They are meant to tickle the ribs with gags, or to thrill, but not to overwhelm or cultivate. The action movie, that B movie with an A-movie budget, will continue to deliver collisions, gashes, crashes, and burnings, like the video games that are their prototypes. Popular culture loves box office, and box office loves celebrity, especially celebrity in trouble. From the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby to O. J. Simpson, Princess Diana, Gennifer Flowers, and Monica Lewinsky is not so great a leap. Celebrities are held in common by diverse people who otherwise would have precious little in common.
Celebrities provide membership cards for ordinary folks.
Through our common fascination, outsiders turn to insiders. Synergy will be a fifth prime media feature. Vast quantities of corporate popular culture are driven not by any passion to create, find truth, or improve public life but by an urge to carve out market share, toward which end maximum reuse of materials is the organizing principle. Speed will be a sixth staple. Sound bites already last less than 10 seconds and will be shorter still.