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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling that that we'll have fewer celebrities that have the same magnitude of the ones in Fisher's generation, or prior to it, mostly because we have a much more splintered entertainment world. Which is a good thing, because today's world allows for us to be exposed to so much more talent and genre that the movie and music industries would have previously ignored. But it's hard to imagine anyone who is famous right now, in their 20s and 30s, having the same grip on American culture as Michael Jackson or Muhammad Ali.

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>Which is a good thing, because today's world allows for us to be exposed to so much more talent and genre that the movie and music industries would have previously ignored.

I think whether it's a good thing depends on whether the important thing is to have access to some better art, or to have shared access to art, even if it's slightly less good.

In other words, art as a shared cultural discussion, vs art as individual consumption. I believe that even the best of art (from a technical standpoint) losses artistic power if it's just consumed by fewer people -- and I mean that it loses it even for those people that do consume it (e.g. they don't get additional layers of meaning/feelings etc by being exposed to the interpretations of the same piece by people and other artists).

I feel that you underestimate how large the world is. Niche art easily entertains millions.

Niche art in popular art forms, such as cult films and cult TV shows, easily reach tens of millions (eg Firefly). It's still totally niche compared to Star Wars, but I'm not sure that you can say in any way whatsoever that it loses power because "only" tens millions of people worldwide have seen it.

I'm not talking about Firefly level niche (which still has millions of fans).

There are Pitchfork "Top albums of the year" than less than 5000 people ever listened to.

I don't disagree with you, necessarily, but the other factor is that everyone has less time and attention to divvy up among the many more celebrities and niches. That's why newspapers and network news will never reach the mindshare that they once had, not even if you resurrected Walter Cronkite and cloned him, because people not only are fine getting their news on Facebook, they're spending a lot of time on FB that might have been spent on other media consumption. Hell, there's a lesson within the old days of newspapers: Afternoon newspapers, almost without exception and regardless of comparative quality, died out compared to morning rivals with the onset of radio and changes to American life schedule.

I don't know, I think Emma Watson would be a hard loss or Jennifer Lawrence, or Chris Pratt. Also Paul Walker was 40 or so, but that was a major loss. I think it is even harder when someone dies young because it's such a shock.

I told this already many times, it feel a golden period is going http://scifioutpost.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/force-gho...

And it feels at best the current gen, ours, is only apply filter (no jab at instagram et al) to enhance old resolutions artificially.

ps: I'd like to bring something about the structure of medias before and now.

The time were channels were limited, where access to production too, the constraints, the potential rigging all this, seems to me now that it had a strong effect on society.

When there was a limited choice, we wouldn't feed our desires directly, production couldn't be extremely tailored, they had to be reaching a broader audience to exist, while having a IT factor. And then people would discuss these things they shared because nothing else was there, and it made it resonnate.

Nowadays, we have all a thing that suits us more, people can produce at lower (artistic and infrastructure) cost. But now productions have less chances to become culturally as relevant as before.

It's just one impression that I have on the status of TV from the 80s and 90s.

Whilst I generally agree with you, my grandparents said the same thing back in the day about Kirk Douglas, Richard Burton, Gene Kelly, Audrey Hepburn...

Kirk Douglas is still alive

And just celebrated his 100th birthday earlier this month!

Oh, I guess I implied they were all dead when I didn't mean to. I meant more that the stars of the day are always seen as the pinnacle of Stardom.

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