I’ve been watching the 4th season of “The Boys”.
By now, I’m doing it out of inertia. The first season hooked me, like it did for most people. But from the second onward, I remember less and less of what happened. When watching the season 3 recap, I didn’t remember most of the scenes shown. This is how unremarkable it was. And on the 4th it’s even worse.
But I’m analyzing it, and I’m seeing the same pattern I see in most modern works of art.
This is what makes them uninspiring, unmemorable and a complete waste of time.
Using stereotypes, cliché humor and sex
Art is the artist’s world view.
But if that view is limited to political slogans, online memes, and cheap, predictable jokes, what kind of world view are you putting out?
A few examples from the 4th season of “The Boys”:
- The Homelander faction is what Woke people and Democrats think of counter-information, truth seekers, Christians and conservatives. They exaggerate and embellish reality, relying on a shallow perspective and catchphrases from Instagram and TikTok.
- Humor is an art all in itself. Most writers are not able to write comedy, so they resort to cheap, cliché jokes. The most famous example is the “Browser’s History” jokes: how many times have we heard them? They stopped being amusing 20 years ago. And yet, we still see them every single time.
- And when you want to grab the attention of the audience, put some sex in it. The boys go for the more grotesque and disgusting side of it while normalizing it. But most works of woke modern art, at some point, delve into gratuitous sexual content.
Preaching instead of creating beauty
Using these stereotypes makes any work of art preachy.
Art should be first and foremost an expression of beauty or truth. And yet, most of these modern formulaic works are just attempts to preach values.
And this makes them unmemorable, uninspiring and the kind of work that gets less and less attention and will be forgotten in a few weeks from now.