Interpreting the Zeitgeist
Hi Everyone! It has been too long. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and a lovely Valentines Day this past weekend. One of my New Year's resolutions was to refine my thesis for this newsletter. Early on, I didn’t want to box myself in - the reason I started writing was to get any thoughts with the inertia to become trends out of my head and into a Google Doc, and I figured I would share the writing that was good. However, as I’ve been writing, I realized that this newsletter is undeniably about content and how it inspires, influences, and molds society.
While alohomora has always been about unlocking magical insights, I hope to focus more on understanding content / information flow moving forward. And readers - feel free to reply! Your feedback and healthy debate is what makes this so fun.
- M
In the February 2021 edition of Vogue Magazine, Andrea Lee writes of designer Max Raab’s “talent for interpreting the zeitgeist.” The quote stuck with me. Today’s edition of alohomora delves into the interdisciplinary nature of the creative class - those who create and interpret the zeitgeist. We’ll start with two brief definitions:
Creating the zeitgeist: Artists and storytellers who draw on burgeoning themes in society to create standalone works of cultural currency that are discussed, shared, and spread through word of mouth.
Interpreting the zeitgeist: Creatives who riff on global themes, building on tropes in areas like politics, art, culture, and society. These creatives cleverly repackage events and movements into poignant works of art.
A topic for a future newsletter relates to how this content is indexed and consumed, and how we can make discrete units of a work (like the songs from the soundtrack of a musical) more accessible over time.
Saturday Night Live: Interpreting the Zeitgeist
With the dearth of in-person activities in 2020, I, like most of us, had more time for shows. Nights at home watching new shows during COVID was my gateway drug to Saturday Night Live (SNL). SNL not only brought laughter to my fiancé and I in the depths of quarantine, but it also made me think about the importance of storytelling.
Storytelling is the act of blending cultural resonance, tension, and emotion (comedy in the case of SNL). It takes discipline and hard work to be a good storyteller. Saturday Night Live has a sustainable storytelling model relative to most shows. Its masterful cast rotates consistently to preserve the show’s freshness. Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of Saturday Night Live, “knows that the show will only remain relevant as long as it reflects the people who watch it.” (Source)
On SNL, every cast member has their “classic” role. For Pete Davidson, it’s the slightly petulant, but mostly self-deprecating attitude that shines in skits, and a penchant for bravado and silliness in music videos. For Colin Jost, it's his deadpan stare after jokes, and interplay with Michael Che. Jost recently wrote a memoir, A Very Punchable Face. Kate McKinnon, in my opinion, is the crown jewel of the current SNL empire. She is versatile - she plays a masterful Fauci, a hilarious Elizabeth Warren, and has the credibility to play herself on the show at this point.
SNL is a generational sensation. I don’t know of any other show that is on its 46th season. SNL first aired in 1975 and has produced ~880 episodes since. SNL writers prepare 40 to 50 sketches every week, but only eight are used for each episode, per The New York Times (NYT Article). The diverse and extensive cast of writers is constantly generating ideas and has a grueling schedule - late nights and weekends are par for the course. Skits blend current events with comedy; iteration and input from multiple voices seems to be key to success.
Other groups doing work to interpret the zeitgeist include MSCHF (bi-weekly viral product drops, read more via the NYT here) and Trader Joe's (its product developers are always trying to understand trending food categories and develop products within them). Check out Trader Joes List, an Instagram account with 1.5 million followers that details new finds at TJ’s. I’d also argue the Peloton bike itself creates zeitgeist, whereas the content created by the instructors and production staff interprets the zeitgeist.
Hamilton: Creating the Zeitgeist
I saw Hamilton in San Francisco over a year ago and completely forgot about it for months. When I went home for the Holidays, my family was obsessed with it. Now I’ve memorized the soundtrack, yet still derive new meaning from the occasional verse, even after listening dozens of times over.
As we touched on, storytelling is the art of blending cultural resonance, tension (jealousy and tragedy in the case of Hamilton), and emotion (love in the case of Hamilton). It took Lin-Manuel Miranda six to seven years to write the musical. In it, he fuses an incredible depth of historical knowledge with lyrical aptitude, hip-hop, and a knack for witty wisecracks. There’s nothing his mind can’t do!
Smithsonian Magazine explained Miranda as, “A magpie, a poet and that’s as it should be, because at its best the stage musical is a mimic of its times and a synthesizing form, an amalgam of impulses and influences from every corner of the culture, and he is an industrious recorder and rewriter of those currents and moments. Like hip-hop or jazz, “the musical” as we know it is essentially American. It’s telling too that this play is at once much simpler and smarter and more complex than anything so far said or written about it by critics.”
Miranda drew on various influences in his creation process - the seed of the idea for the musical came from Miranda’s reading Alexander Hamilton’s biography on vacation. Miranda’s musical influences include Beyoncé, DMX, and Eminem. His intentional selection of a diverse cast was a paradigm shift which resonated with a global audience. He created a cultural pillar by telling a story that drew on burgeoning themes in society to create a standalone work of cultural currency. Miranda is perceptive, and was open to the spark of inspiration when it hit. He created the zeitgeist through information synthesis. Hamilton then democratized the zeitgeist by rolling out on Disney+ for everyone to stream.
In the vein of memorable masterpieces, the Mona Lisa is another example of a zeitgeist-creator. It is preserving the zeitgeist, a phase of the creative process I wanted to briefly touch on. The painting is important in this context because of its continued cultural significance. It has been subject to theft, vandalism, and evacuation (due to WWII), all of which add to its cultural symbolism and poignance. It has kept the cultural fervor alive for generations, and most contemporary estimates value it in the billions. The piece is not only famous because of its creator, Leonardo da Vinci, who worked on the Mona Lisa for years, and honed his craft through hard work, but also due to the lore and excitement around it. Works of art like Hamilton and the Mona Lisa synthesize the emotions of a given period, and replication of such works, in addition to the ethos around them, keeps them top of mind.
Final Thoughts
The continuation of this trend is in translating the zeitgeist. Kevin Xu writes the Interconnected newsletter in both English and Chinese, and Marie Dolle writes In Bed With Social in English and in French. From Xu on writing for American and Chinese audiences, “The more language you can use, the more people you can deliver to.”
These writers transcend cultural barriers because of their dual-pronged approach, which gives them access and insight into two important markets.
At some level, today’s newsletter has been about the confluence of factors that create the zeitgeist at any given moment, and how those who create and interpret it synthesize a number of influences to produce resonant work that reflects the times. As people become more and more siloed in the shows they watch, the streaming services they subscribe to, and the news sources they consume, we will experience a cultural disconnect. The people who can bridge the gap between cultures, those who unite and inspire, will be some of the most important in the coming years.