Creativity

Christmas magazines and knicknacks are hitting the shelves already. Today I recieved the first of many winter mags that will grace my mailbox during the next 3 months--it's where I steal all my best christmas gift ideas from.

Over the last several years I've come to the sad realization that my generation doesn't seem to have an originally creative bone in it's collective body. We steal ALL our ideas.

I'm pretty sure I'm not projecting.

Think about it. My generation is in the 20s-to-40s age group; we're rising stars in business and media, group leaders and responsible for the 'new' and 'fresh' ideas in commercial and entertainment industries. I haven't seen a 'new' or 'fresh' idea in the last several years that would lead me to HOPE that the people of my generation aren't the first examples of a downward trend toward a future of Idiocracy and general dummification of the masses.

Politics, marketing, economic trends all aside--I'll make my point using examples from the subject that really matters in the U.S.: electronic entertainment.

Video Games:

• An endless outpouring of 'expansion packs' and 'alternate scenarios' to games that were massive hits 5, 10 years ago. Any 'new' games are produced without adequate testing and need to be patched/fixed by later releases and/or the volunteers within the gaming community.
• Video game-to-movie genre . . .Tomb Raider, Doom, Mario Bros, TMNT, Final Fantasy, Mortal Combat.

TV:

• How many versions of Law & Order and CSI can there possibly be???? Seinfeld spinoffs?! MORE medical mystery shows every season . . . arrr! Even my favorite scifi show, Battlestar Galactica, is a re-do of the cheesy tv series--an excellent one, I might add, but still a re-do. And Nickelodeon's touting their up-and-coming new series for the 10-ish age: a slightly older Dora the Explorer. Yup--same character, slightly grown up, just like her fans from the original series.
• To wit, the 'new' cartoon shows (and toys) are reimaginings of the toys we grew up with. Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, My Little Pony, Carebears, even Power Rangers mesh a little too well with Voltron.
• TV-to-movie genre and vice versa . . .Big Fat Greek Wedding, Transformers, Brady Bunch and the various other 70s/80s hit shows brought to film, Hannah Montana. There are more, but my brain just fritzed on Hannah--I still can't believe it's that popular. . .
  

Movies:

• Has anyone counted the number of movies/sequels hitting the theatres the last several years--they're practically seasonal holidays! I think the only original superhero movie I've heard of to date is Hancock, the rest ALL seem to be from existing comics/gothic novels.
• Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Spider Man, Batman, Xmen, even MORE comic book-based movies, Pirates of the Caribbean (based on a popular AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE, for crap's sake! Johnny and Orlando were way hawt, though.), Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Star Trek is back . . .need I go on?
• Oh, wait, I forgot the horror and spoof movies: Jason/Freddy, Saw, Scary Movie and related spoofs, etc, etc, etc.
• Hell, even DISNEY is capitalizing on their classic 'princess' movies by creating 'live action' movies based on the same story or combined elements of the old films.
• The Watchmen, Hell Boy, even the Russian Nightwatch series. . . make me stop!
• (Okay, I'll GIVE you Harry Potter b/c it was an original book series, so technically it doesn't qualify for my mini-rant.)

People of My Generation--turn off the television, put down the comics, and PLEASE ATTEMPT to come up with an original idea and build on that. PLEASE!!! Don't get me wrong, I'm still entertained, but my god, can we come up with something new while the next gen is still paying attention??

Now excuse me, I have to return to my magazine to 'borrow' more gift ideas . . .