-
The Fickle Muse
- The University Press of Kentucky
- Chapter
- Additional Information
THE FICKLE MUSE The Unpredictability of Culture Paul A. Cantor And some had visions, as they stood on chairs, And sang of Jacob and the golden stairs. —Vachel Lindsay,“The Congo” The sure way to predict the future is to invent it. —Chinese fortune cookie As an English professor discussing the future of American culture, I think of culture as meaning primarily “the arts.” For the past two decades, I have been especially interested in popular culture, and I can say in all immodesty that I am regarded as one of the world’s foremost academic authorities on The Simpsons.1 Thus, focusing on popular culture, I will make the following predictions about the future of America. American cultural production over the next decade will increase at an average rate of 3.7% per year, topping out at 7.6% and never falling below 2.2% on an annualized basis. This overall growth rate will, however, mask a decline in the percentage share of motion pictures relative to that of television and video games. Motion picture production will peak in 2014 and thereafter suffer a precipitous decline, largely as a result of the simultaneous retirements of Stephen Spielberg, James Cameron, and Jerry Bruckheimer. By 2020 video game production will have outdistanced the total of motion picture and television production by a factor of two, culminating in the release of Grand Theft Auto 27, which will be purchased by every 56 Paul A. Cantor single person on the planet. During this same period, America’s share of world cultural production will decline by 12.0–15.5%, depending on how quickly Shanghai software engineers are able to develop video games compatible with Chinese characters. On a more optimistic note: in 2020, The Simpsons will still be airing Sundays at 8:00 P.M., although the Fox Network will have long since been taken over by the federal government for reasons of national security. These are the kinds of predictions Americans love to hear— complete with percentage figures accurate to one decimal point. Americans like to believe that the future is predictable, and in precise mathematical terms. Predicting the future has always been the dream of humanity and has kept legions of fortune-tellers, seers, prophets, astrologers, and the like gainfully employed for years. The astrologers of today are the economists, and we all know—often to the cost of our 401(k)s—how accurate their predictions are. Because we desperately want the future to be predictable, we assume that somehow it must be; therefore we listen eagerly to anyone who claims to be able to tell us what will happen tomorrow, or the next day, or one year from now, or ten. Since the world is simply awash with predictions, at any given moment one out of a thousand will turn out to have been correct, and we will think we have discovered the new Nostradamus. But the real test of prophetic powers is a track record; one successful prediction is almost always followed by a series of laughable mistakes. TRUE AND FALSE PROPHETS If we look at history, we see an unending succession of predictions that turn out to have been wrong, and that should teach us a healthy skepticism about the ability of the human race to foretell its future. This is especially true in the realm of culture in general and popular culture in particular, even in the short run. Big-budget movies that are supposed to be surefire hits routinely tank at the box office,2 while every year produces “sleepers,” movies that can barely get financing but go on to garner huge audiences and sometimes even Academy Awards. The record of long-term cultural prediction is even more dismal; the ability to foresee the trends that will govern culture in the future has proved elusive. Just think of all the Hollywood careers that [44.193.80.126] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:00 GMT) The Fickle Muse 57 were ruined in the case of people who dismissed the talking picture as a passing fad. We need to face up to the fact—culture is in the realm of the unpredictable. To be sure, occasionally a cultural prophet hits the jackpot. Edward Bellamy, in his otherwise eminently forgettable 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward, correctly forecast the invention of the radio , which he cleverly called “the musical telephone.” He predicted that music would be sent throughout a city from a central location by a...