The Netflix button that allows us to skip input line and going straight to “juice” is synonymous with binge watching with 2017 so it was added as a feature to the platform (and subsequently to others). So much so that on a normal day the button is pressed 136 million times while the total time saved by users is…195 years.

Once upon a time, the opening credits of the television series worked like an experiment by Pavlov. As soon as they fell, we knew it was time to sit on the couch, perhaps hum the part they heard, hypnotically follow frame by frame with our eyes this one and a half minute, usually the same and unchanged in each episode, a small introduction to the corresponding television universe.

Streaming has of course changed the terms and things like this, The TV program does not define our habits, instead we tailor the TV content to our own schedule. Thus, if we are talking about a series that is available exclusively through the streaming platform per season, and not per episode, the opening credits essentially lose their function of “stating” the event, since we have already predetermined this event and are left just mentally separating the chapters of the story.

And who, however, hasn’t been able to wait almost furiously for the skip title option to appear and press the button like a few seconds will save us. True, we have a paradox here: once we waited a week to see an episode that stuck us to the screen from the opening credits for half an hour, now we spend 4.5 and 6 hours greedily devouring the series. , taking the form of a sofa, but “throwing out” the headlines like seeds, we suddenly feel that our time is precious.

One may, of course, wonder why to see 3-4 times in one day the same headlines? Someone else, however, will say that there are those who do not even know what the initial titles of their favorite series are, because they press “skip” from the first episode.

However, in order not to become an absolute, we do not do injustice to the one who sees, for example, today “Breaking Bad” and he is tired of seeing in each episode only tabs with names that play with the letters of chemical elements (don’t forget that the show came out before the platforms came into our lives, and he could have taken a more modest route, everyone would have seen the names like that and otherwise). But why would anyone skip the opening credits? “Better Call Saul” that are witty, stylish, last less than 15 seconds, and alternate between 5-6 different versions per episode?

As for them “The Simpsons”, who have “predicted” so many things all these decades, they seem to have also predicted that the moment will come when the “Skip Screensaver” button will enter our lives. And to make it harder for us, America’s most famous television family decided in the last seconds of each intro to come up with a creative new way to sit on the couch in their living room, in the so-called sofa jokes while the Springfield school changes the punishment each time, which Bart has to write on the blackboard. All this, from his late years 1989.

For better or worse, today’s headlines may have lost some of their meaning. but not their art. In keeping with TV production, which has set the bar very high, the opening credits of “high-profile” series are a small work of art in their own right, meticulous to the fraction of a second. Who doesn’t enjoy every time dramatic violins accompany Don Draper’s freefall – literally and figuratively – in his introduction? “Crazies”? As for his epic intro Game of Thrones which allows the camera to move around a 3D map, took two years and a million dollars to create.

If, of course, there is one series in recent history that has given the initial titles the meta boost they need, then this is by far the most “White Lotus”. If you haven’t lived under a rock, you’ve probably noticed that lately everyone has been watching the second season of his show. Mike White who… kills rich people against the backdrop of Sicily, a series that justifies, among other things, Jennifer Coolidge with the Golden Globes, almost two and a half decades after the actress played Stifler’s mom in American Pie.

Like images of the mischievous, aristocratic Sistine Chapel, monkeys, donkeys and… peeping Toms parade before our eyes as we try to process what we hear. Arpez a la Bach with a little bit of operatic vocals that fade into something more poppy, voices that start to sound like a gurgling robot, and a beat to sweetly tie everything together (?)*.

(*Think here, of course, how far ahead “Unacceptable” which this year 1991 on Greek television, in the opening credits of the series, oh Nikos Patrelakis sampled several hits such as Ben’s “Stand by Me”. E. King and made them unrecognizable.)

Again, the theme was not mentioned in the opening credits of the first season. “Renaissance” but “Aloha!” (after all, the episodes take place in Hawaii) and the same melody comes from the jungle with African percussion, reggae rhythm and animal growl.

Opening credits of “White Lotus” they seem to come from “somewhere”, and yet they belong “here”. Just think that today in cinema, on television, and even more so in music, nostalgia for the experience is playing ping-pong in the sense ghost around what we have not experienced (where phantomology, “chontology”, a neologism used Derrida to describe the return of elements of the past into the reality of the present to ultimately chart a new future). As far as music genres are concerned, they are increasingly shedding their boundary locks, often prompting music critics to ruthlessly genre reset (sic) to describe the sound of this and that artist, while genres such as hyperpop, which more or less sounds like someone opened 10 YouTube tabs in a browser and let them play together.

In other words, things that look like everything and nothing at the same time are more relevant than ever. In such a pop-mosaic world, is it the odd opening titles like “White Lotus” that make the highest sense?

If you do an experiment and get them to play multiple times in a row, you’ll find how addictive they are – we also leave here almost 7 million plays which has “Renaissance” in Spotify but also names like “The theme song “White Lotus” is an absolute hit” (trans. “The title track ‘White Lotus’ is an absolute hit”) in media articles such as The Cut.

Will The White Lotus succeed in becoming the show that will make us stop looking like crazy for the “skip” button? However, 104 seconds of his opening credits taught us that we want to consume the same bizarre content as our time.