This would be an auspicious time to re-examine some of the unspoken premises of the contemporary arts.

To give an example, for a work to be significant, do all the characters need to be as neurotic, arid, and jejune as those in, say, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall?  Such characters may well reflect people in the artist's or writer’s own circle, but that circle is by definition limited.

How much does focusing on such a small subset really make a work sophisticated—and how much does it just make the work more parochial?