Why do we keep creating? š¤
Surely every book, painting, sculpture, song and movie has already been made - do we really need more?
Despite being only 46 (only š±), I reckon I can trace my first-hand knowledge and engagement with English-speaking, Western popular culture back as far as the 1940s. I specify this because I live in Singapore now and am aware that my cultural touchstones and eras are not in fact shared by everyone e.g. my mother-in-law did not know who The Beatles were when I asked her, but she did vaguely recall Elvis Presley whom she referred to as Mao Wang or āCat Kingā.
As I was saying, I can remember popular culture of the 1940s thanks to my nan who we used to visit on Sundays for roast dinners prepared to a soundtrack of Doris Day, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald on the āwirelessā. Her bookshelves were stacked with their biographies and VHS tapes of classic movies such as Casablanca, The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon. When I think back to the 1940s, though I wasnāt there, I can envisage crooners in front of big bands, film noir silhouettes of femme fatales and men in fedoras catching a permanent plume of smoke from their lips.
From there the picture gets clearer. The 1950s, in my mind, were the decade of Elvis Presley and rock nā roll, the birth of the teenager and the film stars that embodied the inner turmoil of that previously unrecognised time of life; James Dean and Marlon Brando, not to mention the beat writers like Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg and Salinger who captured the restlessness of a new generation (of males, at least). The men wore either Harrington or leather biker jackets with drainpipe Leviās jeans whilst the women wore pleated skirts draped over abundant, post-rationing petticoats (in the US at least).
What about the 1960s? Well thatās easy, itās mop-top haircuts, Mary Quant dresses, mods and rockers, hippies and flower power followed by drugs, disillusionment, social realism in the cinemas and social protest on the streets.
The 1970s were glam, punk and disco on the radio and New Hollywood on the screens as Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas, DePalma et al unleashed their cinematic visions (I am aware there have been very few women in my recollections thus far, but it was last century). Interior design was orange, brown and beige; trousers were ludicrously tight at the top and improbably flared at the bottom to accommodate equally ludicrous platform heels. Everyone seemed very hairy.
The 1980s, which is the first decade I actually remember first-hand, seemed sleeker and cleaner in chrome, glass and neon but the 1990s were when I really came into my own. As luck would have it, Anglo-pop-culture shifted towards the UK and London specifically with Britpop which, though ānewā, borrowed heavily from the 1960s Carnaby Street vibe with its Union Jack motifs on everything from Noelās guitar to Geriās dress.
This morphed, in the early 2000s, into something both retro and futuristic at the same time with indie sleaze aping a ā70s lo-fi, junk shop aesthetic and Y2K adopting a sleek and shiny view of the future.
Now try to picture the 2010s or 2020s. What does it look like? Does any moment from the past 15-20 years jump out as distinct?
I am not the first to notice that culture appears to have stagnated since the simultaneous arrival of the smartphone and the global financial crisis in 2007/8 but the reason I bring it up now is that it makes me wonder, as I frequently do when labouring away on a story or screenplay that nobody asked for and very few will see - has everything already been made? Is that why new artistic movements and creative forms appear to have stalled?
From the late 19th through the 20th Century you couldnāt move for new artistic movements! In the first 25 years of the 20th Century we went from Post-Impressionism to Symbolism through Art Nouveau, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Dada. In the first 25 years of the 21st Century thereās not actually been an new art movement at all, only hangovers from the 20th Century such as street art and digital art (NFTs??), which arenāt so much aesthetics as mediums, and of course post-modernism which is essentially a remixing of everything that went before. Why is this? I would like to propose several, completely unscientific, theories followed by some equally unscientific solutions.
Has culture stalled and, if so, why?
Firstly, we must entertain the idea that maybe everything has already been written, painted, sculpted, sung and filmed. Most generations think they have reached the end of creativity before something new inevitably pops up to prove them wrong. But itās got to end sometime, right?
Maybe new creative forms have less cultural impact because we no longer live in a monoculture. Case in point Bad Bunny, who played the half-time show at the Superbowl as the most streamed artist in the world in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2025 but who I, and everyone I come in to contact with, has never heard of. Back in the ā90s heād at least have made an appearance on Top Of The Pops but now I am completely cut off from him.
Maybe new creative forms are not taken seriously enough to impact the culture, like video games, or vertical micro-dramas, which can be super cinematic and are attracting audiences of millions on TikTok and ReelShort but are dismissed as shallow and soapy - are they not to the three reel movie what a three minute pop single was to the symphony?
