How would copyright laws work. Like with Disney gone, could animators just use Mickey Mouse without even having to ask permission?
Post-Doomsday pop culture
- Thread starter CivoLee
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I'd imagine no-one would give a crap about copyright laws and will just do it.
@Gillan1220 I had the same sentiment when I was watching the ending portion of the last episode of the Cold War (1998) produced by Turner Productions. It's easy to take for granted the world and pop culture when everything is fine. (The opposite is true now, given recent events.)
I pity him. He literally saved the world and what did he get in return? From Allan Little, "'How I stopped nuclear war'", BBC News, 21 October 1998, available online:
There was another song released in 1983 with nuclear war related lyrics, only most people never realised it, since the lyrics were in Spanish and the only part of the song most understood was the refrain, which was also its' title, "Vamos a la Playa", only the next line explained why people were supposed to go to the beach, because the bomb had been detonated and radioacrivity was spreading. It was of course an allusion to the 1959 post apocalyptic motion picture "On the Beach", yet hardly anyone got the reference, least of them obviously the producers of the video, which depicted a family blissfully preparing for a beachside bathing day, unless of course they meant it ironically, but even if they did, said irony was lost among its' recipients, since almost everyone regarded the song as one of those typical "Bacardi feeling" summer dance hits of the 1980s.
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I remember binge watching CNN's Cold War documentary back then in Summer 2014. They reran it in their channel as part of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Got to learn a lot while comparing it to OTL 2014's East-West tensions following the Crimean crisis.
I cannot agree with this. People will need someway to escape from reality, or some sort of relief, as recent events have shown. Pop culture will exist, but it differ greatly since it will exist on a pocket, non-mainstream basis. Think of subcultures. Also, not all survivor states post-Doomsday are in the same situation as the former United States of America in this alternate timeline.
@emirmendoza I just realized with the abscence of McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Wendy's, Pizza and Shakey's in the Philippines IITL, Jollibee would definitely dominate Southeast Asia and ANZC.
McDonald's only arrived in Manila in late 1980s OTL. Although KFC was already in Cebu from 1960s, it closed in 1971 when Mactan Air Base was transferred from the USAF to PAF. Most of its customers were American tourists and USAF personnel. My parents said majority of Cebuanos did not eat fast food back then (because it was luxury) which contributed to its closure. It would come back to Cebu around the 1990s. So with Doomsday, neither those American fast food restaurants won't return (the ones in Clark and Subic were destroyed).
McDonald's only arrived in Manila in late 1980s OTL. Although KFC was already in Cebu from 1960s, it closed in 1971 when Mactan Air Base was transferred from the USAF to PAF. Most of its customers were American tourists and USAF personnel. My parents said majority of Cebuanos did not eat fast food back then (because it was luxury) which contributed to its closure. It would come back to Cebu around the 1990s. So with Doomsday, neither those American fast food restaurants won't return (the ones in Clark and Subic were destroyed).
@Gillan1220
No question about Jollibee. Jollibee is Jollibee. The question is if post-Doomsday Jollibee will come up with spin-offs like Greenwich, Chowking, and Red Ribbon.
McDo entered the Philippine market in 1981, but would expand to Visayas and Mindanao in 1992 OTL. (https://www.mcdonalds.com.ph/our-story; see also https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=PbpCDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA40&dq=McDonald's Philippines&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q&f=false) The question is: Will McDo survive Doomsday? And how long? Given that its owners are of Chinese descent (Dr. George T. Yang), I won't be surprised if it will. There's a reason many of the top ten richest people in the Philippines are of Chinese descent. (https://www.forbes.com/philippines-billionaires/list/) I don't see Doomsday changing that.
Shakey's has been in the Philippines since 1975. (https://www.esquiremag.ph/culture/food-and-drink/shakeys-philippines-history-a00309-20191120-lfrm3; https://business.inquirer.net/171391/shakeys-formula-is-to-build-it-brick-by-brick). Without Pizza Hut, I can see Shakey's surviving Doomsday, unless Jollibee sets up Greenwich.
No idea about Burger King's, Wendy's, and KFC's history in the Philippines. Thanks for the interesting KFC anecdote.
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One weird urban legend that was popular during the 1980s and would be popular in the ATL, was that Japan supposedly had villages named "Usa". The idea was that Japanese products were flooding the market and avoiding inspection, using the sticker/label "Made in USA"...
Chowking opened in 1985. It's either earlier, on-time, or delayed here but since many Filipinos love Chinese food. I don't really see any effects of Doomsday affecting it. Same goes for Greenwich and Red Ribbon. My guess is some rich Filipino businessman would nationalize the remaining McDonald's and Shakey's branches here.
