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Cyclic National Fascination

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"Superheroes have always flourished in the times of greatest American adversity. During the depression era, we were afraid of not being able to put food on the table. We were afraid of becoming involved in a great world war that would take our freedom away. In the atomic age, we were afraid of radiation. Now, we're afraid of terrorist attacks. In all of those eras of history, that's when superheroes have enjoyed their greatest resurgence."
Mark Waid, Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle

A curious phenomenon in which, every decade or so, some aspect of American society which is not normally in the public eye becomes the subject of fad-like levels of interest, which both leads and is led by media coverage of the topic. Curiosity about the day-to-day workings of the group or subculture begins at a minor, almost cursory, level — but over the course of months this interest gets driven to a frenzy pitch as it suddenly becomes necessary for every person on the street to know everything they can about it. Often, features of the subculture become embraced by society at large, including but not limited to copying elements of their lifestyle, absorbing their jargon, and creating culture heroes.

This obsessive interest often lasts long enough for stage plays, TV shows or movies on the subject to be made, which usually appear just as the cycle of interest peaks or is dying away. Marketers usually jump on the bandwagon as the cycle reaches its zenith, trying to profit from the vast amount of public interest; it's likely that the sudden commercialization actually contributes to the subsequent, and perhaps inevitable, downturn in that interest.

As the subculture falls "out of style", there is sometimes a backlash against it. Either way, it is followed by a fallow period, which itself is followed by a more relaxed acceptance of some or all of the co-opted subculture elements. The culture at large then usually remains quiescent for several years before discovering some new subculture to obsess over, thus beginning the cycle anew.

Cycles are frequently triggered by some innocuous entry into the meme pool, like a popular song or book. They tend to produce at least one Fad Super (a character based on a then-current cultural fad).

Remember that not everyone lives in the US, so this phenomenon can happen (and has happened) in other countries across history.

A type of Cyclic Trope (a trope goes from being Played Straight to Subverted and back again over time). Might overlap with Foreign Culture Fetish (a sshallow obsession with another country). See also Follow the Leader (a successful or groundbreaking work kick-starts a series of other similar works), The Red Stapler (a work of fiction affects demand for a real product, hobby, or occupation), and Popularity Polynomial (something once considered a fad is now popular once more).


Examples:

