Monoculture is dead, and the cause of death is streaming

Mourning the way we were: monoculture and shared experiences

Image credit: Entertainment Weekly

We used to be a proper country.

Well, not really. But we did used to largely consume the same media, and as such were able to find common ground with one another more easily.

This is what monoculture is, or rather, was: when a society shared nearly singular cultural experiences at the same point in time. Monoculture was the “you had to be there” era, when specific media traveled through one or two channels for mass consumption. You wanted to watch TV? You needed a television and a cable subscription. You wanted to listen to music? You needed a radio, MTV, or a physical vessel of the music (vinyl, cassette tape, CD). Wanna catch that new movie? You went to the theater when it was showing and if not, you waited 9-12 months for it to come to premium cable (or even longer to regular cable, if your parents couldn’t afford movie channels).

I am wistfully nostalgic about this point in our history, the era where millions upon millions of Americans were all seated to consume one piece of media together. I miss the days of going to school and having early morning discussions about last night’s episode of Jersey Shore, or the new Britney song that was just released.

For television, monoculture was when Americans would watch in the tens of millions the series finales of shows like Friends, The Cosby Show, and The Sopranos. We were collectively traumatized by 9/11 coverage and gripped by the celebrity trials of O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson — the O.J. trial alone costing the U.S. about $480 million in productivity on the day the verdict was read.

And even if you weren’t there for every cultural touchstone, you could easily get up to speed by watching reruns of sitcoms like Full House and Fresh Prince or the beloved I Love the… decades series on VH1. (That series and its importance to media literacy for Millennials might be my Roman Empire.) The act of watching these shows became shared experiences unto themselves.

While it is undeniable that monoculture contributed to the creation of a hegemonic society with rigid depictions of family life, sexuality, and respectability among other things, it’s an important pop culture era to understand when examining the media landscape of today. Originally, streaming came about as a way to provide alternatives to monoculture; the early days of Spotify and Netflix promised consumers fully customized experiences. Our user profiles were algorithmically tailored to our tastes, giving us the illusion of autonomy in the shows, films, and music we consumed. But, as capitalism is wont to do, the popularity and convenience — and at one time, cost-effectiveness — of streaming is now being exploited for profit.

You could argue that every era in American history has sought to exploit our love of culture for profit. Yet, so many of us long for “simpler” times when entire communities shared literacy around one piece of media. Back then, the pursuit of our dollars from media companies felt like something to be earned rather than blindly given. The art that was created felt like the product of a genuine desire to entertain and less a cash grab. Put simply, there seemed to be more soul in monoculture. And most importantly, the exchange of entertainment for our investment, be it financial or emotional, felt more fair. Whether or not this perception was true, the late stage capitalism we’re living under now has bucked all pretense that what consumers, or even artists, want matters to any degree.

The movie star is dead — we now have actors-slash-influencers who are desperate to seem relatable on social media in order to sell us their newest brand collab or increase their follower count. What’s worse is the artists themselves don’t necessarily want this, rather it is expected of them in order to land jobs. I miss the days when we’d only hear from a musician or actor if they were promoting a new project, appearing on a talk show, the radio¹, or TRL in the month leading up to the release. I miss when pop songs were always longer than three minutes, with two verses and a bridge and production that wasn’t so obviously chasing virality on TikTok. Shorter songs mean they are replayed more, and more streams equals more money for record labels. (They’re not wrong — I find myself with these short songs on repeat because a 2:30 song is just not enough! It’s not satisfying! Add more song!!!) And to get to any form of entertainment — be it sports, music, videos, film, or television — you have to get through a litany of ads. Before, often during, and almost always after.

What sucks even more is that it didn’t have to be this way — the early days of streaming actually continued monoculture in new and exciting ways.

The early days of Netflix as an alternative to cable saw two shows, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, galvanize a nation. Moreso with OITNB, I recall fondly the days when everyone I knew was watching it, waiting until midnight for the new season to drop every summer. Netflix marketing pushed hard for both of its flagship shows, running commercials on cable to invite new fans to the cult sensations on streaming. People gathered culturally around these shows; it was one of the few times in my life that my parents and I were watching the same TV as adults. I could joke with my college classmates about the most recent episodes of OITNB and whatever funny thing Piper or Nicky or Crazy Eyes did.

