Empire of Slop

Our technical capacity to render fantasy has never been greater. Mass entertainment has never been worse.

Take a look at the four images below and tell me what you see.

If my life depended on it, I could not name a single one of the shows pictured here and, if you told me they were all taken from the same series I would believe you. The first thing that comes to mind is Game of Thrones, but we could just as easily be looking at one of the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies or any number of expensively-produced high fantasy series that now pop up regularly on a streaming services like Prime and Netflix. One imagines these shows have a feudal setting of some kind and maybe a dash of magic realism. There’s probably some violence, maybe even intense violence, but our heroes also get to enjoy a few laughs. I’d wager there’s a quest of some kind, and a bearded oaf whose deceptively grouchy manner in fact masks a more tender side that ultimately lies beneath. Does it matter? Even if you’ve never seen these shows, you almost certainly kind of have.