Hypothesising the Political Economy of Creativity.

Hollywood has run out of ideas. A brief Google search returns page after page of articles and forums discussing the film industry’s lack of originality (the ‘Reboot’ song from Animaniacs also springs to mind) and it’s not difficult to see why. The film industry once produced a constant sleight of original and highly creative films – Star Wars, Terminator, RoboCop (and probably some films that weren’t Sci-fi). But now the cinema is inundated with sequels, reboots, remakes and revivals. How many Marvel films are there now? To be sure, Hollywood has a long history of sequels and spinoffs and blatant plagiarism. But now they don’t seem to do anything else. At least that’s the general perception and it is one I’m sympathetic to. Originality in the film industry has noticeably declined.

I was discussing this with a friend some time ago and, coincidentally, had just returned from a lecture on Kondratiev cycles (there’s a brief explanation further down). I would like, as such, to present a potentially novel hypothesis on why creativity has disappeared from the film industry.

It could be suggested that people have, essentially, run out of ideas. That Hollywood has become unoriginal because everything original has already been done; creativity has run aground. This concept does not sit particularly well with me. You don’t have to spend much time browsing the internet to discover the wealth of creative potential. People have a lot of great ideas and a lot of great stories they want to tell. The often original stories told by the game industry, moreover, demonstrate that they can still thrive in a professional setting. Besides, there have never been any genuinely new ideas (except in the distant past I guess). Every story is based on or inspired by another story and it’s been that way for thousands of years. People are still doing this in creative ways; Hollywood just ignores it.

Movie executives could be blamed. Their primary concern is making money, and unoriginal films do make a lot of money – so why take a risk on something new? An original and untested IP might sell a lot of movie tickets but it might also flop and lose the studio money, it’s risk aversion. There is undoubtedly a lot of truth to this, but I think it risks unfairly shifting the blame onto audiences. “If people were willing to watch original movies,” someone might say, “the studios would make more of them.” And again, this concept doesn’t sit well. It is a reasonable assumption, if the average person only goes to the cinema a few times a year, that they’d choose to see something that they know they’ll enjoy. But tastes can change (sci-fi was not nearly so popular before Star Wars). Moreover, this doesn’t explain why things have changed. Why is it that audiences were more likely to see an original and creative movie in the past but won’t do so today? Why is it that executives were willing to take risks in the past but won’t take risks today? Why is it that creative people with stories to tell could once tell them, but can’t anymore?

In economics, there is a theory called the Kondratiev cycle. It’s a very heterodox idea, not widely accepted by mainstream economists, but it is interesting. In short, capitalism goes through long cycles of expansion, stagnation and contraction that last around 40-60 years. Each ‘wave’ in the cycle is characterised by a particular industry around which the entire economy revolves (currently it’s tech, previously it was the car). When the main industry is new and rapidly innovating, the entire economy expands. But then the rate of innovation becomes slow and/or trivial then no new customers can be found and the industry stagnates (taking the entire economy with it). As stated, mainstream economists dislike the concept and I’m not fully convinced either. Still, the idea that any given industry will go through an initial period of rapid innovation and thus expanding demand, followed by a period of no innovation and stagnant demand, is interesting and was on my mind when discussing the film industry’s creative stagnation. The following is just speculation, but I think it’s plausible.

In the early days of film, the only way to see one would have been in a cinema (or makeshift equivalent) or on TV. This would have, presumably, restricted the size of the industry. Only so many films can actually be shown in such a context and so not many would be needed. Then, in the mid-1970s, came VHS (and Betamax to a lesser extent) allowing people to buy, rent and watch at their own leisure. So, as VHS became increasingly affordable and available, the demand for new films would have rapidly increased. This would, presumably, have made it much easier to sell new films, both allowing smaller firms to establish themselves and incentivising established production companies to increase their output. So more films would be getting made and, therefore, more ideas would be needed. So creatives get (at least a little) more free reign. Moreover, an expanding market would presumably diminish the harm caused by a flop. It doesn’t matter quite as much if market share declines from 10% to 5% if the market has gotten three times bigger. In short, ever more consumers make it easier to sell original films (and somewhat reduces the risk) whilst a simultaneous shortage of new films puts new and creative ideas in high demand. Creativity thrives.

Then the market stopped growing. There are only so many people and each of them is only going to watch so many films a year, so the increasing demand for new films will eventually level out. If the number of films produced continues to increase anyway, it will become gradually harder to sell each individual film. That is, if the number of consumers is too small, it will be noticeably more difficult to convince them to watch any given movie. In this context, production studios wouldn’t need to massively increase their film output anymore. It might even hurt them to do so since they’d be competing with their own films. This, in turn, means that they don’t need as many new ideas. So creativity becomes a much riskier and largely unnecessary investment. If the film executives instead focus on proven franchises, however, they can maintain market share without competing against their own output. In short, when the number of films being produced is noticeably higher than the number of films being demanded, the production companies don’t need new ideas.

That’s my general hypothesis. Hollywood has become unoriginal and lost its creativity, essentially, because audiences have stopped getting bigger. What’s the solution? I don’t know. Unless audience size suddenly expands, I can’t see any way to convince movie executives to start taking creative risks again. If the Kondratiev cycles are used for comparison, the next probable stage for the film industry would be a noticeable contraction in output. In other words, if the number of films being produced is notably larger than the number of films people watch, then eventually the number of films being made will start to decline. This is a potentially worrying prospect for the film industry and moviegoers alike. But, with all the flops Marvel keeps having, we may already be seeing the start of it. Whether or not it will lead to a larger number of original films is difficult to say. It could make executives even less willing to take risks and thus make it even harder for original and creative filmmakers to get a foot in the door.

This is just speculation, and I’ve not done any real research – though I may do at some point. All the same, I think the only way to save the originality and creativity of the film industry from the varying moods of a capitalist market is… well to abolish capitalism and thus free it from the varying moods of a capitalist market.

-Dexter.