there's something about the sound and the look of contemporary cultural production that I find unappealing, even aggravating

i can't put my finger on it exactly - i think it's related the kind of level of detail and burnishing that current technology affords, and that therefore it's irresistible for culture-producers to go there

but i came across this great phrase in a book by Carol Vernalis about video, YouTube, digital visual culture

she talked about "an overpreening of the image"

e.g. with a lot of TV, I find often it's just exhausting to watch. why isn't stillness, a slowly developing mood, a plot focused on only a few characters, an option?

but an overpreening of the sound-image, or sound-space, the same thing is going on with a lot of music

 it's not so much that I'm increasingly resistant to new things, because my overt stance / ideology would still be "yes yes new things bring 'em on bring 'em on" - that's habitual outlook

it's more like, something within me resists this, baulks at, recoils from it, is offput by it

but i'm coming to terms with it - it's probably only natural that by a certain point, the appeal of stuff starts to elude you

it would be weird not to reach that point.

overpreening - it's partly the digital, hi-res thing - and the overly mobile camera-work, whizzing about and swooping all over the shop - also the omnipresence of superfluous drone shots

but it's also something to do with how insanely detailed the people who design sets and do the costumes are

if you watch a period drama now (e.g The Queen's Gambit), every fucking surface of every fucking scene is crammed with period-perfect accoutrements and studiously non-anachronistic design features

it actually distracts from the drama

and then you have the Wes Anderson thing of composing every scene like a painting - with all kinds of annoying symmetries and obsessively curated little exquisitenesses that you'd have to freezeframe and study for 20 minutes to pick up on every thing