The Hollywood dream factory seems to be producing one sure-fire, dumbed-down blockbuster after another, cementing the reputation of American entertainment as the Velveeta on Ritz crackers in the international cultural buffet line. But let's take a closer look. 1992 was hailed as "The Year Punk Broke," that is, the year bands like Nirvana, The Offspring and Sonic Youth finally moved from the underground to the gutter--causing the current trend of the fringe as mainstream. While certainly not "punk" per se, these bands have managed to inject a little fuzz-toned rebellion back into that most American of artforms, rock'n'roll.
That same year in cinema, writer/director Quentin Tarantino scored big with his brutally intense first feature "Reservoir Dogs." Filmmakers like John Dahl (The Last Seduction, Red Rock West) and Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, From Dusk Till Dawn) have thrived in the creative vacuum left by Hollywood. All signs point towards a new artistic renaissance in independent and amateur filmmaking. Richard Linklater, John McNaughton, Ed Burns, The Hughes Brothers, the consistently unsettling work of New York's B-movie king Abel Ferrara are just the tip of this iceberg of talent bearing down on the Titanic of popular taste. There are quite a few interesting, challenging artists out there and the new market demographics of the twenty-something purchasing juggernaut allows for specialty markets heretofore unheard of.
Granted, popular music has settled into a sticky morass of neo-country black-hat troubadors, MOR soul balladeers and watered down baggy-pants hip-hop side-by-side with annoying college complaint rock, but compared to the New-Wave garbage and glam-crap of the '80s it is like a golden age. If eclecticians like Beck can score even one top ten hit, something is going right.
America has always been the gauge of global pop culture, and everybody eventually falls in line behind our tastemaking (except France, of course.) What this means to the entertainment market is one thing; nobody is going to lose much money any time soon. Even horrific assaults on art and good taste like Oliver Stone and Kiss manage to make a profit in the world marketplace.
Like always, it pays for the consumer to develop a little discernment. Even if listening to the radio or going to the cinema is like picking peanuts from shit. Remember, when all is said and done, you have to sort through a lot of shit, but you end up with peanuts! Stay entertained!