickly leaving lower volume, traditional media behind. For a cultural pessimist, the huge increase in content corresponds to decreasing quality and eventual burnout. For a cultural optimist, this increase corresponds to the appetite of audiences/consumers, and more output can only be a good thing.