Ire is often directed at younger generations – those darn kids, blasting hip-hop out of their speakers, refusing to watch black and white TV shows from when men were men and women were women, and burning down every statue they see. I don’t think these complaints are entirely unfounded, but what I find bizarre and want to focus on is the flip side of this – in many ways, America is stuck in and attempts to relive the past. This can be seen in the attempts of some older members of society to pretend it’s still the era of Woodstock, the abounding sequels and remakes being released each week, and the narrative focus on what came before in otherwise original properties. While the idea of a decadent society isn’t a new one, this is in part due to technological changes that have made keeping the past easier and escaping this predicament much more difficult. The past’s grip on our culture is a sign that we are not content with the way things are; it also unconsciously teaches younger generations that there isn’t anything more to accomplish beyond this undesirable status quo.

There are some technological reasons why it is easier for things of the past to linger. Obviously, there have always been ways for culture to pass down traditions, whether it be orally or through writing, and whether it be in a religious context or something else. But over the past 500 years, our options for the mass preservation of cultural artifacts have become practically limitless. We have the printing press, photography, audio, film, computers, home video, and much, much more. Also, consider life expectancy and advances in medicine. It’s not just things lasting longer than before; people themselves are living longer en masse than ever before. While they are alive, their quality of life is also better. If you are born in America, you will likely live for 80 years, give or take, and with the right mix of genes and lifestyle, that could be a very healthy life. Most people aren’t dying of dysentery or the plague at the age of 23. So given our technological situation, it would seemingly be much more likely for things from the past to last longer and for the past itself to live on through people. But has that happened in reality?

I would argue that yes, both have. Putting aside ‘things’ for the moment, a growing trend is for older generations to refuse to take on roles and actions proper to them and attempt to act as though they are young. To clarify, I am not saying that higher life expectancy or living standards are bad. I think it is wonderful that older generations can A) exist in greater numbers and B) remain active. But there is a difference between remaining active and attempting to stay in roles meant for those younger than you. Some things are proper to certain ages, and others to other ages. Consider politics. Recent presidential candidates – some of whom still might run in the future – include Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden. All of them were major public figures 30 years ago, and the youngest of them will be 77 in 2024. Barring a run by Gavin Newsom or Ron DeSantis, we will be governed by Boomers and their elders through the end of the decade. Consider also musical artists. I am impressed with classic rock acts who are still touring. But there’s something more than a little sad about Iggy Pop going shirtless on stage and gyrating at 75, or Madonna’s increasingly grotesque attempts at relevance.

Perhaps politics and entertainment are the venues where the most narcissistic of us attempt to run away from their impending mortality, and they should be seen as case studies. But considering the entire nation, one can observe other signs of youth perpetuating itself. Marriage rates have gone down each generation while the number of people who don’t have children has gone up. People without any posterity have less of an incentive to tend to the future and assume their role as elders. Anecdotally, there seems to be a perception among older generations that young adults are still “those darn Millennials” and we’re frozen in 2010. The median Millennial, though, is about 35 now. One trend that has risen among Millennials is wanting to recapture what they had when they were kids. These are the Disney Adults of the world, the people motivating McDonald’s to make Happy Meals for adults. Just as certain Boomers need to accept that it’s not 1973, certain Millennials need to accept that it’s not 2005.

As for cultural artifacts, rather than people, let’s take a look at music. Before the advent of radio, passing on the specific soundwaves of a specific artist, not just sheet music written by a composer, was impossible. After radio, several singers became nationwide stars, but it took further advances in recording technology and preservation to allow for something like a station consisting of popular music from the past to even be a concept. Yes, the most popular songs are still those recently released. But we have entire sections on the radio or online dedicated to music that is from 40, 50, or even 60 years ago. It’s not just nostalgia, either. Thanks to parents sharing their childhood music through radio or streaming with their kids, many Millennials or Zoomers consider themselves fans of 60s, 70s, or 80s tunes. If I mention a song by the Beatles or Led Zeppelin to a friend, there’s a pretty good chance they understand the reference. This music has stayed relevant continuously in a way that music from the 40s or 50s didn’t in the 70s or 80s. It was more difficult for the Greatest or Silent Generations to share music with their children. So a handful of people like Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra were able to remain icons, but as it became easier to share music, a larger share of 60s, 70s, and 80s artists maintained their relevance.