Cultural Obsessions

  • Fixations on specific cultures are an Older Than Radio trend. Orientalism is the prime instance — mainly Chinoiserie (18th century) and Japonisme (late 19th century), but also The Theme Park Version of the Indian culture (The Gilded Age) and the Ancient Egyptnote  (early 19th century). Even though all four are a direct result of Europe's colonialist campaigns, the last one is special since the culture being mainstreamed was long extinct by the time Napoléon Bonaparte "visited" the territory. Unlike most examples on this page, which only got popularized to the rest of the world (to varying extents) because the US first became fascinated by them, Orientalism was born in Europe (particularly France and the UK) and then brought to the US.
  • For much of the 19th century, French culture dominated much of the world. French products and styles were seen as more refined, elegant, and cosmopolitan, and while Britain remained the world's industrial, economic, and military powerhouse, France took the spotlight as a beacon of culture. French itself became the lingua francanote  and was the most valuable language for travelers and statesmen to know. France dominated in literature and cuisine as well. The attraction to French culture by the upper classes begot resentment from the lower classes, many of whom felt it was a betrayal of nationalism to so highly value a foreign culture, or were simply upset that the rich were spending all their time learning French and buying Louis Vuitton handbags while they slaved away in factories and workshops. This would lead to a backlash towards French culture in the 20th century, with it being viewed as effeminate, haughty, and generally just a distraction for those with too much money and too little sense. This downfall was only hastened by the rise of Hollywood -America's greatest cultural export- and the surrender and prompt side-switching of France during World War II, which gained the French a reputation for deceitfulness in English-speaking countries. French culture made a come-back in the Anglosphere in the 1960s, when arthouse French cinema and an interest in French cuisine (thanks to the likes of Julia Child et al.) caused a resurgence. While a far cry from its dominance in the 19th century, France still enjoys considerable soft power in modern day, with France still dominating the fashion world alongside Italy, and with French movies, music, and language being enjoyed even by non-French speakers. It still retains a reputation for being the fixation of the pretentious Haute Riche, at least in the United States, where an interest in French culture is seen as ephemeral to blue collar Americans. However, it has gradually started to shake off this stigma, despite the furor over France not joining America's invasion of Iraq.
  • Even before the USA grew to become the world's cultural magnet, many European countries developed a fascination with the romance and scope of The Wild West. This aspect of North American socioculture took root in the European imagination, possibly beginning with "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows" in Britain from 1887 onwards. The touring cowboy shows - which were heavy on spectacle and light on actual historical accuracy - heralded a wave of pulp fiction about the American Frontier in countries like Germany, France, Italy and Belgium. Karl May was the market leader in Germany, but other European nations were not slow to follow. Western-set pulp fiction surged in popularity in the interwar years, possibly as an escapist route from the dire realities all around, and were permitted reading in Nazi Germany. note  Interest surged again after 1945, but, despite the best efforts of authors like J.T. Edson, was moribund again by the end of the century. The light is kept alive by Belgian band dessinée cartoons such as Lucky Luke and others.
  • Returning American servicemen from the Pacific War brought home a fascination with the Polynesian culture that flourished from the late '40s to well into The '60s. "Tiki culture" took off with the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition and the 1948 James Michener short story collection Tales of the South Pacific (loosely adapted the following year into the musical South Pacific), and continued with the pseudo-tropical "exotica" music genre and a slew of "fun in the sun" movies set on Pacific islands. This also gave America a bunch of fruity cocktails garnished with little umbrellas. Hawaiʻi gaining statehood in 1959 and the rise of cheap air travel gave it a second wind, embedding Hawaii in American pop culture as a pleasure resort (before that, it was a distant colonial outpost known for plantations, Pearl Harbor, and little else), a status that managed to outlast the Polynesian craze. The trope of the former GI running a tiki stand in paradise can still be found in some works.
    • GIs returning from the various theaters of war helped popularize other cultures in the U.S. in general, and vice versa. While American soldiers brought with them such concepts from the Old World as pizza from Italy and pub-styled establishments from the U.K., the rest of the world found itself fascinated with American cultural exports. GIs shared American products with civilians, and many found them better than what their own countries produced. While American music was already globally popular prior to the war, American music didn't become a global phenomenon until afterwards, with American soldiers bringing their tunes with them to many occupied countries. Many musicians from places as far away and diverse as Indonesia got their start doing covers of American rock songs, typically in English. America and its culture remained relatively isolated on the world stage prior to World War II, with its biggest cultural export being from the film industry, and the country being typically stereotyped by foreigners as little more than rambunctious cowboys. After the war, most of the world was devastated, with America alone accounting for half of the world's total industrial production. As a result, most modern commodities -be they products or entertainment- had to be bought from the U.S. while the rest of the world rebuilt, resulting in most cultures on the globe developing a fascination with the U.S., especially the ones on their side of the Iron Curtain. America's cultural dominance persists to this day, with kids all around the world growing up on American cartoons, visiting American social media websites, watching American movies, and listening to American music. This helped popularize English as the global lingua franca, replacing French.
