Given Luciano Pavarotti's death yesterday, it made me think of a great quote I read in a book somewhere years ago. I don't remember the book, but I believe it was by Scott Turow. It is a great illustration of the current state of pop culture.
"Professional wrestling is the opera of the masses."
Think about it. Opera and professional wrestling both offer the same basic deal: Good. Evil. Love. Hate. Jealousy. Pride. Sex. Envy. All acted out by totally over-the-top caricatures.
My central premise in thinking about consumer markets and consumer behavior is that people don't fundamentally change. What they have access to changes, and that may imply changing societal morals and values and interests, but I don't believe that the implication is correct. A hundred years ago (or a thousand years ago), people enjoyed watching over the top caricatures acting out base human emotions. Some small percentage of the population had access to the op
era and enjoyed it. That same small percentage still has access to the opera and still enjoys it. The majority of the population did not have access (either geographically or financially or because of family / peer pressure of it being perceived as "uppity") so they didn't experience opera. Cable television came along and the WWE and way more people had access to the same concept of over-the-top caricatures acting out base human emotions. If cable television and the WWE had been around 100 years ago you probably would still have the same number of people enjoying both opera and wrestling as you hav e today. So the current relative lack of popularity of opera versus professional wrestling is not a sign that society is going down the gutter, but rather it just reflects society as its always been, just more in-our-face because of cable and satellite TV.