The specific classic movies and TV shows that have remained relevant shed further light on the impact technology played. I would guess most people probably have a greater familiarity with pre-1980s TV than pre-1980s movies. This is because TV shows had constant reruns, so I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone never really left the popular consciousness. The movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s that have remained culturally significant were either re-released in theaters every few years like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, and classic Disney films, rediscovered on TV reruns like It’s a Wonderful Life, or both, like The Sound of Music or The Ten Commandments. With the advent of VHS tapes and LaserDisc in the 80s and 90s, Gen X and older Millennials were able to preserve the movies of their childhood and show them to their kids. Thus, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, and Back to the Future are watched 40 years on in a way that Citizen Kane, High Noon, or North by Northwest were not in the 80s. DVDs and streaming made it even easier. Previously, only movies or shows of a certain quality threshold were passed down. Consider how many 20-somethings look back nostalgically on mediocre Disney Channel original movies. This is solely due to the ease at which they can be accessed, not their quality (sorry High School Musical fans). The mediocre kids movies watched in the 30s and 40s were shoot ‘em up Westerns and the like which were not well preserved and were not re-released. The 30s or 40s equivalents of a Star Wars or Indiana Jones, good movies marketed more for adolescents like Bride of Frankenstein or Dracula, are still remembered, but not to the same extent as the saga of Luke Skywalker. Thus, the evolution of technology has made it easier for films and TV shows, particularly from people’s childhoods, to remain in the mainstream lexicon.

It’s not just that they have remained relevant, though; the shows and movies of the past make up a greater proportion of what is actually consumed, partially to the detriment of new releases. In film, the number of adult-targeted films has remained about the same, but in the last decade, viewership of them has fallen off a cliff. The mid or high budget adult drama or comedy is basically dead. This is also partially due to technology. Why go to a noisy theater with strangers when you can watch a movie from the comfort of your increasingly improved home theater setup, especially if you’re a member of the older generation? While TV hasn’t been as impacted as film, both have suffered from older generations preferring to revisit favorites of the past. But similar to music, Gen Z is also much happier than previous generations to watch shows from the past. Consider the continued popularity of Seinfeld, Friends, Parks and Recreation, and The Office, which was estimated at one time to make up 13% of Netflix’s total views. Considering Dunder Mifflin’s misadventures in particular, isn’t it historically odd that one of Gen Z’s favorite shows is one that began almost twenty years ago and ended a full decade ago? Several Zoomers were born after the show’s inception and wouldn’t have even started watching it until after the show’s run had ended.

Movies and TV shows are also influenced by the past in another way that music is not: sequels. We live in the era of sequels, prequels, reboots, and remakes. While you might have ‘sequels’ to concept albums like Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, the idea of a sequel or a remake lends itself much more easily to a more explicitly narrative art form like film. Thus, both albums and films can be marketed on the appeal of the artist – the musical act, or the actors and directors. But a movie or TV show can also be marketed on the appeal of a continuation of a previously known property, or a franchise, while music cannot.

Sequels are not a new thing at all. In the 1930s, both the Tarzan and the Universal Monsters franchises were wildly popular. The Maltese Falcon, the classic Humphrey Bogart noir, was the third adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel in a decade. TV shows have often attempted to make some connection between a beloved original and a new show – All in the Family and Maude, Cheers and Frasier. Expanding to other art forms, Don Quixote, Huck Finn, and The Lord of the Rings are classic novels that are either sequels to other works or sequels in part. So why am I pointing to sequels as an example of the past’s grip on America?

Objectively, the number of non-original movies and TV shows is increasing, as well as taking up a larger proportion of the popular consciousness. Yes, there are still original movies being made, and you might watch them and love them. But most people ignore them. Consider the major movies to be released in 2023: another Ant-Man, Creed III, Scream VI, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, John Wick: Chapter 4, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Fast X, The Little Mermaid – and I didn’t even get to June. In the last ten non-pandemic years, there have been exactly 6 live-action originals to rank in the ten highest-grossing movies of their year – Bohemian Rhapsody, The Martian, American Sniper, Gravity, Ted, and the very first Hunger Games. Compare this to any random year from the 80s or 90s, or even the 2000s. In 1983, for instance, you had Return of the Jedi, Octopussy, Sudden Impact, and Staying Alive in the top ten for the year – all sequels. But you also had Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Trading Places, and WarGames in the top 5 – all originals. In 1993, the highest-grossing sequel was Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, at 19th. Yes, we’ve always had sequels, but they used to exist among other, original works.

Even if it is easier for a movie to do so than music, why are we so oversaturated with sequels and the like today? There are some economic factors. For the bulk of Hollywood’s history, the actor, or occasionally a director like Hitchcock or Spielberg, was the main way a movie or show was marketed. People went to the movies to see John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Audrey Hepburn, or later, Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, and Julia Roberts. There was a system in place to build up a future crop of stars. This worked like clockwork for close to eighty years. But starting in the 90s, for a variety of reasons, the appeal of the star began to wane. In part, it was because Hollywood decided it was simpler and cheaper to manage a franchise than a star. A star will be good for maybe a few years, while a franchise can hypothetically last into perpetuity. A franchise has no ego, and its actors can be replaced with minimal difficulty. Today, there are perhaps a handful of actors who can make a movie a hit just based on their presence, like Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock, or Ryan Reynolds. Yes, there are plenty of famous actors, but they are not stars – people want to see Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock Holmes or Iron Man, not in other films. Now people go almost exclusively to see the latest offering by Marvel, Fast and Furious, or Jurassic Park. The death of the star also happened around the aforementioned rise of home video and streaming and was one of the leading causes of the death of the adult-driven movie.