  • Blaxploitation and a heavily stereotyped Black Culture became a national fascination in The '70s. This current is characterized by high-octane action, disregarding the law to solve conflicts, and a cast comprised almost entirely of black people. It came back in the early '90s in the form of urban gangster films (Boyz n the Hood, New Jack City), and several times in The Noughties and The New '10s thanks to Quentin Tarantino.
  • In The '80s, the US obsessed with Awesome Aussies, as illustrated by the Australian New Wave. It was prompted by the resurgence of Australian cinema and it captured the world's attention, not only the US's. Prime examples are the huge success of "Crocodile" Dundee and Steve Irwin's popularity.
  • The success of Queer Eye gave us a period of infatuation with "gay culture" (in other words, every gay stereotype possible). This period even gave us "metrosexuals", men who, despite not actually being gay, spoke, dressed, and acted as much like flaming queens as possible. It also led to the replacement of fop with this neologism. A literal reading of the word would mean either "one who is sexually attracted to moderation", "one who is sexually attracted to cities", "one who is sexually attracted to mothers", or possibly "one who is sexually attracted to a subway system"...
  • When Latin America started importing Asian soap operas (mainly Korean, Indian, and, several years later, Turkish) around the mid-2010s up to 2020s, its population became very fixated on said Asian cultures. Kind of a huge, real-life Addictive Foreign Soap Opera fever. It was coupled with the rise of popularity of Anime and K-pop in the region. This phenomenon expanded to much of the rest of the world with the explosion of interest in K-Pop and smash-success K-dramas like Squid Game, doing for Korea's soft power what Anime had done for Japan's in the 80s and 90s.
  • The United States has long had a cultural fixation on Ireland, mostly due to a very large proportion of the American population being descended from Irish immigrants. This is evident in the annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations which dwarf even those in Ireland itself with their ostentatious displays of Irish patriotism (Irish flags and national symbols -including some so stereotypical they border on offensive- are prominently displayed throughout the US on this day, with Americans typically dressing in green). "Traditional Irish dishes" like corned beef and cabbage are also commonly eaten on St. Patty's Day, washed down with pints of Guinness. Many Americans will proudly cite their Irish heritage, even going as far as to claim they themselves are Irish, much to the chagrin of actual Irishnote .
  • Another cultural fixation of the United States is its indigenous cultures, with Native American tribes and famous figures being used as mascots for businesses and sports teams, and many an American proudly (and often inaccurately) claiming to be part Cherokee. Despite the fascination with Native Americans, the average (colonist-descended) American has never had a reasonable understanding of the cultures and peoples that used to live on their land, and most depictions of them tend to be grossly stereotypical and just plain wrong. This fixation actually began in Europe, with many well-meaning but patronizing European scholars and theologians expressing the plight of the Native Americans. In the United States itself, the fascination was coupled with tension, as colonists often admired the Native Americans but had a persistently violent relationship with them. This grew into the archetype of the Noble Savage in the fairest of depictions, and The Savage Indian in the bleakest. The prominence of The Western in the 1920s to well into the 1960s would cement these depictions of Native Americans in the minds of the general public. Many hippies of the 1960s -usually grappling with white guilt and a sort of gullibility to foreign cultures- found themselves engrossed in Native American mysticism, although most of this mysticism was inauthentic to say the least. The fascination petered out in the early 90s as discussions about the cultural insensitivity of portrayals of natives made people a little less interested in the stereotypes, but to this day many American brands and sports teams prominently display Native Americans as their mascots, although not without controversy.
    • This fascination extends beyond even just branding a drug-smoking hippies, with many of the nation's founders expressing admiration for the Iroquois Confederacy and its system of government, with some historical scholars claiming it may have influenced how the American federal government took shape. While that is disputable, what is indisputable is the impact Native Americans had on religion, with Mormonism incorporating them into their theology. The legacy of North America's many indigenous peoples is most visible in place names, where major cities like Chicagonote  and entire states like Oklahoma note  all derive their names from Native American words.

