I am afraid to admit I have been ceaselessly binging “Friends” for the past few weeks. As bedtime approaches, this is precisely the comedy I need to turn my brain off — and I would be lying if I said that it didn’t give me a much-needed dose of familiarity as the academic year and its courses, assignments and extracurricular commitments start to mount. 

Yet, I hate canned laughter; I don’t really like the characters and I automatically despise the taste of anyone unironically preferring the show’s dumbed-down comedy over more sophisticated classic sitcom offerings like “Seinfeld.” 

This past week, Max updated the show’s assets to celebrate its 30th anniversary — a big deal in the corporate world. In the past decade, franchises based around intellectual property have become a key part of most major entertainment corporations’ strategies.

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To illustrate, see “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter” (dubbed “The Wizarding World”) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the latter arguably laying the blueprint for how to continually engage a fanbase by spoon-feeding them seemingly endless spin-offs and crossovers.

The incentive of film sequels is obvious: a baked-in audience wanting to once again step into a universe it already loves, increasing the project’s chances of returning on investment and securing profits. 

Many (yours truly included) love, and every other year revisit, classic millennial marathon-friendly franchises like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games. But at what point does corporations leaning in to lure us back into these universes hamper the development of new, original ideas?

There’s a parallel here to the music industry, where samples and nostalgic references seem to have become a cornerstone of modern songwriting, and ongoing academic discussions are ripe about how popular music has become less complex. 

The backdrop to all this is streaming: Gen Z is the first generation to grow up with not only its own generation’s music and film at its fingertips, but also all the classic music and film of the 20th century. The result? Current artists now compete with classic acts with budgets to boot. 

In 2022, Per Sundin, former president of Universal Music Nordic, declared most record labels should make their brightest employees focus on catalog, rather than more recently released music.

In 2014, Mark Fisher, a former lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, declared that “the future has disappeared” in a lecture titled “The Slow Cancellation of the Future.” He argues that the breakdown of social democratic policy, such as housing and unemployment benefits, have destroyed artists’ ability to contribute novel ideas to the culture: “The thing that has disappeared is a sense of difference … The sense of culture belonging to a specific moment, that is what has disappeared in the 21st century.”

Or maybe all the best songs and all the best stories have simply already been conceived? 

There are, after all, only 12 notes in Western music, and most stories can be traced back to religious scripture. Corporations doubling down on a franchise strategy emboldened by 20th century nostalgia rooted in the malaise of our times certainly does not help. Neither do the financially cushioning incentives that come with it. Artificial intelligence, with its many potential implementations, is likely to bolster this backward-leaning approach to fresh culture.

Despite all the academic and commercial doomsday prophesying, as a passionate fan of film and music new and old, I am not worried. While it might be hard at this moment to imagine Harry Potter diminishing any of its massive popularity, or The Beatles somehow losing their reverence in favor of modern songwriters, I have faith in culture being inherently reactive. 

I also believe creativity and originality prevails; history has proved that corporations, while having the clout to influence most cultural landscapes to a certain degree, are often helpless against creative ingenuity rooted in broader cultural shifts. 

Every generation wants its heroes, and if repackaging and spinoffs — or global artists on billion-dollar grossing tours — define this era, expect original ideas and local artists to scratch the counter-cultural itch of Gen Alpha. Or maybe Gen Beta. Until then, let’s try to enjoy the nostalgia loop while it lasts.