But think of how much TV and film production there is, and how much is produced and published on the Internet, and the handful of writers whose names we immediately know is tiny. And very few people want to read about them.
This, yes, a hundred times. I'm as guilty as any--raving about some episode of The Good Place or The Leftovers or Community and not having a clue who wrote them. In fact, the only show I can recall watching for and remembering each writer was Buffy the Vampire Slayer ... for no show before, or since, have I known (save for the handful which are apparently entirely written by a much-lauded showrunner).
It's unlikely that my favourite TV shows are being written by Bill Gates, Caitlyn Jenner, and Princess Gloria Von Thurn und Taxis ... and just as you don't have to invoke conspiracy to explain today's lack of interest in the actual authors, you also don't have to invoke it to imagine the Elizabethans were much the same. Shakespeare's famous now, but back then, he wasn't.
Today there's a select group of people who know perfectly well who Steven Lutvak is, but he's hardly Andrew Lloyd Weber or even Pasek and Paul. Maybe a 100 years from now he's be our most celebrated composer, and the internet forums will be abuzz about how little gossip there was about Lutvak in the early 21st century ... |