Fictional Obsessions

  • Outside of Japan, Anime was an underground subculture that made its first inroads in the West with Astro Boy and Speed Racer, then percolated in The '70s (Star Blazers) and The '80s (Robotech) before bursting into the mainstream in the mid-'90s, peaking in the early 2000s when 85% of people under 35 watched at least one hour of anime a week. It hasn't faded away completely, but it has declined in popularity since the mid-2000s. Much of this may be due to declining quality as production houses, looking to exploit the new American market, focused on making shows that were either fast and cheap or overly filled with in-jokes for anime fans.
  • Dinosaurs enjoyed a period of mainstream popularity in the late '80s and especially The '90s thanks to The Land Before Time and later Jurassic Park, to the point that the latter movie singlehandedly made the Velociraptor a stock dinosaur. These movies, particularly the latter due to being live-action, helped bring the ideas of the scientific "Dinosaur Renaissance" to the public, making Dumb Dinos pretty much obsolete in pop culture. Dinosaurs seem to be coming back into the spotlight in 2014 and 2015, with the Jurassic Park franchise getting a revival, Transformers and Power Rangers getting dinosaur-themed installments (respectively, Transformers: Age of Extinction and Power Rangers Dino Charge). As well as the release of a few other dinosaur-focused works such as The Good Dinosaur, Fossil Fighters, and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
  • Zombies — or rather, zombie-related survivalism — is an example of a subculture that developed with the craze. It started in the early-mid '00s, when a number of highly popular zombie films (Resident Evil (2002), 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead) came out within two years of one another, helping to bring back from the grave a genre that had been lying stiff since The '80s. From there, the infection burned through film, books, comics, games, music videos, television, and especially the internet, where the Zombie Apocalypse mutated into a meme.note  Shows like Community, The Simpsons and Degrassi had zombie-themed Halloween episodes, communities the world over staged zombie walks and games of Humans vs. Zombies, and everybody had at least considered "a plan". Preparedness groups and even the Center for Disease Control jumped on board, using pop culture's obsession with zombies as a way to tell people to be prepared for disasters and emergencies.
    • For that matter, survivalism, in general, tends to ebb and flow depending on the times. It first flourished in The '70s due to fear of economic collapse and social unrest and appeared again in the mid-'80s due to fear of World War III and in the late '90s thanks to fear of Y2K. It later hit another high point early in the 21st century due to both the late-2000s economic crisis and, to a lesser extent, the alleged Mayan doomsday prophecy, with reality shows like Doomsday Preppers and scripted series like The Walking Dead and Revolution all rooted in survivalism. Needless to say, companies selling gold, canned foods, and guns and ammunition love this trend.
    • The widespread worry about nuclear war in the late '40s and '50s should count as an even earlier example of survivalism, although there were no zombies. Bomb shelters were a popular home-improvement project in some circles (even inspiring The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Shelter"), the sci-fi and comics of the time practically LIVED on tropes related to the nuclear apocalypse and radiation mutations, and many Baby Boomers still chuckle about the deadly-serious suggestion given in educational filmstrips that hiding under one's school desk was a viable way of avoiding a city-melting fireball. Science-fiction author Robert Heinlein deliberately fed the hysteria in a series of essays (see his collection "Expanded Universe") meant to scare people badly enough to get nukes banned. Didn't work, obviously, but a case could be made that he accidentally "created" survivalist.
  • Thanks to Cold War intrigue and the success of the James Bond franchise, The '60s produced a fascination with spies and spy culture. Shows such as I Spy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Avengers (1960s), Mission: Impossible, and the parody Get Smart, films like The Ipcress File (along with parodies like Our Man Flint and The Beatles' spoof Help!), spy movie-influenced songs like Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man" and Edwin Starr's "Agent Double-O-Soul", books by John le Carré and Len Deighton, and spy undertones in Rocky and Bullwinkle and Secret Squirrel abounded, and spy toys were popular with young children. The craze died out as the Cold War fizzled, but its influence can be found in The Bourne Series and the Austin Powers movies and cartoons like Kim Possible and Totally Spies!. The genre has experienced a new lease of life in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror.
  • Vampires, the other undead monsters, at roughly the same time as zombies. While the zombie obsession was largely born out of geek culture, the vampire craze came from teenagers, particularly teenage girls, beginning when The Twilight Saga romanticized the creatures to a degree that Anne Rice and Joss Whedon could scarcely have imagined. It truly took off once the Twilight movies came out (in 2008), with vampires becoming the symbols of romance for an entire generation of women born between 1985 and 1995. Shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries only fed the craze.
  • The 90s were hosted an obsession with Disaster Movies, with audiences flocking to see miniature landmarks get smashed up by Mother Nature. While there had been a surge in popularity in these types of movies in the 1970s, they died off in the 1980s as real-life disasters like Chernobyl soured audiences' appetites for wanton destruction. The end of the Cold War revived the genre, as the threat of nuclear annihilation was no longer viewed as imminent. With the nuclear anxiety gone and the threat of any major wars seemingly distant, the American public once again wanted to see cities get wrecked by volcanoes, meteors, storm surges, tornadoes, and whatever other natural, man-made, or alien-made disaster that Hollywood engineers could think of. Then 9/11 happened, and the genre halted dead in its tracks as the very real and visceral footage of destruction poured onto America's TV screens.

