Post 10-24 Class 'Sameness'

  Our culture, our media, our ideology straying off the 'mainstream', or popular path is quite rare and our society is unsupportive of such efforts. Looking at our Presidential Election a battle between 2... two challenging viewpoints. Third party candidates are effectively silenced by the media and candidates making for a manufactured facade of a two party system. Yet, our populous buys into this limiting structure, just as it buys into the system that manages our social interactions and culture into a culture of sameness.
  Much of movies, film, and music follow along a format that does not break much convention, or formula designed for 'broad audience appeal', as they define. Who is the original though in our contemporary times? The sixties had Dylan. Hendrix and The Beatles; the fifties had Chuck Berry and Ray Charles; the seventies had Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath; I could go on-and-on, and there are more examples in the decades given, where there was 'sameness' and generic music but there was still original sounds and artist breaking through with new sounds and new ideas, but currently music has become even more devoid of originality and the culture and masses are enlivening music that is bland, soulless, and unoriginal.
  Producers and record execs that follow formulas that attempt to manufacture success are surely to blame, but also are the masses who are silent and buy into this system of remanufacturing original successes and copying original acts. People will 'grow into songs' or 'get used' to songs as they are beaten into their head by radio stations, TV, and advertisers. People will initially say they hate a song and then later like it, giving in, changing their mind when the song gets popular and people give you a strange look if you say you do not like, said, pop song.
  If only artistry, innovation, and hard-work were still desirable traits in cultural products. If only people would desire to break forms and parameters that are constructed around them like jail cells of consensus and anti-individuality. So they have their top ten countdowns. They have their suggestions... but most importantly they [the media] have their corporate sponsors who pay to play their plastic, cookie-cutter artists. While the people who are challenging convention are marginalized and subverted.

  Frank Zappa's "Tinsel Town Rebellion Band" criticizes this system as it pertains to music. And Frank Zappa himself symbolizes an artist who was original and innovative but was never embraced by the mainstream media or mainstream culture.