The content in mainstream TV seems to be getting over-populated with the same shows, just re-branded differently. Creativity in the concept and content has been diminishing. Now it just seems that TV shows are being created just for small twenty minutes bites of shallow and attention grabbing entertainment with the sole intention of monetisation. After the introduction of the video- on- demand services, hopes were rekindled but, whenever I go on Netflix or Amazon Prime and look for some TV show to watch, I just feel over-whelmed and end up either not watching anything or watching re-runs of the same show that I had seen earlier.
Tired from the content on TV I would often go on YouTube in search of unorthodox and non-mainstream content. I would look for things that would be impossible to talk about or show on TV. This freedom of content creation without any form of censoring came from a space that encouraged new and fresh creations as well as the content not having much influence from people outside the circle of creators. This causes the content to generally lack in production quality, but this helps in forming stronger narrative structure and experiment more with the look and feel of the content with a small budget.
Creating big-production film and TV shows gives control of the content to the producers. The vision of the director and the writers is now undermined by the vision of the producer. According to data, producing an hour of TV can set back a producer by approximately $3 million on average. Hence to make back the money the most obvious strategy would be to create things that their consumers identify with, hence creating content that have been proven to make money. Due to this, there isn’t any room left for experimentation in creating content and creating newer viewership who would be interested in new content. Of course this doesn’t apply to all shows as there are always some which would be considered unique, but a channel dedicated to the creation of content as different as the ones on Adult Swim, was unheard of.
Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, talks about the difference between George Orwell’s dystopian book 1984, and Aldous Huxley’s (also dystopian) novel, Brave New World. Orwell predicts that we will be oppressed by immense government control, not only on our actions but also our thoughts, whereas Huxley says that our need for entertainment and pleasure will drive us to our demise. Postman takes the Huxleyan stance in his novel. In one of the chapters, Postman talks about the ‘now… this’ phenomena in broadcast television and radio when transitioning from one subject to another. This phrase indicates the irrelevance of what was seen and the indistinguishability of the content coming up next. He finds the root of this problem in telegraphy and photography, but television is responsible for putting the “now…this” worldview into its “boldest and most embarrassing form.”
The “now…this” phenomena still prevails. It has spread from TV to social media to online video streaming sites to video on demand services. But this has appeared in a newer form of advertisements and machine learning algorithms. Websites and apps such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and other such streaming services use the machine-learning algorithm to figure out the content which the consumer would be interested in viewing based on what the users have watched earlier and liked. Eli Pariser, in his book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You, talks about the filter bubbles that the internet has made around its users. The users are only aware of the information on the internet that are curated for them through the algorithms based on the search history of the users. This creates a bubble of information that the user is exposed to, and the information outside this bubble will never come across to the users. This leaves a whole world of content out of reach from the consumers. As people are bombarded daily with advertisements of TV content both online and offline, and the large production TV Shows are the ones able to advertise in such great volume and so aggressively to the people, this causes a loop in the information received and looked for to become the same. This in turn creates a trend which creates investment for the same content by another big production company.
One TV channel that has managed to stay away from the vicious cycle of following trend creations and at the same time create a huge cult following for itself, would be the late night Cartoon Network Channel, Adult Swim. Adult Swim has been able to create content deemed unthinkable to create in the space of TV creations for its time, and has actually created a whole new genre of cringe humour. Although most of the content on Adult Swim lies on the spectrum of absurdity, this gives them a freedom over the type of content where they are able to talk about almost anything and everything.
In 1992, Ted Turner created Cartoon Network. The original programming constituted the MGM and the Hanna-Barbera library of children cartoon shows. Until 1994 when Mike Lazzo the head of programming in Cartoon Network, created a spin-off talk show called Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Lazzo just took the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Space Ghost, and re-invented him as a washed up ex-superhero, trying to come back in the spot light as a talk show host. This show was intended for a mature audience, hence Space Ghost Coast to Coast would be played later at night. This show was the first original content created by Cartoon Network and the first show that would give rise to Adult Swim in 2001. During the first four years of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Network provided Lazzo with next to no production money. Due to low budget Lazzo and his team had to re-use characters from their Hanna Barbara library, to experiment with the style of animation and the content for creating a new show. They decided upon the ‘indie garage feel’ for the show, a kind of aesthetic different from any other late night shows at that time. The absurd, surrealist and mature nature of the content in this show attracted millions of new viewers to Cartoon Network. From the success of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Network created more late night shows. In 2001, Adult Swim was created, with shows like Home Videos, Sealab 2021, Harvey Birdman, The Break Show and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Not only were Adult Swim at the forefront in the creation of fresh, experimental and controversial content, it also recognised such content when other channels couldn’t. After the cancelation of Family Guy by Fox, Adult Swim featured a whole season of Family Guy, reviving the show and increasing its viewer base by more than 200%, FX took notice and renewed the show a year later.
