I would say two or three things, off the top of my head:
How many people outside the culture know about it, and how far those cultures are from the originating culture (ie, do naked, stone-tool-using tribesmen in the Amazon know who Darth Vader is?)
How long it's lasted. Though you have the corporations deliberately keeping things in the public eye nowadays, so that's not a very organic metric, at least, not any more. But then, there's a lot of books that we only know about because schools pushed them on us, too. Basically, do people still genuinely care about Star Wars two or three generations down the line? Do the grandkids or great-grandkids of the original audience like it as much as their grandparents did?
Also, perhaps how many other parts of the originating culture it's affected; when the original Star Wars first came out, it basically introduced us to movie merchandising and toy tie-ins, which affected the Saturday morning cartoons that came after it.)
The only T-shirts I remember being around based on newspaper comic strips were generally bootleg Calvin and Hobbes or Bloom County stuff from sketchy big-city shops.
I would say the ability to reference something about it and everyone knowing.
Slave Leia is a major zeitgeist even today. Darth Vader is the same. Yoda with a lightsaber, or even a lightsaber alone.
What does a T Rex sound like?
Lord of the Rings has a full Zeitgeist, but the hobbit doesn't.
Mario has Zeitgeist. However 3D not so much. I can't think of a game world that comes even close to that. Mario Kart is an amazing example of this.
I don't know if Marvel or Disney has reached that level. It had moments, but those didn't last. I don't think Mickey will survive much longer. Reference a movie from the last 20 years with any staying power? You can just say a line and people know it. Last 10? Last 5? It's not surviving, and you can see it in casual conversation.
Hear hear. That the current company still calls themselves “Walt Disney Company” pisses me off a bit. Do we have a more proper nickname? “Woke Disney” is the best I can think of right now 🤔
My name is Inigo Montoya....
I'm not going to kill you, but...
No Luke, I ....
Watchu talking bout....
Avengers....
The hills are alive, with the sound of ....
Guns are my....
How many can you finish? I think that's a good way to test the zeitgeist. Simple, stupid, but accurate.
You could poll people but thats a lot of work, far better to just search for it like this: You could do a 'google trends' search on the phrase to see how often it is repeated over time, relative to other phrases. Works for stuff after 2004, or which continues to have an effect after that.
You'd have to develop some kind of metric of comparison, like how movies and ticket sales look at fall-off, they look to see if the movie has 'legs' and has positive word of mouth by how well it continues to do. Weekend 1 might have 50m in sales, weekend 2 might have 3mil, implying bad word of mouth, while 30m in weekend 1 but then 20m in weekend two implies more positive word of mouth, and traction.
So do the same, find some lines and films, real icons that have stood the test of time like 'red pill' from the matrix, or 'i am your father' and then compare other lines to them with google analytics, looking not just a peaks, but for continued impact, look at the falloff in the use of that phrase. I suspect morbin won't have much legs because it doesn't mean much and it's just a joke about a dumb film, but things like 'red pill' left a cultural impact and then was used as a metaphor and analysed for its explanatory power, give things extra points for being meaningful memes rather than just a joke like 'knights who say nee', a once novel and absurdist joke that autists repeat endlessly.
It also works for rarer names, not just phrases. You can see which characters are still being talked about today.
This will only capture the linguistic zeitgiest, and will miss the visual and music/sound based stuff. For example, there has been a resurgence of neon and synthwave 80s aesthetic, and the bladerunner 2047 and tron and stranger things are likely both a contributing cause and results of this trend, but they don't have any quotable lines so your analytics search will miss this. This will be far harder to search for.
After that, you'd maybe want to analyse the actual content, and sort some mentions of the character into 'surface level mentions, "oh I really liked when archie fell on his ass"' as compared to more meaningful commentary "today's political climate wouldn't tolerate a character such as archie bunker..."
Oh, that goes even further back, and includes names like "Diedre" (came from a soap opera, iirc), and even "Wendy" (Peter Pan). Hell, one could even talk about religions introducing new and trendy names into cultures. "Peter" (Petros) is one of those. In New Testament times, it was just a nickname - Rocky.
But I think the real metric would, again, be sticking power. Do those trendy names still get given to kids two, three, or more generations after the movie/book/TV show came out/was initially popular? Or are all the "Rainbows" and "Moon Units" bitter and restricted to one generation?
The easiest way to measure the longevity of any cultural franchise is its relevance to kids and teenagers. Star Wars inspired the imaginations of two whole generations of young people, and Lucas made literal billions off of the merchandising of action figures, models, books, comics, video games and pretty much anything else.
Now, Star Wars merchandise doesn't move. Collectors don't want it. Kids don't want it. They don't care, and the only people who even bother with the franchise are adults, either old fans who are still clinging on for some reason, or the woke leftists who only care about it for the platform it provides them.
All cultural artefacts with this kind of reach and influence inevitably die a slow death. The children who grew up loving them grow into adult consumers with disposable incomes to spend on their hobbies. But when their kids, who don't give a shit about it, eventually grow up into consumers, they won't spend their money on Star Wars. That will be its final death.
I would say two or three things, off the top of my head:
How many people outside the culture know about it, and how far those cultures are from the originating culture (ie, do naked, stone-tool-using tribesmen in the Amazon know who Darth Vader is?)
How long it's lasted. Though you have the corporations deliberately keeping things in the public eye nowadays, so that's not a very organic metric, at least, not any more. But then, there's a lot of books that we only know about because schools pushed them on us, too. Basically, do people still genuinely care about Star Wars two or three generations down the line? Do the grandkids or great-grandkids of the original audience like it as much as their grandparents did?