Historical Obsessions

  • The Renaissance brought a wave of interest in Classical civilizations like Rome and Greece to Europe. Crusaders returning from the Middle East brought stories of ancient Roman citadels and the basilicas of the Eastern Roman Empire, and increased trade and cultural transmission between the Christian and Muslim worlds resulted in the "rediscovery" of classical works, after they were translated into vernacular from Arab sources. Europeans began to view the past few hundred years as unenlightened and barbarous, shaping the modern stereotype of the so-called "Dark Ages." Classical civilization was held up as the height of human achievement, and everything from art to architecture sought to emulate Greco-Roman civilization. This fascination continued until the "Age of Enlightenment" in the 18th century, but gradually declined in the 19th century as scholarly works more critical of Greco-Roman civilization were published, and Europeans turned their gaze from the past towards the future.
  • The Middle Ages, conversely, became romanticized in the era of, well, Romanticism, when societal changes brought on by the industrialization resulted in many people becoming disillusioned with Enlightenment ideas, and the rise of nationalism led to the rediscovery of nations' medieval pasts as opposed to more universal appeal of Greco-Roman civilization. This fascination then waned for a while to come back in the latter half of 19th Century, then most infamously after the end of the First World War as far-right regimes constructed mythical pasts of tough men and racial purity, and then, after a phase of post-Second World War optimistic fascination with future and science, as harmless fantasy literature.
  • The post-World War II villains du jour in American media have been: Sinister Russian Commies during the postwar period, Sinister Muslim Oil Barons during the energy crises of The '70s, Sinister Russians again during The '80s and The '90s (with a transition from commies to gangsters and arms dealers after the end of the Cold War around 1990), and Sinister Muslim Terrorists during The War on Terror. Vladimir Putin is working overtime to maintain the cycle — it got worse when he invaded Ukraine in 2022.
  • Reportedly, "Tea Parties" have long since existed under different names, reaching a fever pitch of media attention every fifteen years or so. "Tea Parties" are right-wing, anti-Washington (neo-)populist movements in the US, not parties where people drink tea. "Tea Parties" have manifested as the John Birch Society in The '60s, the "Reagan Revolution", the "sagebrush rebels" in the late '70s and early '80s, the "Contract with America" in the mid-'90s, and the Tea Party movement from the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The left-wing version appears as well, but less frequently: 21st century examples include the craze over Obama and Bernie Sanders and the "Occupy" movements.
  • Unlike World War I, which was considered best not remembered and certainly not glamorized, World War II has been through cycles of popularity. Having avoided the direct consequences of war by simply being so far away from it, American audiences didn't shy away from war movies, while British and Soviet audiences also flocked to them in remembrance of their struggle and eventual victory. The losing side was not as interested, for obvious reasons. The first surge in World War II fascination began before the war even ended, and lasted right up until the 1970s. The Vietnam War gave audiences a distaste for war movies, and the squeaky-clean, sanitized portrayals of the war rang hollow when Americans watched the real horrors of war unfold on their TV screens every night. The idea of war being just and redeemable no longer sat right, and World War II dropped out of the media spotlight. The fascination was revived again in 1998 with the release of Saving Private Ryan, sparking renewed interest in the conflict that endures to this day. One could hardly turn on an "educational" channel in the US in the early 2000s without seeing World War II documentaries. It got bad enough that people started referring to the History Channel as the "Hitler Channel."
  • Many nations that are descended from great empires tend to go through periods of fascination with their own history. In present day, countries like Turkey have experienced a wave of obsession with their imperial Ottoman past, with many a prominent Turkish soap-opera being set at the height of Ottoman power.
  • A peculiar form of obsession occurs in the former Eastern Bloc. Russia in particular is still fascinated with its Soviet past, with many older Russians remembering the "good old days" of the 1970s before the USSR's decline. While nostalgia for the communist past is not very prominent in Eastern Europe, as most Eastern European nations resented Moscow's dominance and have tried to separate themselves from that past, it is oddly prominent in Germany, with fondness for the GDR being referred to as "Ostalgie" (a combination of "East" and "nostalgia"). Despite its reputation for being a quasi-fascist surveillance state, many East Germans still remember the GDR fondly, as reunification brought economic ruination to the former East Germany. Many GDR industries were financially insolvent in the new capitalist world market, causing many thousands of Ossies to lose their careers, and social services like day care that Ossies depended on disintegrated with the GDR. However, as older generations die off, most younger ones either don't remember the GDR or only remember is problematic later years, so Ostalgie is slowly fading. In the present, it mostly exists as a marketing gimmick to hawk stuff to tourists.

