The other day I was watching video essays on YouTube as I far too often do and I came across a video on the channel Wisecrack called “Algorithms and the Death of Hollywood.” Within the video, Michael Burns notes a malady that has emerged within the entertainment industry and digital media. He argues, particularly of superhero movies, that they have all of the trappings of a standard superhero narrative, but the results feel increasingly fake or unmoving. One possible cause which Burns offers is that entertainment media has become increasingly data-driven with companies seeking to analyze historical data about movies’ themes, plots, talent, and release dates in order to optimize future projects’ potential commercial success. The phenomenon that Burns is describing relates closely to discussions of the relationship between database and narrative as well as the nature of embodiment in digital media.
Indeed, the use of data to produce new media and the observed lack of depth in current Hollywood releases seems to support an argument made by Manovich (2001), in which he argues that databases and narrative are “natural enemies.” The use of data by the entertainment industry to create stories —rather than the artistic vision of script writers, directors, and other artists— would suggest that the resulting product should be somehow “less artistic.” However, Hayles (2007) complicates this issue, pointing instead to databases and narrative as “natural symbionts.” The true symbiosis of these two epistemological concepts remains questionable in spite of Hayles’ optimism. Importantly, Hayles’ (2007) metaphor introduces what database and narrative have to offer to each other, suggesting that “[database] needs narrative to make its results meaningful. Narrative, for its part, needs database… to enhance its cultural authority and test the generality of its insights (p. 1604).” While this argument may indeed be the case for database (and for narrative in the domain of academic research), it is unclear whether databases should be considered as legitimizing cultural authority and how desirable generality is in artistic expression.
The generalizable narrative is an appealing phenomenon in an economy based on capital for reasons that are self-evident: broad appeal equates immediately to high profitability. Data allows movie makers to identify, target, and replicate the ideal tale with mass appeal, creating a text that demands the attention of a cultural touchstone. The narrative rendered generalizable by database faces a crucial problem: what is left out when narratives are created solely to answer desires that are already known? Where comes the opportunity to impart/create/imagine new knowledge? It would seem that all big data has offered Hollywood is a tool to efficiently capture the imaginations of the same demographic they had always chased before, only now with less chance than ever of stumbling onto something interesting or different. Instead of asking the question “what themes and narratives have we not listened to before,” we still ask ourselves “what themes and narratives have already been proven successful?”
Such a dire relationship between data and narrative leaves us with an unappealing lot: stories crafted around themes, people, and dates that were once successful without an explanation about why they were once deemed important. Han (2022) states the problem in these terms: “Today, we pursue information without gaining knowledge. We take notice… of everything without gaining any insight. We travel… across the world without having an experience (p. 7).” We traverse an entertainment landscape filled with stories but devoid of history. For the sake of art (at least potentially in this one instance), a database then, is not the right tool for the job. In time and place, data must be embodied and contextualized to be understood for any value it might have outside of its not inconsiderable capital: for data points to become a story, and for an image to become a work of art.
I do not mean to overstate my case in this situation, but the work of Han (2023) seems apt; I cannot help but view much of the rehashed, retold, and adapted media of the mid to late 20th century as taking on the air of the “tourist in a Hawaiian shirt,” where the products produced in media stem from intellectual property originating in an all-but-forgotten time and place. Divorced from these important contexts, we are left with art that engages an audience populated by an older generation seeking experiential nostalgia, and a younger generation that has no art that meaningfully engages with the exigencies of their current situation. Perhaps expecting art out of Hollywood is a naive proposition, and the entertainment industry has always frustrated such desires. Regardless of whether or not such an artifact is ever intended, art is often a byproduct of what is created in that industry. Unfortunately, I think the intrusion of big data in this one instance creates a situation where the happy occasion of incidental art will be less and less frequent.
References
Burns, M. [Wisecrack]. (2023, September 18). Algorithms and the Death of Hollywood. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/qVo0TljuVjw?feature=shared
Han, B.-C. (2022). Hyperculture : culture and globalization. (D. Steuer, Trans.) (English). Polity Press.
Han, B.-C. (2022). Non-things : upheaval in the lifeworld. (D. Steuer, Trans.) (English). Polity Press.
Hayles, N. K. (2007). Narrative and database: natural symbionts. PMLA, 122(5), 1603–1608.
Manovich, L. (2002). The language of new media. (1st MIT Press paperback, Ser. Leonardo). MIT Press.