All right, you may say. People like to pretend they’re young. They also like to watch The Office a lot. Maybe sequels are sometimes annoying. But what does it really matter? Who cares what movie you’re watching if you like it?

My answer is that, first, how we deal with mortality and what we choose to do for entertainment says a lot about us, and our obsession with the past is a signal that something is off. This desire for the past is something that exists throughout history. We’ll always have LARPers yearning for the good old days. But the role that technology has played in our current situation is unique. Second, while good sequels and remakes abound, the notion of a sequel inherently limits the story itself. At one time, Tom Cruise might have played a lot of action heroes, but those characters were different and infinite stories could be told. Now, he acts primarily as Ethan Hunt or Maverick, limiting what can be done. I also believe that media is not just a method of personal entertainment; it also provides a common context for culture and shapes everyone it touches, both consciously and unconsciously. The fact that watching a TV show or movie can be called consumption should be a tip-off. Just like how the food you intake impacts you – “You are what you eat” – the media you consume does so as well. It would be absurd to say that someone can spend eight hours a day watching TV and that it doesn’t impact them. That many of the narratives people take in are either ones from decades ago or ones connected to narratives from decades ago seems notable. It seems like that might have an impact, even unconsciously. I believe it has.

It’s not just that people watch sequels and The X-Files; the narratives themselves of seemingly original works increasingly connect to the past somehow. Stranger Things is one of the most popular original shows of the last few years. It has good characters and interesting plotting, but a large part of its appeal stems from nostalgia for the 80s. Think about Marvel’s WandaVision, which was pitched as its most artistically daring work to date. The plot of the show is about Wanda’s depression from her lover’s death and creating for herself worlds where they can be together. These worlds all take place in parodies of sitcom tropes from each decade – first, something like I Love Lucy, then Bewitched, and so on. The plot, then, revolves around the past – to push it further, about someone’s attempts to hide in it. A large percentage of our narratives, then, are either directly related to previous ones or touch on the past. Touching on the past is not in and of itself bad; Dante basically wrote a fan fiction of a fan fiction. It is the extent to which this is overtaking the narrative that concerns me.

Before concluding, I want to make one final note about America’s narrative stories that isn’t explicitly connected to the past, but I think it’s important. In a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, media personality Michael Malice noted that our culture implicitly views comedy and light-hearted movies as inferior to drama and darkness, and that that unconsciously sends some nihilistic signals about the nature of the world. I think he is spot on. Why do so many remakes try and position themselves as a “darker, grittier, more realistic” take on the property? As soon as the copyright for Winnie the Pooh expired, someone decided to make a slasher version of it. Why not try and just do a normal version? Beyond Pooh, was anyone really asking for a darker take on *Archie*? You can seemingly never go too dark, unlike with cheeriness and its extreme, corniness. The darker you go, the more ‘serious’ and ‘realistic’ you are.

 I believe this darkness also has its converse in the excessive use of humor. Consider the two main superhero franchises, Marvel and DC. Marvel is known for a flippant, quippy, and humorous style that doesn’t take itself seriously, and DC attempted to market itself as the opposite of Marvel. This was not Christopher Reeve’s Superman. This Batman would be even darker than the previous dark Batman reboot of the other dark Batman reboot (but the next reboot would be even darker). Not every Marvel or DC film fits this stereotype, and it’s not always a problem. But why are these two the default options? Why not make more movies that just exist in a world, take themselves seriously, but don’t feel the need to prove their seriousness through darkness?

I believe that the world Gen Z has grown up in has unconsciously communicated certain messages about how the world works. The world is a place where darkness is the norm; any serious work, be it a film or a song, will realize this. It’s fun to escape at times through over-the-top comedy, but those are diversions. This dark world is also a stupid one led by incompetent and aging people who refuse to let the passage of time take place. America will seemingly belong to Boe Jiden, the Bad Orange Man, or Hillary ROTTEN Clinton in perpetuity. Their elders seem to also want to escape this present, either pretending it’s still the past or reliving their childhood through their old entertainment. This dark and incompetent world is also one in which there are fewer and fewer remaining stories to be told. The ones being told now are either the same ones as before, a continuation of something before, or touch on the past. What room is there for genuine creativity, something really new and fresh to occur? Beyond the arts, what room is there really for change in the entire world?

In short, the world and stories being gifted to younger generations don’t leave them with much to build off of. We can’t ignore the past or stay stuck forever in it; we need to push through to create a better future.

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Truman Kjos is a junior studying applied mathematics.