"My 5-year-old's favorite song is a version of "Golden," the standout hit from Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters, meowed by fake cats. Her favorite TV show is Is It Cake?, a Netflix baking competition seemingly inspired by a viral TikTok trend that involved making trompe l'oeil cakes disguised as random objects. Everything in popular culture feels recycled or reanimated or patched together out of preexisting elements. The dominant art form of the 21st century is the remix."
"In the background, though, are product-placement deals featuring more than 100 carefully selected brands, a curated Spotify "experience", influencer tie-ins, and prime Demogorgon placement inside the new Netflix House at the King of Prussia mall, in Pennsylvania-the latter truly a potent postmodern symbol of art becoming consumption. "Who wouldn't want an $80 cookie house modeled after Vecna's death mansion?" Fast Company's Jeff Beer"
Contemporary culture overflows with an endless reel of words, ideas, games, songs, videos, memes, outrageous statements, celebrity meltdowns, life hacks, and viral oddities. Children adopt remixed fragments—novelty covers and meme-adjacent shows—as mainstream favorites, blurring lines between earnest fandom and parody. Popular media frequently recombines preexisting elements into new forms, making remix the dominant art form of the century. Even sincere homages like Stranger Things embed extensive commercialization: product placement, curated brand experiences, influencer tie-ins, and mall attractions that convert aesthetic nostalgia into consumer merchandise and branded experiences.
Read at The Atlantic
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