Musical Obsessions

  • From about 1985 to 1990, Heavy Metal music became hugely popular. Everywhere you looked kids were growing their hair long, buying leather jackets, and throwing up the devil horns hand gesture. Heavy Metal's popularity reached such high levels that the Moral Guardians of the day even held Senate hearings trying to force record companies to put warning labels on albums with explicit lyrics. When Grunge killed Hair Metal in 1991, many record companies, as well as MTV, also forgot about heavy metal in favor of the newest trend. As a result, public interest in heavy metal dropped significantly but still managed to maintain a small, but devoted fanbase, with bands like Pantera managing to become very successful during The '90s despite receiving little attention from mainstream media sources. In the mid-2000s heavy metal experienced a resurgence in popularity due to the highly successful Guitar Hero video game franchise, although metal still doesn't have the mainstream popularity that it did in the latter half of the 1980s.
  • Grunge started out as an underground, indie style in Seattle and Australia, with groups doing noisy, loud, DIY recordings that incorporated elements of punk and heavy metal. When recording executives decided Grunge would be the next big thing, they signed up almost anyone with a flannel shirt and a guitar, distortion pedal,and a few angsty songs about alienation and addiction. Grunge bands soared up the charts and toured widely. Of course, a musical style that was developed by outsiders could not flourish under the thumb of industry managers, so there was a pushback against this commercialization and commodification. This pushback, along with the surge of copycat acts, the saturation of the market with derivative songs, and the impact of addiction issues led to Grunge's demise.
  • From the late 1980s through to the late 1990s, the 1930s-era swing Jazz styles went through a revival. Bands played swing tunes, often mixing in rockabilly, boogie-woogie, and using jump blues-style horn sections. Some rock, punk rock, and ska bands mixed in swing elements. Bands also took up vintage zoot suits and retro hairstyles. Along with the swing music revival was a surge in interest in 1930s-style swing dancing. Swing revival bands and artists included Royal Crown Revue, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Brian Setzer.
  • In Peru, the Indigenista movement started a cycle of fascination-rejection toward the country's many indigenous cultures. To be more specific, whatever remains of Incan and Aymaran cultures after Spain's invasion and assimilation. The main proposers sought to create appreciation toward that heritage in an attempt to tone down the blatant, problematic Eurocentrism that had dominated Peruvian society up until then. As a result, works exploring the struggles and traditions of the Indigenous people's descendants were created. This caused heavy rejection, further highlighting Peru's deep-seated racism issues, until it cycled back to appreciating it during leftist administrations (and during The '80s terrorist period), where there was a noticeable push for indigenous cultures to not only be part of school curricula but also for it to be presented in a favorable light. Peruvian soap operas and films tend to reflect this trend. Examples of this are The Milk of Sorrow, Juliana, El gran reto, and Wiñaypacha. In terms of music, pop-trap musicians Milena Warthon and Renata Flores have adopted traditional indigenous music influences and instruments; with the latter singing some verses in Quechua.

