I may catch some flack for this, but I’m going to list some recent developments that I see as connected:

1) The Undergraduate degree is today what the High School diploma was 25 years ago. If you have always been intrigued by the Snail Darter fish of the Tennessee River Valley, there’s a job for you. But there wasn’t for your grandpa, and he didn’t have to worry about beating out a dozen other guys for that job, half of them with Masters degrees.

2) Even though I live in Michigan, I’m always five minutes away from a place where I can buy a Fair-Trade Sumatran coffee with soy milk and a packet of SPLENDA. 2 bucks protects my body from something in sugar and various hormones injected into milk. With my $2 coffee, I also know I’ve done my part to save a small African farmer harvesting beans in his back yard from getting the shiv from Starbucks.

3) The levels of irony we speak in are becoming innumerable. We have twenty different tones of voice that can be used to say, “I like you,” and each one means something different. And even twenty isn’t really enough because if I say, “I like you,” in conversation, but I’m saying it the way Will Ferrell says it in Anchor Man to somebody who hasn’t seen Anchor Man, then what they may think I’ve just said is, “I don’t really like you but I’m pretending I do because I need a ride home later.”

Bottom Line: We’re living in a time when there is an infinite amount of stuff constantly cramming for more room in our little brains. The more we stuff in there, the more nuanced our lives become.

For instance, say I’m at a party and I want to meet a woman between the age of 30 and 35 who is intelligent with a bubbly personality but a self-deprecating sense of humor. One tack I can take would be to simply walk around humming the theme song to The Great Space Coaster loud enough where said woman could hear me and say, “Oh my god! Are you humming the theme to the Great Space Coaster? I loved that show when I was a kid…” As soon as we hit on the movie Bottle Rocket, I know we’re going somewhere.

But say I’m at the same party and, for some reason, I’m looking for a guy between the age of 25 and 30 who is a youth pastor. I can try singing Michael W. Smith songs under my breath while wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Blanka, the green guy from Street Fighter II. These little nuanced pop culture references have become short-hand for connecting with people.

In this great state of Michigan I am watching companies like Ford, who pioneered the assembly line, take a bath because their products just don’t have nuance. Really, how nuanced can a car be? 4 wheels and an engine. But so many companies have cashed in on the profitability of the Manufacturing age that my friend who wants to order a car online that uses less gas than my stove, but also has a design that reflects his love of Anime can actually find a car like that.

I think Hollywood has also relied heavily on the “sameness” of products that were big in the manufacturing age. It has done the same thing really well for a long time. Too long. They’ve taken sameness into a time when we’re looking for nuance. In days of yore a tub of popcorn, a big screen, a couple big stars, a little romance, a little action, and an easy ending could guarantee a profit. Throw on top of that the occasional Blockbuster, which is all of the same elements done really well, and you’ve got a thriving industry.

I believe more of us are spending more time now defining the nuances that make us different than finding comfort in the things that make us the same. But this last summer (and the previous summers, in my opinion) are evidence that the major studios are stumped when it comes to making films with nuance. Maybe they have trouble building a business plan around nuanced films. But just because a business like that hasn’t been necessary in the past hundred years, doesn’t mean that it can’t be built.

Paul