A major influence of Adult Swim shows come from the Theatre of the Absurd, an era of theatre whose works are often described as anti-plays. On realizing the absurdity of theatre itself, these play writers were able to question the fabric and the existence of the theatre and create works considered absurd with the use of realist themes, often these themes would linger around the question of existence. The Eric Andre Show and Moral Orel are much like the plays made during the era of the theatre of the absurd. These shows are a reflection of generic talk shows and family sitcom dramas, pointing out the absurdity of format in the narrative structures and the overall content. Adult Swim much like the plays in Theatre of the Absurd, are able to question the fabric of TV shows and humourize it to the extent that even the viewers unaware of the saturation and the staleness in its content, get enlightened about it.
The Eric Andre Show is essentially a talk show gone wrong. The Eric Andre Show starts with Eric Andre, the host of the show destroying his whole set, beating up the crew of the show and thrashing the whole set to the ground. After annihilating the set when he sits down to rest, few from the crew clean up the whole set and replace all the broken equipment with new ones. It seems that Eric has completely given up on the show and just doesn’t care about anything anymore hence giving him the ability to do just whatsoever he wants to. In one of the skits in his earlier episodes Eric Andre walks into a jewellery store and robs it in broad daylight. For him nothing matters, he doesn’t care what the viewers want to view, he just cares about what he wants to show. This approach towards creating content brings forth a kind of freedom where almost anything is possible and nothing is predictable. Another example of his nonchalance is in the interview section of the show, they are edited from a forty five minutes to three to four minutes interview making the majority of the interview unseen. He considers his interviews to be “half social experiment and half psychological torture”. Many guests have left mid-interview, unable to cope with the absurdity and the complete unpredictability of the interviews as well as Eric himself.
Eric Andre can be compared to Eugene Ionesco, a prominent play writer from the Theatre of the Absurd, who hated the theatre. He wrote The Bald Soprano, a play inspired from his attempt at learning English and in this process realising the absurdity of language and the impossibility of communication. The play revolves around a Mr. and Mrs. Smith as they talk about their evening earlier, through their discussion their maid Mary comes to announce the entry of the Martins. Mr. and Mrs. Martin seem to not remember each other, although through deduction they realised that since they live in the same house and sleep on the same bed hence they must be married, to which Mary deduces that they do not know who they actually are hence proving their theory wrong. The destruction of language goes on through the play, and ends with the Smiths sitting in the same position as in the first scene and the whole play begins from the start. Eric Andre similarly in his show breaks down communication of his interviews and skits to a level where anticipations and expectations are thrown out of the window and the confusion of his victims and the viewers is what makes the show hilarious.
Morel Orel is a claymation show created by Dino Stamatopoulos, it parodies the generic family sit-com drama and points out the absurdity in family sit-com dramas as well as the depiction of religious morality as shown on TV. This show is about a naïve kid named Orel from the fundamentalist protestant Christian town called Moralton. Each episode starts with Orel learning something new about becoming a better Christian, and his attempts would land him in questionable situations best described as the grey area of Christian morality, in turn landing him in trouble. Often people say that this show is just poking fun of religion with the use of extremely dark humour, I beg to differ, as the show tries to tell the story of almost all religious fundamentalist households. The gullibility of children and the lack of happiness in the families lead to miss-interpretation and miss-communication of religious texts and malpractices. Simply speaking, this show talks about how much more complicated real life is with respect to how religion tries to portray it.
In the current context of increasing rightist and orthodox propaganda run politics in a country like ours, this show would be a great reflective piece for the youth for becoming aware of social functioning and understanding the role religion plays in our society. Although the show revolves around Christianity, similarities can be seen in the context of political and economic manipulation of the masses starting from a young age throughout the wide spectrum of religions around the world. The show is not anti-religion, it’s anti-irrational and extremist fundamentalism, and instead of blaming religion for everything, they blame the people who brainwash their children, .
Adult Swim has been around for more then one and a half decade, slowly growing from a mere five shows to over seventy original shows, multiple pilots and specials, several shows that were cancelled by other channels were given a second chance and Adult Swim also played a major role in bringing anime into the mainstream in the west. It holds the highest number of viewership in the late night hours of broadcasting as well as the youngest amongst all the other late night channels. Adult Swim have been able to create a community by featuring artworks, animations and music of their fans, many artists and musicians careers started from being featured on Adult Swim. One of the main reasons for Adult Swim’s success would be their boldness, their inability to say no to controversial and unconventional content has given them that edge over all the other TV channels, but unfortunately with time as they realised their audience and understood their needs and wants in TV consumption, one could deduce that Adult Swim too has started to lose it’s edge. As the number of zeroes in their revenue increase, the low budget experimental TV shows that had built Adult Swim from scratch are now being replaced by big budget, more sober and cautious content. But although Adult Swim is heading to a more commercial direction, there is no denying the influence that Adult Swim had on the TV industry, as well as influence over their viewers and maybe later on they start experimenting with even bigger productions and create even more controversial and unconventional content.