Ian Miculan

Thanks! If you use this for a future article, I look forward to reading it

Yeah, Cats is a weird situation because it seemed destined for cult fandom before release. This vulture.com article does a pretty good job of explaining how Cats is already transitioning into cult status: https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/cats-box-office-flop-is-it-the-next-rocky-horror.html

Something that I think could be added to this discussion is how propaganda had to work with real-world events to be as effective as it was in WW2. The American government was selling the war effort to a public that wanted retribution having just witnessed the Pearl Harbour attacks. I believe that this, rather that the propaganda alone, is what made their messaging so effective.

I think you touched on an interesting point in that zombies (despite the fact that they are fairly consistent monsters in terms of appearance, strengths and weaknesses) have the ability to embody a variety of threats that are unique to a given time period. It seems that this ability to stay relevant at any point in time as well as the initial popularity and reputation of the genre has contributed to its longevity.

Great article! It might be interesting to follow up on this article with medium or genre specific writing methods to see if there are any deviations from the general rules.

I briefly mentioned the New Wave of American Heavy Metal which would likely include BMTH, ADTR, and Asking Alexandria (and I actually wanted to expand on metalcore a bit but it turns out that its a much older subgenre than I initially thought). Admittedly, I didn’t spend too much time on it and probably should have fleshed it out a bit more. However, the problem remains that big bands now aren’t reaching the same mainstream as big bands from years ago. This is evident in both mainstream chart success and big concert festival line-ups which frequently place older, and more popular, headlining bands in front of newer ones. Another big indicator is simply how many non-genre junkies would know who Asking Alexandria or BMTH is vs. how many would know who Metallica or Nine Inch Nails is. (I should also note that popularity does not equal quality and that the genre has definitely not seen a dip in skill as evidenced by new bands like the ones you mentioned)

I think a kind of underrated factor in all of this is the role of walkthroughs. As gaming criticism has become less diverse, and arguably more corrupt, walkthroughs seem to be the only way to get a truly unbiased sense of what a game is like. While some mistakes and glitches can be covered up in edits, the gameplay, storyline, and mechanics (the key factors in every game) get displayed in full view for viewers to draw their own conclusions.

I think a lot of what makes a good soundtrack has to do with how and how well a film is edited. Quite often the degree to which the music fits the editing makes the difference between a good soundtrack and the director seemingly hitting shuffle on their iTunes. For instance, the movie Filth has a very diverse soundtrack that fits extremely well due to the cuts and colour correction of the film.