[Skoob]

I hope these points are reasonably self-evident:

1. Thematically, there is nothing new under the sun. The human condition hasn't changed since our ancestors sat around their first campfire. There are only a few major themes: growing up / rite of passage, seeking purpose, love and relationships, righting wrongs / redemption / conflict resolution, puzzle or problem solving, travel in strange lands, pursuit of dreams, lessons learned. Everything "new" is really just stuff that's been done before, recombined and reconstituted in different ratios like favorite kitchen recipes.

2. What is new to a child becomes less so as we age. Good storytelling is a blend of science and art, keeping audiences engaged through careful planning and a variety of tools: sympathetic identification with a hero who "could be one of us," relevance to current affairs with the promise of unique insight, rationing details and special effects to tantalize, embellishing to pre-empt questioning and lend plausibility, and so on, making sure that all the pieces are presented well and purposefully, contributing to a greater whole.

3. The power of storytelling lies in its ability to make believe, because to varying degrees, we emulate (copy) people we admire. Literally, good stories are a form of predictive programming, packaging values and standards for conduct that influence our own behaviour when we encounter parallel situations.

4. Popular culture is an advanced field of mass marketing that uses storytelling as a way to introduce new fashions and language and trends. The audience is a manipulated community of admirers and copycats. Conformism is a powerful motivator. We buy stuff and adjust our behaviour in other ways for the purpose of identifying ourselves with our heroes and with others who share that interest. The primary driver behind it all is money. As long as there is good money to be made from entertainment and merchandising, the two will continue to go hand-in-hand. I certainly don't see that changing, do you?

So the only thing that we can conclude about those who express frustration with the lack of anything "new" is that they aren't kids anymore, and they're starting to observe the overlap between what we're given now and stories told before. From a broader perspective, it's also true that whole cultures have their narratives that involve beginnings and endings, and one wonders sometimes if the best stories and artifacts from a particular culture are unique to one period in its history and if the best is yet to come, but from a different people in a different part of the world.

In the meantime, we have our action figures and other toys, souvenirs from the stories and experiences important to us during the time that we have. It could be argued that our favorite toys anchor us in this changing world. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't keep any of his or her old toys.