The Danger of Pastiche

Television shows no longer go away; cancel one and it comes back as a movie, and half the other big movies that year will be sequels or comic book spinoffs. Wait, is that a new thought? No, not really. But it’s useful, and now Kurt Andersen has got a hold of it. In the January Vanity Fair, the man who wrote Turn of the Century and helped launch Spy becomes the latest observer to remind our modern world that it sure likes recycled cultural product.