Over on Hit & Run, they’re discussing in the comments the comparative merits of Survivor, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under.
Which of these will future art historians most admire? Which of these television shows will future historians look back on as our Madame Bovary, as our Moby Dick?
I say none of them. A hundred years from now, historians will describe this as the era of the soap opera: A single play, performed an hour a day for decades on end, featuring the work of dozens of writers and hundreds of actors, following story arcs that stretch for generations, in real time, and all made feasible by the unique economics of the emerging broadcast media.
Nothing else like it ever before.
Whole academic conferences will be convened to discuss these remarkable artistic endeavors. And, as with Madame Bovary or Moby Dick today, nobody else will care.
It’ll not only be known as the Soap Opera Era, but The Reality Show Era as well. Have you noticed that almost every new show is either a new reality thing, or something to do with communicating wih the dead?
What the hell is that?????