IN BABY YODA, HOLLYWOOD SEES ITS PAST, PRESENT AND MEME-ABLE FUTURE:

Familiar yet new. Baby Yoda may offer viewers a sweet respite from the world, a Dalai Lama in toddler form, but for Hollywood, Baby Yoda is the very embodiment of its modern reality, of all the forces that have shaped the galaxies of entertainment over the past decade and will likely mold it into the next decade and beyond. Baby Yoda is the decline of the movie star and the ascendance of IP, the rise of cord-cutting and the escalation of the so-called streaming wars, the dominance of web culture and the technological leaps in CGI … all tucked into one adorable little package.

And while the stars are fading away and/or becoming CGI in Hollywood, at Commentary, Rob Long notes that they’re getting plenty of competition for clicks and views on YouTube: A Decade of Nobodies. As Rob writes, “The past decade—with its relentless expansion of things to click on—has ushered in a new kind of fame, something we might call the ‘Who the Hell Is That? Is That a Famous Person? I Never Heard of That Person’ Era.”