As a person who writes and writes about writing, I often love to take a look at inspiration for work. Good writing is like good cocaine for me. I get totally obsessed with it, regardless of what form it’s in. 

I’m like that with games (see Poppy Playtime) as well as with things like TV shows or books. Recently, I stumbled upon a play that really got me floored: Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play. 

It’s about to be made into a movie, so you might want to check it out before it’s cool. (No really, you can find plenty of renditions of the play on YouTube and they’re actually really great.)

The play starts off after a major cataclysm occurs in the United States. A gaggle of survivors of a nuclear apocalypse-style, grid-destroying event are first seen around a campfire shortly after it happens. 

They’re all together, reminiscing about things they saw during the “apocalypse” as well as talking about TV shows they missed. Most notably, they reminisce about an older (real) episode of The Simpsons called “Cape Feare.”

That group? They’re all trying to recollect the words in the show and the events in it — and actually kludge it together with decent success. However, there are key mistakes that later get played on the background. 

(Note: For those not in the know, “Cape Feare” is about Sideshow Bob stalking Bart Simpson. The Simpsons go into witness protection on a houseboat, but get trailed by Bob, and Bob gets caught after stepping on a rake and singing a song.)

Either way, The Simpsons becomes an oddly comforting part of the nostalgia comfort culture of survivors. The play skips ahead to 7 years, and the group has now started to make a living doing shows of “Cape Feare,” and it’s highly lucrative. 

It becomes clear that plays are now the go-to entertainment form, especially when it comes to showing off old TV series. They also start doing fake commercials as a way to channel even more nostalgia to the audience. They keep changing up the story, adding new lines to make it work with the audience.

The final outcome? 

75 years later, the “Cape Feare” episode is now a bizarre, borderline spiritual epic about Bart Simpson fighting Mr. Burns, who caused a radioactive apocalypse, while the ghosts of Springfield cheer him on. 

In other words, every single iteration of “Cape Feare” becomes less and less like the original. The culture references got erased, replaced by new ones that are more geared toward the new world that the play is in. 

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There’s no real cultural term for this, but historians have a name for it when it happens to historic artifacts. In history, it’s called “historical negationism,” and it’s defined as “is the falsification,[3][4] trivialization,[5][6] or distortion of the historical record,” by Wikipedia. 

Basically, historical negationism happens when you’re “playing telephone” with historic records, oral recounts, and more. With every pass, nuance is lost, cultural references vanish, and things get distorted. 

The same thing can happen with cultural references — as Mr. Burns points out. Don’t believe it? 

Think about it this way: outside of “Daisy Bell,” can you name a single other common song from the 1890s? Probably not. The songs are lost to time, forgotten, or just become so irrelevant that they are now just a footnote in a history book. 

Or, take for example, the way that the Moomins comics were. Back when they first came out, Moomins had some fairly dark themes that mirrored growing up in World War II. Today, the Moomins franchise is known for being super idyllic, cuddly, and idealistic. 

Another good example is Looney Tunes, which originally used to be shown solely to adults. It used to have a lot of cultural references, including celebrity impressions and sex jokes. By the 1960s, it was standard children’s TV. 

The old toons that were shown often had references totally missed by modern audiences. (I mean, do many kids under 15 know who Abbott and Costello were?) Today, those vintage cartoons are mostly about being goofy and nostalgic — not edgy humor. 

This was not done on purpose, like cultural erasure. It is just the way things evolve.

Most younger goths don’t realize this, but there was an underground precursor to goth culture called deathrock. This music genre was known for its spooky, haunting melodies and was aesthetically (and musically) influenced by 70s punk. It eventually morphed into goth.

The idea of “trad goth” has been around since Siouxsie and the Banshees — at least, with the eye makeup. Up until the advent of cybergoth in the late 90s, most goths all wore black, had fishnets, rocked Demonias, TUKs, or Swear Alternatives, and went hard on eyeliner. That was it. 

It was almost a uniform. Heck, it kind of was a uniform because most goths ended up buying all their gothwear from Hot Topic. If you were smart, you ordered online for more unique pieces. If you were lucky, you shopped at a small local goth store.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to be able to see the boots you were wearing and actually know the brand and the make of them. That’s how uniform goth stuff was. 

While it always was anti-conformist, it still had its guidelines on what conformed to the goth vibe. Heck, when I was a teenager, there were five real goth “flavors:” cybergoth, steampunk, regular (“trad”) goth, vampire, and mall goth. That was it. 

Today, this is not the case. 

There are over 20 different openly acknowledged goth aesthetics and sub-subcultures. But the idea of a goth wearing pastels and whites and pink to a club? Or worse, a goth hanging out with a guidette or “Barbie” bimbocore girl?

 Oh my god, that would have never flown. 

Health goth, a spinoff of goth culture that hits the gym, was also pretty laughable. In fact, they had a skit about “sweating to the oldies for goths” that involved poking fun at the idea of a goth at a gym. In other words, much of what is now generally accepted as part of alt culture was just not really done back then. 

In other words, the goth subculture evolved, particularly in its aesthetics. It had to in order to remain marketable and relevant to society. Is traditional goth still alive? Yes, but it’s not nearly as common as it used to be. The movement branched out.

Goth was a rebellion against the hyperconformist, preppy world of the 2000s. When I was a teen, being a goth was a great way to guarantee you would be bullied, avoided, or otherwise shunned by mainstream society. 

Wearing too much black or having goth hair styles, pale makeup, and black lipstick would have ended up with people making fun of you. In some cases, it could get you jumped. I knew people who got beaten for their clothing choices. Some even died from the “crime” of existing while goth.

Goth was initially an anti-conformist movement enshrined in a specific music genre. Then it became a multi-genre, multi-aesthetic thing. Nowadays, goth is more of an aesthetic than it is a music genre. I’ve met a lot of younger goths who have never heard of Siouxsie, Wumpscut, or Sisters of Mercy. 

That’s cultural negation in practice, folks. 

I honestly don’t know what will evolve, what will stay, or what will change. However, that’s the cool thing about your work. As Mr. Burns shows, your work can be interpreted through a million different eyes, given enough time.