Why the 20th Century was the Greatest Century For the Arts and Artists

They say if you were born in the 20th century, that you to late to miss exploring the seas and the planet, and to early to explore the stars. But you know what we were around for? One of the greatest centuries for the arts. This is where insane technology really changed the game of what artists could do. Before this era, artists were either painters, writers, composers, or sculptures. But with the advent of technology, we saw rise to some of the greatest movements the art world has ever seen. Movies, Metal Music, Animation, and Video Gamers were all birthed in the 20th century. Artists were given some wicked tools, and they decided to created some of the most bewildering innovative art we have today.

Sure, exploring the seas was fun. But they did have awesome music they could listen to? No, they didn’t.

Let's start with movies. Filmmaking got it's start in the late 19th Century and early 20th century and really blossomed during this time. What started as people going into a store and watching a Kinetophone (a word that really does ancient) has evolved into a industry worth 28 billion dollars today. When people first laid eyes on a movie of a moving train, they were dodge out of the way thinking what they were seeing was real. The amount of experimentation it took to get movies to where they are today all happened in this century. We went from movies that had no sound and were in black in white to movies in high def all in a matter of 100 years. You had some of the greatest film directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and John Carpenter all pushing what the medium could do. These were just a few of the trailblazers who forever shaped how filmmaking is done today.

Also taking a look at how the camera and gear itself has changed over the century. The tools would just keep on improving, thus giving filmmakers and artists more power to really go crazy with. Olden cameras could weigh up to 30 pounds and combine that with the tripod, you would need bodybuilders just to move the thing around. Just a few decades later, we cameras like the Hi8 camcorder which were portable and allowed the birth of The Blair Witch Project to see completion. Another major innovation that happened in the Century was the creation of the digital format. No longer where filmmakers having to deal with film processing, the ease and capture of the digital video made filmmaking assessable to anyone.

The camera is bigger then her head!

Then who could forget the birth of the metal music movement in the 1970's. When Black Sabbath dropped their LP in 1970, the world was about to be shaken to it's core. The 80's was were things got taken to the next level with the thrash metal wars with the greats like Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer changing what music could do and the birth of black metal and death metal. I know if you born after the year 2000, you don't understand what the power of metal music could do. When people first heard metal tracks, they had thought a demon had chased them in their home and that they were being possessed. Parents would walk in on their kids head-banging and throwing their bodies around the home as they let the music make them move. People had never heard music like this before.

This is why there was a war on metal music in the 80's and 90s as people thought metalheads were blood drinking, grave robbing, sacrilegious hooligans and crated a Satanic panic epidemic . In 1985, a committee known as the Parents Music Resource Center, spearheaded by Tipper Gore, made up a playlist of songs they deemed inappropriate. The list came to be known as the "Filthy 15" and out of the 15 songs nine of them were metal tracks. What the Parents Music Resource center didn't expect was this plan would backfire and just make the songs on the list more popular than ever. Anyway, the point is that listening to metal nowadays barely raises anyone's eyebrows. We've all grown accustomed to it. But the rise of the movement was something to behold as the genre exploded into various sub genres and bands were pushing boarders everywhere you looked. This was also just in the metal scene, unfortunately we don't time to discuss the explosion of other musical genres that was taking place during this time frame like Prog Rock, Hip Hop, and electronic music.

The amount of music innovation during the 20th century was something else.

Let us not forgot the raise of animation in the 19th Century as well. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated film crated by Disney and was so mind blowing for its time that audiences had forgotten that they are watching animated humans rather than real ones. An medium that also rose and improved with the movie industry, animation allowed artists to express them in ways never thought possible. Disney would soon conquer the world of movie animation during the Disney Renaissance where they made one banger after other. Animation has been studied and proven that it helps kids with improved recognition and retention. The medium made it possible to communicate emotions and ideas in a unique, easy-to-perceive way, that never ages with time. Snow White still looks great and amazing to watch while early CGI works were not as lucky.

Then come the era of 90's cartoons, where shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Animaniacs quietly and consistently redefined what animation meant, exploding the boundaries of possibility wide open and subverting the expectations set by prior decades of what animation could be. Over in Japan, Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball were birthed and soon showed the world what an epic series could be. There was a certain magic in the air, and this was the last major decade before the internet and CGI really took over. Before everyone was streaming their own thing, the 90's still had the magic of waking up, turning on the tv and watching these epic shows together.

Watching an epic episode of Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball at home, then going to school and discussing it with your classmates were some of the highlights of living in the 90s.

Lastly, videogames. We could go over the history that began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes, but we could be here all day. The point is, this new medium of videogame programming would really challenge artists in ways never before seen. Videogames would be combining music, drawings, writing, and player control to make something totally unique. Who has not played the original Super Mario Bros in their lifetime? People in this century got to see the rise of gaming and how it crossed the bridge from 2D to 3D, with each generation of new consoles really upping the ante. You just don't get that same level of excitement around a new console launch these days.

We now take all of this awesome art for granted now a days, but just stop and think for a second how almost none it existed a mere 100 or 200 years ago. So next time you feel sad for being born in the wrong era, just remember you were there for one of the greatest eras of the arts there ever was. I didn't even time to mention the rise of other important music movements or other aspects of the art scene, this was just a brief overview of how awesome this century was. Will another century ever top it, it would have to try pretty hard.

Classic!