Best of the iDecade: iCame, iSaw, iConquered

LET’S call it the iDecade.

If it's true that the 1960s were the Free Love decade, the '70s were the Me decade and the '80s were the We decade, then it's certainly safe to declare that the 20-naughts -- the first tenth of the 21st century -- were a decade in which popular culture was redefined by digital technology, ever-easier online access (both legal and illegal) to movies, music and TV, the democratization of stardom, and an evolution in which the notion of entertainment for the masses was replaced by the creation of every single consumer's own personal playlist.

The early 2000s were, indeed, the "I" decade, in which iTunes and iPods and iPhones allowed everyone to declare that "I" control the content of my entertainment experience. CD sales slumped as downloadable singles became the preferred format; watching TV shows cluttered by commercials went by the wayside as PVRs, downloads and online streaming video gained popularity; trips to the movie theatres and video-rental stores were replaced by Internet access and at-home video-on-demand purchases.

As consumers became the masters of their own entertainment domains, a new wave of entertainment stars grabbed hold of the spotlight and turned it directly on themselves. Some of them -- musical acts like Beyoncé, Keith Urban, Taylor Swift and Nickelback, movie stars such as Tobey Maguire, Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, and TV standouts like James Gandolfini, Jason Bateman, Eva Longoria and Michael C. Hall -- gained stardom the old fashioned way, through hard work and tireless promotion.

Others, thanks to the rocket-fuelled boost provided by reality-TV shows, led by American Idol, were offered a shortcut to the top, and performers such as Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daughtry and Carrie Underwood took full advantage of the pop-culture helping hand and actually stuck around long enough to grab several handfuls of Grammy Awards.

At the dawn of the iDecade, the music industry's preferred flavour was the boy band, with pre-fab packages like Backstreet Boys and N'Sync selling CDs by the truckload. Before long, girl-power popsters such as Britney, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson pushed their way into the spotlight; by the end of the 10-year span, it was post-pubescent performers such as Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber who were winning teenage hearts.

All the while, well-aged but persistent rock dinosaurs such as the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen and even AC/DC continued to tour.

While the Idol revolution was taking place, country music enjoyed a huge resurgence thanks to a new wave led by Keith Urban, Taylor Swift, Brad Paisley and Underwood.

The recording industry was in a state of revenue-freefall crisis, thanks to the shift to downloading and peer-to-peer digital music sharing, but music itself has probably never been more popular.

At the movie theatres, the iDecade brought a cavalcade of computer animation, ranging from fully cartoonish fare such as The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up to digitally enhanced blockbuster franchises like Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the final two chapters of the Star Wars trilogy.

The 20-naughts brought huge technical advances to the big screen, but also created huge headaches for the big studios as the digitization of films made online movie piracy a huge, income-sapping problem. On the other hand, cheap and easy access to digital media inspired a new generation of filmmakers and spawned a new do-it-yourself genre: Mumblecore.

On the small screen, the transition to the 21st century was anything but easy for TV's traditional purveyors. Major networks on both sides of the border saw their audience share continue to erode as the channel universe expanded, and the inevitable revenue decline was accompanied by a creative lull, as producers, performers and viewers began to regard cable TV and specialty networks as the place to go for top-notch programming.

While the broadcast networks said goodbye to The West Wing and Seinfeld and ER, cable services were introducing audiences to The Sopranos, Deadwood, Weeds, Six Feet Under, The L Word, Dexter, The Shield, The Wire, Mad Men and more. And then, on top of it all, the entire U.S. TV industry was brought to a screeching halt by a writers' strike that shut down production for 100 days in 2007 and 2008.

TV eventually returned, but the big money didn't. The global financial collapse followed hard on the heels of the strike by the Writers Guild of America, and the TV business was forced to rethink its entire business plan. South of the border, NBC opted out of the final hour of prime time, abandoning scripted fare and handing the 9 p.m. time slot to Jay Leno five nights a week.

And up hereabouts, TV viewers spent the waning months of the iDecade listening to an endlessly tiresome back-and-forth of "Save local TV" and "Stop the TV tax" pleas.

Winnipeg played a significant part in pop culture's past 10 years, with filmmaker Guy Maddin finally getting his moment in the global spotlight with My Winnipeg, proud local product Nia Vardalos unleashing the biggest independent movie hit in history (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and this city providing the setting for the popular romantic comedy Shall We Dance and Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning turn in Capote.

Manitoba's film and television production community continued to lure made-for-TV movies to our region, and also contributed a couple of legitimate hit homegrown series -- Falcon Beach and Less Than Kind -- to the prime-time landscape.

Musically, Winnipeg's injection into the decade's playlist came from the likes of Remy Shand, Chantal Kreviazuk, Fresh IE, the Weakerthans, Inward Eye, Doc Walker and the Waking Eyes.

In the end, however, the decade that just was wasn't really about Hollywood or record stores or prime-time schedules; it was about you and me and "i", and how each of us now gets to choose just exactly what will entertain and inform us.

In the pages that follow, you'll find our perspectives on the best and worst of TV, movies and music from Y2K to the present. Whether we're right or wrong about the iDecade is, not surprisingly, completely up to you to decide.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 19, 2009 C1