Is there a cure for 'Bear' fatigue?

On the importance of original, local arts & culture media coverage. [READER]( The Daily Reader January 17, 2024 I generally don’t care about entertainment awards . . . unless something I like wins, in which case those awards are great and important. And I am fully unenthusiastic about The Bear, the Chicago-based FX drama you probably know well enough about that any further description feels utterly pointless. Normally, a show I don’t care much about would gently slip from my memory over the course of a few months, especially if it has little to do with my everyday. But not The Bear. I’ve grown to resent the show as it has become a cultural phenomenon. It’s so thoroughly embedded in the pop culture zeitgeist that it feels impossible to escape Bear fever—especially in Chicago, where people rally around the program like it's an NFL team with Super Bowl potential. (On this note, I recommend reading [John Wilmes’s 2022 Bear review]( The public interest is real—and reflecting that obsession can be real interesting, [like when Block Club reported on the financial windfall]( that restaurants featured on the show have since experienced. But too often pop culture popularity gets translated into hollow media coverage, which frustrates me more than anything else. Arts and culture journalism was in a shaky place when I began freelancing professionally in 2009; these days it feels like it’s on the verge of extinction. Thoughtful critical essays about pop culture, deep dives on arts and culture phenomena, and reported pieces illuminating a facet of how the worlds of film, visual art, literary arts, or music are necessary to help us understand the world around us. And yet, every year I reliably find fewer and fewer news organizations publishing the kind of work that nourishes my soul and expands my sense of how the arts (and the world beyond that) work. I do, however, find lots and lots of quickly churned out nonsense about The Bear. And now that we’re in awards season, the steady stream of Bear “content” has become a torrent. I usually can’t remember when the Emmy Awards happen, but my RSS feed fed me plenty of interchangeable stories about the Bear’s wins, some from local outlets. I wonder, what is the value of churning out this kind of awards coverage when national outlets more engaged with the mechanics and day-to-day grind of TV and film entertainment can deliver the news really fast, and to a larger audience? What do local readers gain when, say, the [Sun-Times]( relays the same version of an Emmy Awards story [Deadline]( and [The Hollywood Reporter]( covered more thoroughly? (Do Chicagoans . . . care about the Emmys? Are they really worth the hassle of covering?) What bothers me more is the thought of the opportunities that are lost in chasing the kind of routine national story readers can find elsewhere. Is there a distinctively local arts and culture story that will go unwritten because limited time, funds, and labor were used on . . . recounting Bear Emmy wins? The Bear news pile-ons just fatigue me. I suspect they fatigue other people too. The public is fickle, though, and I suspect in the near future there will be another Bear . . . or [rat hole]( or distinctive Chicago character who inexplicably captures the city’s attention. I hope whatever enthusiasm I have for all such forthcoming phenomena can last more than a day before evaporating into resentment. And I hope the energy of experiencing hyperlocal phenomena with people in my community can energize me to do the work of sharing nuanced, insightful stories about Chicago’s vast cultural output. (On that note: [have you read my newest feature yet]( Sincerely, [“He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable.”]( by Geoff Edgers (Washington Post) [“‘The Curse’ Showed Just Enough To Unsettle,”]( by Corey Atad (Defector) [“We’re Jewish legislators, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza,”]( by Kelly Cassidy and Will Guzzardi (Sun-Times) Gerfety, [Come Back Bright]( the courts, [is a place]( Fortune Friedman Hemberger Krimstein & Smith, [They Have No Respect]( ❄️ Leor’s [“Third January 2024 playlist”]( Imelda Marcos celebrate a new battery of diamond-hard math rock Plus: Cincinnati record store Torn Light transplants its freak flag to Chicago, Tone Deaf Records kicks off its 2024 in-store schedule with a Fred Thomas show, and more. by [Leor Galil]( and [Micco Caporale]( | [Read more]( → [Chicago electronic duo Drama call for love, resistance, and freedom]( by [Jamie Ludwig]( | [Read more]( → [Cincinnati postpunks Corker make cold sound like fun]( by [Leor Galil]( | [Read more]( → [L’Rain brings grief-stricken experimentalism to Tomorrow Never Knows]( by [Shannon Nico Shreibak]( | [Read more]( → Enter to win this Reader Giveaway! 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