Hopefully this crisis marks the high tide of the tendency endlessly to remake, remodel and recycle the past
A decade ago it was fashionable to be concerned that the future was on hold. Where were the flying cars and gleaming cities we had been promised? People worried that culture was increasingly trapped in its own past, awash with reissues and remakes. In contrast to most of the 20th century, very little in the world of music or cinema felt radically new. We seemed to have lost the will even to imagine any challenging way forward.
But this wasn’t because the future had stopped. Technology was simply delivering it in a shape that seemed undramatic. We have come to think of the instant availability of nearly everything as an inevitability, yet what streaming platforms such as Spotify offer, with YouTube as vast, scrappy backup, is historically remarkable. And of course it feels liberating. But aren’t there downsides to a centralised omni-archive? And, post-pandemic, where might pop culture – all culture – end up? Will it still be recycling the past, or will we once more be assailed with styles, sounds and visions hitherto undreamed of?
