Word: mainstream
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What Mass Culture? Niche entertainment took over in 2003 as the mainstream rapidly got marginalized...
Finding Nemo was the kind of exception that proves that just when you're ready to declare the mainstream dead, it swims up and bites you on the tush. The year's top-grossing movie was also an example of just what it takes--in a culture broken down by tribes and ages and demographics--to make an across-the-board hit. People flocked to Nemo because it was a good movie, of course. It was moving, it was beautifully animated. And who doesn't like a good ink-spurting joke? But more important, it was about easy-to-agree...
...American culture, as in American politics, it was possible to assemble a case for two entirely different visions of the mainstream: one libertine, irreverent and p.c., the other traditional, devout and PG. It's tempting to borrow the electoral blue-state/red-state template and say there are two mainstreams, equal and opposite--but that beggars the definition of mainstream, no? The year 2003, we've heard, was when the swing voter became irrelevant. It could be that our pop culture too no longer has that swing...
...Mainstream culture today is like a flash mob. Those who are part of it know they're part of it, even if it doesn't congregate as often as it did back when 30 million people would watch a network show on a typical night. Every so often, we get the call--we gather for Joe Millionaire or buy that Harry Potter book. Then, show over, book read, we scatter: back to VH1 or our Scarface DVDS or our scrapbooking chat rooms...
...equipment, is working on a hydrogen-powered forklift. And the Canadian government has pulled Hydrogenics into a $6.1 million project to deliver a fuel-cell-powered transit bus to the streets of Winnipeg, Man., by March 2005. Hydrogenics co-founder Pierre Rivard says fuel cells probably won't go mainstream for another 5 to 15 years, but with GM's backing, the $128 million publicly traded company, which lost $20.6 million last year, can probably afford to wait that long...