Sport Obsessions

  • Association Football, a.k.a. soccer, became highly popular in the United States during the late '70s with the New York Cosmos's signing of several big-name international stars such as Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer. After Pelé's retirement, the game's popularity declined and the league folded. Interest revived somewhat with the 1994 World Cup when the U.S. hosted the event and the men's team reached the knockout stage for the first time in over 60 years, and again in the 2010 World Cup when the men's team won their group on a stoppage-time goal. The establishment of Major League Soccer, and more recently the National Women's Soccer League, may eventually make soccer less of a fad and more of an ongoing niche interest.
  • It's a long-running joke with deep roots in fact that every Winter Olympic Games Americans rediscover and fall in love with the strange, regional sport of curling all over again, then immediately forget it until the next Winter Olympics.

Business Obsessions

  • In the late '50s and early '60s, the previously secretive world of advertising agencies suddenly became the focus of immense cultural interest. The inner workings of Madison Avenue became the fodder for books, plays, TV shows, and movies (The Man In the Grey Flannel Suit, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Bewitched, Lover Come Back). Its unique internal jargon, often focused on CYA (Cover Your Ass) and consensus building, briefly flooded American speech. Some bits of it still remain (for instance, "run it up the flagpole and see who salutes", which was a well-worn cliche decades before it appeared in Harvey Danger's 1997 song "Flagpole Sitta"), and the TV series Mad Men seems primed to revive much of the old adman slang. (As a nod to the old fad, Mad Men casts Robert Morse, the leading man in the original 1961 Broadway production of How to Succeed in Business..., as the eccentric Bert Cooper).
  • The telenovela industry of Peru during The New '10s made unreported employment and low-paying jobs the subject of most of its productions. Predictably, it often was a rather romanticized view on the matter — not accurately portraying the country's poverty, initially over-relying on provinciano stereotypes, and usually revolving around some sort of by-proxy Rags to Riches plot (meaning, the Love Interest tends to be wealthy). It all can be traced back to Yo No Me Llamo Natacha and Mi amor el wachimán. Respectively, the tale of a Guile Hero domestic worker who travels to Lima, the capital, to work for well-off families; and the love story between a pituca (rich, sheltered girl) and a poor security guard. There have been made telenovelas about carretilleras (ambulant, food vendors), informal clothing makers, landladies of low-income zones, and Cumbia singers. It was such a popular trend that one of the latest productions is a Deconstruction spawned by a tragedy that made all of the previous idealistic takes much Harsher in Hindsight.


In-Universe examples of this trope:

  • Played for Laughs in Daniel Pinkwater's The Last Guru, America becomes enveloped in a New Age religious craze — 99% of the population abandon their previous faiths in favor of meditation, chanting, and gong-ringing. Eastern gurus become the most in-demand profession. This all ends after Harold, revered as a semi-divine figure by much of the populace, asks everyone to stop, and people return to their old faiths and practices as suddenly as they started.
  • Eminem's persona in his album Relapse exploits this trope by referring to himself in very vampiric terms.


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