At an age when I was crazy about all sports, my young son showed no interest in rooting for the local sports teams at all. I shrugged it off as a generational difference much like the one I had with my own father, who never understood most of my passions.
The same was true of watching television, something my son did very little of, and listening to music – he preferred to play rather than listen. His interests and tastes were different than mine, I assumed, and that was a good thing.
But, when, at 16, my son and his friends stopped going out to movies, I began to see that something else was going on that had much bigger implications. Of the things this generation has lost its connection to – newspapers, radio, and television being the most notable – the big-screen movie event is one of the latest to go.
It’s always been a chance for the young to get out of their parents’ watchful gaze, as well as a long-established rite of adolescent passage. The fact that these kids would not want to carry on the tradition of watching bad films with their friends and potential girlfriends in darkened theaters away from home was confusing to me. I was left to wonder if there was a thread that connected this to the general decline of the traditional media experience. Was it a shortened attention span, or did the content – the programming, writing, and performance – not appeal to them? Or was it something else?
Here’s what I found out: no matter how well performed the play, the story, or the song, my son and his friends were just not interested in watching and listening to other people do things. The experiences they value must be interactive.
They want to participate. And the entertainment industry had better be ready; video games are the tip of the iceberg.
Guitar Hero, the play-it-yourself video game that has become an industry juggernaut, represents the most obvious trend here. But as amazing as it is to watch that end of the entertainment business, I was really floored when I attended a performance by the mash-up artist Girl Talk. What’s a mash-up artist? Think of a DJ who knows how to use a laptop and has a voluminous knowledge of music. The “songs” Girl Talk creates are the equivalent of FM stations that promise you will know and like each song you hear. But in Girl Talk’s case, there’s a new song every fifteen seconds, and they all make you want to dance.
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