I’m wondering. Why is there a similarity, too much of it actually, in offshore entertainment products coming to us recently? I know some analyst or trendsetter would cook up a new trend that will be the “in” thing the next year, but recently, that have been the case in songs and movies.
Before this, only fashion trends are obviously affected by trendsetters. And so, many products coming out onto the shelves, looking almost the same, or using the same theme. For instance, a trendsetter would announce that white will be the new black next year, then every fashion oriented product for that year will be designed to use white. Don’t undermine the power of trendsetting. Even being a nerd is cool when they said it.
Now, It seems that films and songs are affected too. For instance, many popular songs nowadays are using a 70’s retro feel to their song. Ain’t No Other Guy by Christina Aguilera, and Deja Vu by Beyonce for instance. There’s also Crazy by Gnarls Barkley.
In the silver screen, most it is seen on animations. Most similar, Madagascar and The Wild. Then everybody’s into the talking animal thing. One annoying character, one annoyed character, and one character that serves no other purpose but to provide comic relief and to be cute.
Recently, we have Happy Feet. A story about dancing and singing penguins. About the same time, we’ll have Surf’s Up, another penguin story, about surfing. What, don’t we have variations animore?
Only animations from Pixar managed to be a trendsetter. It’s no surprise, that Pixar‘s CEO is Steve Jobs, whose other company is the Apple, another trendsetter.
Trendsetting also effects films, where once there was the horror movie trend, then the hollywood-version-of-Asian-movies (not only horror movies, but also love movies, such as The Lake House remake of Korean Il Mare). Not to forget the remake trend we’re having right now.
Local songs have been affected, but for movies, there’s too few per year to see any trend. Remember the Rock Kapak season? The Remix season? The Hip Hop season? The Dangdut season? The Eddie Hamid (he singlehandedly started a trend of his own!) season?
Don’t let me started on the political arena.
Where has all the originals gone?