Contributed by: evilscientist
So there I am at lunch today at the food court in the mall near my work when it hits me. All food courts are the same. The names of the restaurants change from food court to food court, but the genre of foods, for the most part, doesn't. So in a food court, you have a westernized Chinese food place, a westernized Japanese food place, a burger place, an ice cream place, a pizza place and a sub/sandwich place. There may be a couple of extras, but that is the basic formula.
I think it's a comment on our society, that everything in commerce has to run under a formula. Movies, music even the lowly food court has to work under a magic formula. The result, all movies start to look the same, all music starts to sound the same, etc. etc. There seems to be a destruction of creativity in our society. Now I'm one to talk, not being particularly creative myself, but if creative people in society as a whole are being stifled by this conform to the formula attitude that is everywhere, society is somehow less rich for it.
Now the internet is helping to counter this to some extent, as it allows creative people to publish their work without help from the established media outlets, bypassing the formula police. The audience is much smaller though and by self-selection, tends to be more educated (at least enough to get onto the internet and download the material).
Even the internet as an outlet for creativity may become stifled, as the large media outlets, fearing the competition, are lobbying for laws that make it difficult to avoid them as the path to publishing. There is a push on in the US to allow people to patent movie plots, though I would imagine that the big studios, who make their money stealing each other's plots, would lobby against this, but given how short sighted businesses in North America are, who knows.
I imagine there are some who don't see this as a problem. As long as everyone's making money, who cares is the argument. The problem is long term competitiveness at the very least, and at the worst, the complete graying out of our culture as everything has to be as bland as possible to fit the formula de jur. Am I the only one who sees this as a problem?
Evilness
http://www.evilscientist.ca/article.php?story=20051012134320544