The Rise Of Cheap And Happy: Is Recession Escapism Sneaking Up On Us?

There are at least some signs that Cheap And Happy is the most promising trend in entertainment at the moment. It's not the only thing that gets people excited — witness the great anticipation of the sure-to-be-bleak Battlestar Galactica finale on Friday — but Cheap And Happy is on a roll.

Take Dancing With The Stars. (Please.) Most shows do not thrive in their eighth seasons. They tend to at least show some signs of age. Instead, this relentlessly upbeat dance/variety show, which has a lot in common with all the relentlessly upbeat variety shows of the past, had its highest-rated premiere ever last week.

Cable is on the rise, choices are expanding, networks are struggling, and...more people than ever are watching the years-old Dancing With The Stars.

Contrast that with the fate of Watchmen, a moderately reviewed film that had a huge opening among eager fans but has failed to capture the attention of the public at large.

Sure, you say, we live in the age of perky reality television; isn't that the story of the last ten years? It might be, but there's one current moneymaker that has its roots in such old-fashioned media that it sure seems like a peek at the national mood.

The surprise moneymaker, after the jump...

 

You know what's turning a profit even though it has absolutely nothing to do with new media? Romance novels. Cheap And Happy. It doesn't get much Cheaper, in fact, or much more reliably Happy...at least by the end.

Not for nothing, but for people who already have even broadcast television available to them, Dancing costs nothing and Watchmen costs probably at least eight or nine dollars a person — and that's before you add the absurdly priced concessions. Romance novels cost a handful of dollars and don't require a special trip to the bookstore; they're at the grocery store, or at Target, or at Walmart.

Interestingly, people are still going to the movies, and it's not like everything that's doing well is cheerful — hello, Taken! But while Taken and Gran Torino may not say life is easy, they go down easy; strong-dad thrillers and Clint Eastwood hind-whoopings offer an escapism of their own, in a way that dark comics do not.

Similarly, whether "Happy" works depends on the kind of happy: as many have noted, the poorly received Confessions Of A Shopaholic plays completely differently in current times than it did when fighting debt could plausibly be described as a plucky challenge for an upbeat heroine and not the very thing nobody really wants to spend all day thinking about.

Trends are always easiest to spot after the fact, and we live in a culture far too splintered for there to be such a thing as What We're Liking Right Now, but it looks like a good moment to be in the business of easily digestible stuff — entertainment to wind down to, one might call it.