Also, perhaps how many other parts of the originating culture it's affected; when the original Star Wars first came out, it basically introduced us to movie merchandising and toy tie-ins, which affected the Saturday morning cartoons that came after it.)
I don't know that the third is a good metric. By that measure, The Shadow has more cultural reach than Batman and Doc Savage has more than Superman.
The only T-shirts I remember being around based on newspaper comic strips were generally bootleg Calvin and Hobbes or Bloom County stuff from sketchy big-city shops.
I would say the ability to reference something about it and everyone knowing.
Slave Leia is a major zeitgeist even today. Darth Vader is the same. Yoda with a lightsaber, or even a lightsaber alone.
What does a T Rex sound like?
Lord of the Rings has a full Zeitgeist, but the hobbit doesn't.
Mario has Zeitgeist. However 3D not so much. I can't think of a game world that comes even close to that. Mario Kart is an amazing example of this.
I don't know if Marvel or Disney has reached that level. It had moments, but those didn't last. I don't think Mickey will survive much longer. Reference a movie from the last 20 years with any staying power? You can just say a line and people know it. Last 10? Last 5? It's not surviving, and you can see it in casual conversation.
In my view, Mickey is Walt.
Mickey died when Walt died, and ever since then he's been nothing but a mascot, a brand name and logo to be stamped on the company's products.
Seeing how Epcot ended up, I'd have to agree.
Hear hear. That the current company still calls themselves “Walt Disney Company” pisses me off a bit. Do we have a more proper nickname? “Woke Disney” is the best I can think of right now 🤔
"The Roy Disney Company" or "The Walt Disney Company, c.o. Walt's Crazy Trans Grandniece"
Good point. Finish these lines
My name is Inigo Montoya.... I'm not going to kill you, but... No Luke, I .... Watchu talking bout.... Avengers.... The hills are alive, with the sound of .... Guns are my....
How many can you finish? I think that's a good way to test the zeitgeist. Simple, stupid, but accurate.
You could poll people but thats a lot of work, far better to just search for it like this: You could do a 'google trends' search on the phrase to see how often it is repeated over time, relative to other phrases. Works for stuff after 2004, or which continues to have an effect after that.
You'd have to develop some kind of metric of comparison, like how movies and ticket sales look at fall-off, they look to see if the movie has 'legs' and has positive word of mouth by how well it continues to do. Weekend 1 might have 50m in sales, weekend 2 might have 3mil, implying bad word of mouth, while 30m in weekend 1 but then 20m in weekend two implies more positive word of mouth, and traction.
So do the same, find some lines and films, real icons that have stood the test of time like 'red pill' from the matrix, or 'i am your father' and then compare other lines to them with google analytics, looking not just a peaks, but for continued impact, look at the falloff in the use of that phrase. I suspect morbin won't have much legs because it doesn't mean much and it's just a joke about a dumb film, but things like 'red pill' left a cultural impact and then was used as a metaphor and analysed for its explanatory power, give things extra points for being meaningful memes rather than just a joke like 'knights who say nee', a once novel and absurdist joke that autists repeat endlessly.
It also works for rarer names, not just phrases. You can see which characters are still being talked about today.
This will only capture the linguistic zeitgiest, and will miss the visual and music/sound based stuff. For example, there has been a resurgence of neon and synthwave 80s aesthetic, and the bladerunner 2047 and tron and stranger things are likely both a contributing cause and results of this trend, but they don't have any quotable lines so your analytics search will miss this. This will be far harder to search for.
One I see mentioned a lot in boomer conservative circles is 'archie bunker', he's used in many conservative essays and discussions. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=archie%20bunker is what that kind of staying power looks like, while a less serious joke/meme with sticking power line from say lord of the rings in 2002 looks like this: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=boil%20em%20mash%20em or this: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22they%27re%20taking%20the%20hobbits%22
After that, you'd maybe want to analyse the actual content, and sort some mentions of the character into 'surface level mentions, "oh I really liked when archie fell on his ass"' as compared to more meaningful commentary "today's political climate wouldn't tolerate a character such as archie bunker..."
Oh, that goes even further back, and includes names like "Diedre" (came from a soap opera, iirc), and even "Wendy" (Peter Pan). Hell, one could even talk about religions introducing new and trendy names into cultures. "Peter" (Petros) is one of those. In New Testament times, it was just a nickname - Rocky.
But I think the real metric would, again, be sticking power. Do those trendy names still get given to kids two, three, or more generations after the movie/book/TV show came out/was initially popular? Or are all the "Rainbows" and "Moon Units" bitter and restricted to one generation?
The easiest way to measure the longevity of any cultural franchise is its relevance to kids and teenagers. Star Wars inspired the imaginations of two whole generations of young people, and Lucas made literal billions off of the merchandising of action figures, models, books, comics, video games and pretty much anything else.
Now, Star Wars merchandise doesn't move. Collectors don't want it. Kids don't want it. They don't care, and the only people who even bother with the franchise are adults, either old fans who are still clinging on for some reason, or the woke leftists who only care about it for the platform it provides them.
All cultural artefacts with this kind of reach and influence inevitably die a slow death. The children who grew up loving them grow into adult consumers with disposable incomes to spend on their hobbies. But when their kids, who don't give a shit about it, eventually grow up into consumers, they won't spend their money on Star Wars. That will be its final death.