The algorithms that power both discovery of art/content and, increasingly, its creation can only look backwards and only define what is good by what is popular. Algorithmās have no taste, see no depth, feel no emotion, all they have is an archive of what was clicked on and what wasnāt so now that has becoming the defining trait of āgoodā art/content - itās clickworthyness. This already dubious metric is further devalued by the context in which that art/content is now experienced e.g. on a tiny screen in an unconducive setting whilst the user is doing three other things at the same time. (Thereās a reason films seem better in a cinema, art in a gallery and music in a club). This is a huge hurdle to the development of new creative forms with true cultural impact.
The decline of deviance, as evidenced in the epic post by Adam Mastroianni below, and which I put down to the now untenable opportunity cost of being original. There was a time, not that long ago in fact, when one could actually scrape by living on the dole in London or Manchester, like the Sex Pistols and The Smiths, or in a loft in NYC, like The Velvet Underground, until opportunity knocked. A time when you could be discovered by a journalist or critic, patron or gallerist, publisher or producer who, back then, actually built their reputations on finding previously undiscovered talent and bringing it to prominence. Now A&R scouts donāt go to gigs, journalists donāt venture into enclaves and gallerists canāt afford to take risks when rents are so high, so the job of being discovered falls squarely on the shoulders of the artist whose only means of reaching an audience is to please the algorithms which, well, see point three above. My point is, where will the next Hunter S. Thomson come from when the price of failure is so high?
Global competition - once upon a time you would hone your talent as part of a small, local scene, collaborating with and competing against the best of local talent until you grew out of that scene and expanded your boundaries regionally, then nationally then, if you were very lucky, internationally. Now, the moment you put something out online, you are immediately in competition with every other artist within your medium on earth and, as the saying goes, no matter how good you are there is always an Asian kid who is better. We expect talent to arrive fully formed these days, without the development process that gets them there.
Itās cutthroat and dispiriting so, what can we do about it?
I donāt have any definitive answers as of this moment but I do have some suggestions, feel free to add your own in the comments below.
Go to physical gigs and galleries, recommend bands, books and artists, buy their work for other people as gifts, school yourself in the classics by all means but try something new too.
Donāt rely on algorithms to tell you what to read, watch, look at and listen to. Find individual journalists, critics and yes, even influencers, whom you go to specifically to find art that is not necessarily popular with the algorithm but made an impact on someone whose opinion you value. My personal favourite thing is to visit record shops in other countries and ask them who I should have heard of from their local scene and then buy it.
Stop trying to re-create the form that inspired you. Yes, I would love to write the great British/Singaporean novel but, guess what, no oneās reading those any more so write something else instead; short stories or novellas perhaps? As bestseller Ian Rankin has suggested, maybe we should write FOR modern attention spans rather than keep complaining about them.
Create your own industry; the record labels, movie studios and publishing companies are all still stuck in the last century tying to maintain business models that havenāt actually been around all that long. Just because the last 50 years of the 20th Century gave us mass market paperbacks, blockbusters and rock stars doesnāt mean these are natural phenomena. These industries, formats and successes are all synthetic, people made them up, so letās make up new industries and formats and successes instead.
As an artist, enjoy the process not just the end result. I write to find out what Iām thinking and that provides me with clarity in an otherwise murky world, if I simply prompted an AI Iād get the words but none of the meaning or the pleasure, which often first requires the pain of actually sitting down and thinking for myself.
So, why do we keep creating? Human nature, self expression, curiosity, therapy, boredom, inspiration and sometimes, maybe, for validation but if you put that first youāll find yourself trying to please the algorithm before yourself and thatās the death of art.
To Do List
My recommendations for new things to read, watch, look at, listen to and do this week:
My poem is still in competition for Poems on The MRT and every vote counts so please have a read (itās short) and drop a heart if you like it : https://poemsonthemrt.com/wp/poems/a-timeless-space-ode-to-changi-airport/
Hereās an article from The Conversation on how AI will accelerate the rate of cultural stagnation in case you needed anymore evidence: https://theconversation.com/ai-induced-cultural-stagnation-is-no-longer-speculation-its-already-happening-272488
And if youāre looking for the why behind all of this, I fear this piece in the NYT may explain everything - in fact itās so good I pinned it to my blog roll of favourite essays on the homepage of Pro-Human. Itās about how financialisation killed everything you love: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html
OK, I accept thatās all a bit bleak so hereās something lovely, a brand new British literary magazine and podcast on a mission to ānurture, publish and promote the best new working-class writing by new and established working-class writers and visual artistsā: https://thebeemagazine.com/
Right, thatāll do ya! Nx