Mark Fisher - ‘The Slow Cancellation Of the Future’

Fisher analyzed the show Sapphire and Steel, and how it relates to our modern culture, “...it doesn’t feel as if the 21st Century has started yet. We remain trapped in the 20th century, just as Sapphire and Steel were incarcerated in their roadside cafe”. I disagree that our culture is currently at a stand still. There are many reasons why our culture is aging differently than it has in the past. 

One possible factor is that our current culture is so fast paced, always looking for the next best thing, that it is unwilling to look at our present long enough to have a ‘moment’. 

This pace of new information has also swelled the amount of options for consumers. For example streaming services like Netflix and Hulu (and other competitors) started taking off about a decade ago. This made a huge switch from the more limited options of cable to thousands of different options at our fingertips. This connects to why Spongbob memes work so well for my generation; for, it was sort of the end of cable tv in that we were all going home after school and watching the same handful of shows. The same goes for music. Transitioning from the age of radio music to accessible streaming from spotify, apple music, soundcloud, pandora, ect. Our culture is not as strongly defined by a narrow few musicians and tv shows. 

Maybe culture is just made in a different way now; In my head I see cultural landmarks and the passing in times in memes, vine, youtube, tik tok, ect.  I would also like to argue that though our culture has not per say developed a new style that distinguishes it from other decades it is unique in its romanticization of the ‘good ole days’. As a culture we have collectively agreed to revisit things of the past but re-inventing them in our modern way.