Over the past decade, American pop culture has been in an era of the fantasy and extraordinary. The fiction market has dominated with a boom of paranormal and supernatural literature, which has also been supported by movies & TV shows of the same themes. I don't think I even need to give examples for it to be understood how much of an influence these books, movies and TV shows has had on American culture.
Of course, there has been a slow buildup of attention to this that has exploded in recent years, saturating American pop culture with vampires, werewolves and zombies (oh my!). A literary leader in this era is J.K. Rowling, whose books have been popular since it first hit the New York Times Bestseller list back in 1999. Buffy the Vampire slayer was hugely popular (and still has a following); it aired from 1997 to 2003. I don't want to leave out Anne Rice either, though I'll get more into her on my next post about vampires.
Of course, this flavor of geekdom has always been around for those who seek it. They just hadn't been as popular in mainstream American culture: Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Golden Compass, Xena: Warrior Princess, etc...
Science-fiction has been on the rise as well, although it hasn't been nearly as popular in numbers. Many sci-fi shows, novels, and movies have very loyal fans but not a big enough group to keep the overall popularity up. For example, the show Serenity was a sci-fi show (and later movie) that brought the wild west and sense of manifest destiny to the untamed expanse of outer space... However it only aired for one series. =( On the other hand, Trekkies and Star Wars geeks have come out of the wood works and flourished as their fandoms have attained more national attention.
And then where do we put the zombies? Back in their graves, I know. Stupid question. But really, zombies can be categorized as fantasy/paranormal or science-fiction, depending on the theory for the zombie rising (ex: voodoo magic or a crazy pathogen).
The big question to all this is "Why now?" The answer is many faceted and will take some more research to pin down exactly, but I do have one legitimate reason. The easiest and most obvious answer (to me) is that people search out more fiction and escapist literature when they are stressed, which is most everyone during this recession. People long for something completely out of the ordinary that will not remind them of the monotony of life or any other personal crises. They want something bigger, exaggerated, incredible, which in turn makes it a multimillion dollar market (including books, movies & TV shows).
At last, my mind always circles back to one question: What is the social and cultural impact of our actions?
How much of our pop culture spreads to other countries and effects their popular cultures?
What worries me is how long this market for fantasy/paranormal/supernatural is going to last. It's been a big hit and shows no signs of slowing, but sooner or later it will. It's only an era, a fad, a thing of popularity. In my favorite author's biography, she wrote about how she began to get published and how difficult it was. She said no one wanted to publish her stories (vampire-like beings, Greek mythology, & high action) because there wasn't a market for them.
So how long will this era continue? Will the market for it still be around for me (or many other young writers highly influenced by these veins of writing) when I actually finish a manuscript & try to publish it?
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