Podbit · The Rest Is Entertainment
Richard Osman argues that cultural calcification — when money and power concentrate in a few hands — historically triggers creative explosions from the next generation. The current stranglehold of tech billionaires may be the dinosaur's last swish, not a permanent new order.
Where this was said
At 21:05 · chapter starts 18:20
Richard Osman invokes historical optimism: when a culture becomes calcified and concentrated in a few hands — which has definitively happened now — that is precisely the moment when the fight-back begins. Creative people never change what stories they want to tell; they just need a different route to tell them. 'Creativity is still creativity. It will find a way through the dam. The water finds its way through the concrete.' He sees a gap in the market: Blumhouse-style lo-fi horror about tech barons, or a whole new wave of disruptive creators who haven't yet been bought [1] — Richard Osman "Richard Osman argues that cultural calcification — when money and power concentrate in a few hands — historically triggers creative explosi…" 21:05 . Marina Hyde is more cautious. She notes that you often have to live through a period of censorship or self-censorship first — and they are in that period now. The calculus has changed: studios aren't declining these projects because they don't want to offend powerful people outside their business, but because those powerful people are now inside their business, embedded in cloud infrastructure contracts. Both agree that the conclusion of all this is stark: American popular culture is definitively 'under the yoke of about five people, all of whom are billionaires and all of whom have quite thin skins.'
Richard Osman argued that American popular culture is now definitively controlled by approximately five billionaires, all of whom have thin skins.
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