Darling, the culture desk has spent years pretending we’re all just here for a little light entertainment, and yet somehow every successful franchise now behaves like a religion with better merch.

This week’s evidence is almost too on the nose. Reuters reports BTS’ new album Arirang sold 3.98 million copies on its first day. That’s not merely consumer enthusiasm. That is coordinated affection with a liturgical calendar. Fans don’t just buy the product; they arrive, they witness, they repeat, they recruit. The industry likes to call this engagement because “devotion” sounds a touch too revealing.

Then there’s Labubu — yes, that deliciously odd little ugly-cute creature — heading to the big screen through a Sony and Pop Mart collaboration. A toy once treasured as a collectible is now being inflated into cinematic lore. Hollywood, bless its wandering eye, simply cannot resist a fan base that already knows how to kneel. Why build attachment from scratch when you can slip into something pre-beloved and call it storytelling?

Meanwhile the Academy Awards drew 17.9 million U.S. viewers, down again, according to Reuters. Prestige still enters the room like it expects applause on sight, but the audience keeps ghosting. There’s a lesson in that little heartbreak. Spectacle alone no longer guarantees intimacy. You can put everyone in diamonds, dim the lights, swell the orchestra, and still fail to create the one thing culture now lacks most: a shared sense that this moment matters because we are in it together.

Which is why Netflix, that supreme priestess of convenience, is giving its upcoming Stranger Things animated spinoff limited theatrical screenings. Isn’t that cute? The empire of endless at-home availability suddenly wants velvet ropes and showtimes. Because pure access turns out to be a bit of a tease. When everything is always available, nothing knows how to make an entrance. Even streaming has realized it needs occasion. Some flirtation. A little ceremonial foreplay before the content arrives.

And over on the more serious side of the room, Denis Villeneuve says he nearly took a break before completing Dune: Part Three but changed his mind because audiences embraced the first films so intensely. Of course they did. People are starving for worlds big enough to inhabit and myths large enough to borrow a heartbeat from. Irony had a very good run, but sincerity in a sharply tailored coat is making a comeback.

Put these stories together and the pattern is almost indecently obvious. Culture does not merely want our time. It wants our reverence. It wants us to show up together, say the lines together, post the reaction together, wear the symbol, hold the collectible, stream the song at midnight, and nod knowingly when the reference passes by. Entertainment is no longer content with being consumed. It wants to be inhabited.

That’s not entirely a bad thing. Human beings need shared stories, recurring rituals, and beautiful excuses to feel less alone. The danger is that the market now knows this too well. It can package belonging, sell identity in installments, and turn longing itself into a subscription model.

Still, I’ll confess a weakness for the whole performance. There is something irresistible about watching a supposedly secular culture rediscover ceremony in sequins, box sets, and fan chants. We keep insisting we’ve outgrown old forms of devotion, then spend our weekends queueing for premieres, defending fictional universes like doctrine, and treating pop-comeback dates like feast days.

Maybe the truth is simpler. We were never going to live by irony alone.

We want stories with enough shape to gather around, enough beauty to seduce us, and enough recurrence to make life feel patterned instead of merely streamed. The winners now are the ones who understand that attention is fleeting, but ritual — ah, ritual lingers. It leaves lipstick on the glass.

And that, my loves, is why culture still keeps coming back dressed as spectacle while quietly begging to be believed in.

Sources: Reuters lifestyle coverage ().