I worked within the vast web of consultants for the Hillary Clinton campaign for President in 2015 and 2016.It was a process of searching. Clinton’s story is a deep well and it’s familiar to the public. The middle class roots. The legal career. The family. The years as first lady. The years in service as Senator and Secretary of State. Our job, as one group of communications experts among many others, was to tell some part of her story to voters in a way that would resonate. For over a year, the campaign frequently switched that part of Clinton’s rich story it chose to communicate. For a while it was about how she is a fighter for us. Then for a few months it was her ability to break down barriers. Later the campaign ditched that again and got excited about her capacity to make the country stronger together. As the campaign searched and searched, each of these messages, different dimensions of an original story of Hillary Clinton that the voting public knows well, they kept coming up empty. None of those dimensions of who Clinton is and why she deserved to be president was resonating.
They were hitting the same old generic themes people had heard over and over again from other candidates for decades with none of the zeitgeisty resonance needed to neutralize the compelling story that Trump was telling. Last week, certain corners of the news buzzed about another go at the presidency for Clinton. This time, Clinton is hitting different notes. She’s talking about the Russian interference dimension of her story. She’s playing up her shoulder-brushing debate feistiness in tweet replies to Trump saying “don’t tempt me” to run. I think she should do it! It could work. Because her playbook is straight out of the franchise remix: familiar characters starring in new stories with updated contemporary resonance. It’s a smart move for anyone who wants a toehold in the culture, especially when your fan base is craving a story about cockiness in the face of democracy-destroying evildoers. The franchise remix is replacing the franchise reboot as the savvy move for owners of popular IP. Like the reboot, the franchise remix is set in the deep, rich worlds we already know from familiar stories.
But unlike the reboot, the remix diverges within the familiar setting, telling us not what we already know but what we want to hear right now. The franchise remix searches for and then highlights themes for now within an old story or world. Damon Lindelof, creator of Lost and The Leftovers, seems to have crystallized this moment of the remix supplanting the reboot when he announced to fans his new adaptation of Watchmen for HBO in an earnest Instagram letter. “We have no desire to ‘adapt’ the twelve issues Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibbons created thirty years ago,” Lindelof said. “Those issues are sacred ground and they will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted.”He continued: “They will, however be remixed. Because the bass lines in those familiar tracks are just too good and we’d be fools not to sample them. Those original twelve issues are our Old Testament…To be clear. Watchmen is canon.”What Lindelof ended up creating was a stroke of genius.
His show gives the casual viewers what it wants, a story with themes of race and identity, while also giving the existing and new die-hard fans a bottomless well of extra credit work to do in their free time, from the original comics to new background materials crafted specifically for the more voracious members of this new show’s audience. This template will be repeated. Owning beloved IP is not enough. Dozens and dozens of media companies own beloved IP. Practically everyone owns beloved IP. The owner of beloved IP now creates new never-ending webs of storytelling across media, merchandise and experiences. Now media companies are starting to mine their catalogues for IP to remix instead of IP to reboot. The 1960s novel and film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is getting a remix. Daria is getting a remix. Party of Five and Clueless are, too. None of these are retreads of the original stories but instead use the characters and the worlds as familiar, safe jumping-off points to tell stories thematically engineered to be hits right now. Makes you wonder, why don’t they just write new stories with new characters that touch on themes that are relevant right now?
Why not run new candidates with new themes? I blame a phenomenon called , a sort of paralysis in the face of rapid technological and communications changes. We’re stuck. Everything changes so rapidly yet nothing really ever changes. We get the same characters over and over because when you're in a car accelerating uncontrollably you just need a fixed point on the horizon to focus on. So like Todd Philips sneaking a grown-up movie into a superhero package, the crafters of our biggest shared stories have found new ideas can only stick when they're wrapped in something familiar. Otherwise we don't have the bandwidth to process them.
The shorter stuff
Last week I wrote about zero-touch cultural products, media that don't actually exist and yet do exist. Is the Jeff Bezos dick pic the most expensive zero-touch cultural product ever? There’s speculation in this article that the political scandal surrounding Jeff Bezos didn't help when the Pentagon was weighing Microsoft versus Amazon for their cloud computing contract. That political scandal involved a threatening email from the National Enquirer mentioning photos that have never surfaced and are questionable in their very existence. (NYT)
I did not know that Barstool had worked out some sort of influencer deal with the family who went viral for their painfully unfunny TikTok videos. There's no way that the woman behind the videos is in on the joke, right? They are laughing at her, but I guess so was everyone on my twitter timeline who retweeted the videos in the first place. The whole thing is sad. (The Outline)
Al Pacino proves that you can do self-care well into your 70s. He learned the term "access" and is now using it to express his feelings about his friends. That's septuagenarian goals. (NYT)
Lost in the Watchmen press was the fact that the show, perfectly soundtracked by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, premiered on the thirty year anniversary of Pretty Hate Machine. (Spin)
Nick Ciarelli and Brad Evans have the funniest show in the world right now and it is a running series of sketches posted to Twitter. Their latest is a very funny parody of YouTube fast food reviewers. (Twitter)
There is something so weird about seeing Jeff Goldblum stuck in the middle of some Star Wars dudes and some cartoon character I don't recognize in this Disney+ digital billboard. It was so weird to me that I actually had to Google around to figure out why he's in this ad. Turns out he's got an original show coming to Disney+ but is he really that iconic? (Twitter)
Scary thought: it's only been four years since Netflix started releasing original shows. It feels like 400. In that time they've gone from zero originals to 130. (Twitter)
I choose to wholeheartedly embrace and enjoy this take about Peloton co-opting Christianity. Why not? It's fun. (The Daily Beast)
Apple TV+ reviews are in. (Variety)
The soundtrack to the Ryan Murphy Netflix show The Politician is #1 on iTunes. (Twitter)
Cardi B's rapping competition show for Netflix is a hit. (Complex)
My favorite New York Times column is finally back after a five year absence! Streetscapes is the thing I used to look forward to most every Sunday. RIP to Christopher Gray. (NYT)