Here is the first KFC branch in Cebu City, 1969. Closed in 1971 when the USAF transferred control of Mactan AB to the PAF.
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Chowking opened in 1985. It's either earlier, on-time, or delayed here but since many Filipinos love Chinese food. I don't really see any effects of Doomsday affecting it. Same goes for Greenwich and Red Ribbon. My guess is some rich Filipino businessman would nationalize the remaining McDonald's and Shakey's branches here.
Here is the first KFC branch in Cebu City, 1969. Closed in 1971 when the USAF transferred control of Mactan AB to the PAF.
Interesting photo. Thanks for sharing. Is that a San Miguel beer logo I see? What happened to the structure afterwards?
Back to Doomsday, how possible is it that a businessman not affiliated with KFC would set up a KFC in the Philippines ITTL? That would depend on whether trademark law would be enforced. What do you think, @Gillan1220?
I must have missed your explanation about this. May you please explain why this thread should go to the ASB forum?
I can't tell what that logo is. Resolution of the image is too small and blurry. The structure was demolished eventually.
Regarding trademark, no-one is gonna care about it. The Cubans remade Coca Cola in their own likeliness when they explored the ruins of Atlanta. It is possible someone can set up a KFC but they need access to the secret formula of how the friend chicken and the gravy is made.
The idea that people would be worried about, let alone producing, music, movies, games, and other forms of culture with the level of death, chaos, and destruction a full-on 1980s nuclear exchange would bring is an incredibly hard sell.
Since the wreck of the Titanic was only found in OTL 1985, this means ITTL 2020 the wreck has never been found.
11 herbs and spices won't be as much a trick as getting the pressure cooking right en masse but KFC and Waffle House or parallels would be reasonable guesses for the first fast-food-style restaurants to return after Doomsday.
This could be at any point after Doomsday or any civilization-stunting holocaust, not necessarily within the semi-immediate aftermath. It could be even a century later.
I know that the supposed "realistic" scenario for a nuclear war in the early 80s is everyone who isn't vaporized/immolated dies of radiation sickness, those who don't die of radiation sickness starve or freeze during nuclear famine/winter or kill themselves out of despair and that's it for humanity and all intelligent life in the solar system until the cockroaches become sentient or the ruins of Earth are colonized by some alien civilization. Or civilization crashes back down to the "Dark Ages", or better yet the Stone Age, remaining there for millennia until somehow, someway people figure out how to decipher those ancient tomes once called "tek-nick-all man-you-alls" and can slowly work their way back up again. But I'm sorry, I just don't buy that. People would find a way to carry on and have fun again.
The 1983: Doomsday scenario as described on the Alt History Wiki says that the Global South survives and builds a new world in the absence of the United States, Europe, the USSR, and the rest of the formerly dominant Global North. Frankly, that isn't too far-fetched of an idea.
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I think you're failing to understand just how devastating an event this would be to human culture.
Even granting your premise of Doomsday (or a RL full-scale exchange) only affecting the north in terms of physical destruction, the countries that are spared direct attack in the south are going to be devastated by disease, climate change, refugees, the collapse of the global economy, insurrections, rebellion, civil unrest, resource exhaustion, famine, radiation, panic, and God knows what else. This level of destruction is unprecedented in human history, and it's unlikely that there'll be any major recovery because everything's destroyed to the point that you can't build it back because the resources you need are rendered useless, irradiated, or floating somewhere in the stratosphere.
Now, in a country like, say, Australia, is there a chance that a government could carry on in some pocket of the country? Sure. Might it even hold control over the original territory? Maybe. But all these issues are going to apply.
Civilization will probably survive at first, but it's going to be city-states and their surrounding areas. And these will gradually break down as the fuel runs out, the power goes out, the supplies run low... no one is going to be sitting there and saying "we've GOT to form a band/write a novel/make a movie/etc."
Will people crack jokes and still tell stories? Yes. Could it spread outside these pockets? Sure. Will it be anywhere near the ease or frequency before the bombs fell? No. Because the systems in place are not there anymore, and those societies are going to have much bigger problems on their hands than the latest single from TTL's Lorde.
Perhaps a new culture will eventually emerge hundreds of years in the future, but it will be rural, isolated, pre-industrial - at best. The complex pop culture scene you and Gillian want is just not going to be there because the means, will, and resources are no longer there - which is what I and @OldNavy1988 are trying to explain.
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