But after Kevin Spacey’s assault scandal and the character Poussey’s tasteless death on OITNB, both shows quickly went downhill with their respective fanbases. In the years that followed, Netflix tried to replicate the marketing formula that worked with their first two forays into serious TV. But few shows have come close to or surpassed the streams that those original two did — and if they did, it was often in spite of Netflix’s marketing, not because of it.

Game of Thrones was a unique hybrid of cable appointment TV and the convenience of streaming, and probably the last true piece of monoculture before our present moment. It started on cable, but was available next day on the now-defunct HBO Go app. When that turned into HBO Now and the series’ storylines really started to heat up, the fandom steadily grew into a cultural phenomenon. I was one of these bandwagon fans, binging the series² on pirated websites until I caught up to the live episodes at the start of season 4. By the series’ end, you had bars of people joined for watch parties, cheering on the Night King’s glorious defeat. But, all good things come to an end, and the media cycle moves so quickly now that most people have forgotten how big every episode of GoT felt to us during its run.

Now, all streamers seem to follow Netflix as an industry leader. This unfortunately means that, if a show is not immediately — and I do mean immediately, as in the first two to four weeks after release — a successful, viral sensation, it is cancelled with a quickness. Streamers used to allow three or four seasons for a show to grow in popularity, like Netflix did with my beloved GLOW.³ But now, streamers are unafraid of cancelling shows after a mere one or two seasons.

Because of the model that they created, streamers refuse to understand that consumers’ viewing habits are different now. Content is on-demand, therefore we feel no urgency to operate on the model of appointment viewing or listening. We come to the content when we want to. Streaming services literally conditioned us to be this way. Yet, they want to have it both ways: they want to pimp the convenience of on-demand viewing with their platforms, yet blame us for cancellations if we aren’t waiting with bated breath the second a new show, movie, or song premieres.

All of the fans a show will ever have don’t discover the show right away; even the most successful television shows of all-time had their fanbases grow season upon season through word-of-mouth or latent discovery through reruns. Similarly, we all have loved songs or music artists that had to grow on us through repeated exposure. The capitalists at the top of these industries don’t care about slow, earned growth over years; they want cheap, instant results.

What’s more, we’re given less content over longer periods of time. Perhaps trying to imitate the formula of Game of Thrones, a maximum of 10 episodes per season is the present standard. This could maybe be excused for a drama, but now it’s the standard even for sitcoms, a genre built upon feel-good, filler episodes. We have to wait anywhere from one to four years between seasons, when the norm used to be 14-22 episode seasons that ran from fall to spring, with only small breaks throughout. It’s hard to even want to invest in a new TV show because of the long season gaps and high probability of cancellation if it’s even remotely niche.

So now here we are: a media landscape saturated as ever, but diminishing in quality and quantity per media text. An entertainment model that not just fucks over consumers, but the people that create the entertainment as well. Unsurprisingly, those working in the industry are struggling to grow financially and professionally with walls that continue caving in on their creativity, including yours truly. Monoculture certainly had its limitations in regards to fostering imagination in our society. However, when we survey the horizon of what’s to come in media, it’s hard not to conclude that capitalist greed has needlessly complicated the entertainment industry, breaking it beyond repair.

1. I remember listening to “SexyBack” by Justin Timberlake for the first time on the radio on the boombox in my bedroom, because that’s where you premiered music once upon a time. Now, the radio is only something you listen to if you’re in a car — and with Bluetooth connectivity to your phone, you’re probably not listening there either.

2. On a personal note, I will always find it wild how I got into this series before my husband, who is the BIGGEST nerd. Like, DND brand nerd. This series was so Quentin-coded. But I got him into it, and he even read the books too! If you’re reading this dear, you’re welcome.

3. This was especially egregious because the subsequent season would have been the show’s last ANYWAY and they had already started filming! They just had to let them finish!!! And the last season ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger. UGH.