It truly is a golden age, a time that will be remembered fondly for decades. Historians will write of these glory days, and bards will sing of their triumphs. Possibly with the aid of Autotune.
It's the golden age of superhero movies. As a longtime comics reader (don't ask how many boxes I have at home), I'm giddy about the release of The Avengers, after a multi-year buildup that started with the first Iron Man film.
There had been other superhero movies, and the Tim Burton Batman franchise made plenty of money, the Richard Donner Superman series is still well thought of.
But finally, with CGI and directors who could tell tales of spandex heroism with a straight face, we got superhero movies that were actually good.
Really, those Burton Batman films? If you want to really drive a comic book nerd into a redfaced, spittle-flecked rage, ask him how much he liked the idea of Batman machine gunning people from the Batmobile. (Jeez, it's like Burton didn't take the idea of a millionaire playboy/ flying mammal-themed vigilante seriously or something!)
The first of the golden age of superhero movies was arguably the 2000 release of Bryan Singer's X-Men, followed by its sequels and spin-offs, the parallel Spider-Man films that started in 2002, and Christopher Nolan's new Batman movies.
Now, a lot of these films have ranged from so-so to awful (we're looking at you, Fantastic Four movies!), but you have to take the bad with the good.
It's always the golden age of something, and right now we're living in the midst of several.
The golden age of the hourlong drama? Sure, it started sometime in the 1990s when HBO rose to prominence and started making The Sopranos and Oz and The Wire, and everyone else had to bring up their game to compete. With Breaking Bad and A Game of Thrones still airing, it's far from over.
How about sitcoms? Arguably, it started with I Love Lucy and has not yet ended. The style seems to shift, though. The 1970s gave us MASH and All in the Family, with political and social commentary, then the 1980s gave us cosy, politicsfree shows like Cheers and The Cosby Show. Seinfeld and Arrested Development brought cynical, dark comedy, and the current crop of great shows include Community and Parks and Recreation, shows that mix heart and absurdist, rapid-fire jokes.
It's also the golden age of the young adult novel. When I was a young adult, we had Choose Your Own Adventure novels, old bluespined Hardy Boys books written in the 1930s, and Sweet Valley High, all 2.97 million volumes of it.
These do not hold up well compared to Harry Potter or The Hunger Games.
Other genres and art forms, however, are not doing well.
The last good time to be a big fan of innovative jazz was the early 1960s.
The soap opera is not likely to see any further artistic developments if it ceases to exist, as seems likely. The western genre produced everything from The Searchers to High Noon to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In recent years, we've seen few westerns, many of them remakes.
There are also areas where I simply can't tell. If I don't care for dubstep, how can I know if it's a bold new musical genre, the next bebop or punk?
How do golden ages end? They end when the innovation and drive move elsewhere, and the art form dies, usually by being smothered by nostalgia.
But something new will come along to take its place, sooner or later.
Matthew Claxton is a reporter with the Langley Advance, a sister paper of the Burnaby NOW.
