Cultural Churning

The term "churning" in broker parlance means buying and selling stocks merely to generate a commission, and is an action undertaken by a broker for the express purpose of augmenting their paycheck. It is never in the best interests of the client, and it inevitably leads to unnecessary losses in the client's account.

Given this terminology, I've come to a certain realization about American culture: it is churning itself. Specifically amongst the creative industries from which America entertains itself. Having been in the theatre district on the west side of Manhattan last night (to see the great and still electric Alice Cooper), I passed by the following Broadway plays: The Color Purple, Jersey Boys, and The Times Are A' Changin'. To those of you not terribly informed on these three plays, let me sum up: The Color Purple was a book made into a movie, and now into a Broadway play. Jersey Boys is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Times is a Broadway play based on the music of Bob Dylan. In recent years, Broadway has had long running hits in the form of The Producers (based on the 60's movie, starring Gene Wilder), The Odd Couple (starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in the movie version, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall in the television version), and Annie Get Your Gun (based off of an earlier Broadway play), Movin' Out (based on the music of Billy Joel). If you don't sense where I'm going with this, I'll clarify: Broadway producers have no interest in getting behind anything that doesn't already have automatic cultural recognition and already proven marketability. I certainly can understand this, as producing a Broadway play is one of the most speculative endeavors a venture capitalist can take up. But the end result is that, again, this is a form of churning. American culture has already discovered and enjoyed The Odd Couple, The Producers, and The Color Purple. What is the sense of turning a movie and/or a television show into a Broadway play when most people who are going to go see it have already seen it on the big/small screen several years before? The sense, clearly, is money. It certainly isn't creativity.

This hardly extends to Broadway. American cinema is littered with big budget movies, sprinkled with guaranteed marquee appeal via mediocre remakes of movies past. Of course, there's always the three or four sequels that come out from a successful movie (Saw I,II,III; Batman (five or six sequels), Superman, The Fantasic Four (sequel currently in production). Heck, they even remade The Manchurian Candidate (it was awful....the sequel, that is). Solomon once said there's nothing new under the sun. Ain't that the truth.

Then, of course, we have music....an absolute wasteland of retreaded riffs, lyrics, subject matter, guitars, amps, and poses. I can't even get into rap because to call it unlistenable is an insult to unlistenable music. Ornette Coleman was unlistenable, but at least he was original. Listening to sheet metal cut by a buzz-saw...that's unlistenable. All these are preferable to listening to, say, DMX or Ludacris. But...I digress.

This all crystallized in my mind the last 24 hours because I realized after seeing Alice Cooper last night that the man is still viable, still writes catchy, deviant heavy pop, and he puts on a wholly original, fun, rockin' show. Alice can't fill Madison Square Garden thirty-three years after his apex, but he still has enough appeal to fill Roseland Ballroom with two or three thousand sickos. (Like myself and my brother.) Alice was a groundbreaker in his day, both musically and theatrically. So was Bowie, and so was Peter Gabriel. All three were primary movers in turning a rock concert into rock theatre, and all three had groundbreaking music. The question I have, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, is whether it is due to a lack of creativity on the part of the music business (and the theatre and movie businesses) that nothing pushes the boundaries anymore, or whether there are no more boundaries to be pushed. Has the soundscape of music been completely surveyed and accounted for? Are there no more original riffs to be had? Is there no more subject matter left to be explored? Are there no more voices, no more original chord progressions, to be put together? And on a wider scale, is there no more dramatic subject matter left to be explored?

Has music, theatre, and cinema finally confronted everything that can be confronted, written about, and played? Retread plays, music, and movies makes money for the suits, no doubt. But maybe, just maybe, they don't really have much of a choice in the matter; perhaps it is the "artists" who've let down the suits.