The Flattening of Culture

And a longing for change

Photo by Harper Sunday on Unsplash

I just watched Dazed and Confused, for the first time, on a flight to Paris. It's not a great movie, though to be fair, it was difficult to hear over the roar of the plane. But it did take me back to the seventies. I was a kid during that time—but a very observant one.

There was a tangible beauty about the decade. The fashion displayed in the aforementioned movie, of course: bell bottoms with embroidered hems, tooled leather purses, crocheted tops, accouterments often hand-crafted by the young people who wore them. But also: The huge, glossy collections of art by M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali stacked on my family's coffee table. Frank Frazetta's fantastical viking scenes adorning the album covers and sci-fi paperbacks in my brother's room. Space-age landscapes in day-glo against black velvet, radiating under black light. Those concert posters in melting bubble letters. Psychedelic art inspired by psychedelic drugs. Macrame plant hangers, wall tapestries, terrariums, beaded curtains. Necklaces strung of glass beads, of Venetian trade beads, of millefiori. Even the mosaic-tiled bong a neighborhood boy kept in his car was a work of DIY craftsmanship. Then there was the rumble of smoking sports cars, the scent of diesel mixed with sandalwood and patchouli, the wail of arena rock. A feast for the senses.

“I don't want to go to America,” said the bellhop who took my luggage. “Americans are crazy.” I couldn't argue. Now in Paris for the fourth time, a conspicuous calm took hold of me quicker than usual. Each building towering near my boutique hotel was old, worn, soulful. Plants and flowers spilled from windowsills. A woman dined alone outside, at noon on a weekday, in a silver dress and strappy, kitten-heeled sandals. She enjoyed a carefully prepared salad with no television blaring in her ear. Two men passed by wearing button-up shirts and pants that fit well.

This is what travel is for: It allows you to see with fresh eyes.

Another culture steeped in sights and sounds, different from everywhere else, different from what came before. Culture is everywhere, in ceremonial dress, in steaming hot pots of regional stews, in gatherings in streets and temples.

Except, perhaps, here and now.

True—fish don't know they're wet. But a writer is sensitized to the strange in the mundane, and until very recently, I've never experienced the world in so few dimensions. In my place and time, culture began to decline well before the pandemic, scattered by modernity, obscured behind the Internet, commodified by late capitalism. Then the pandemic put another nail in its coffin.

By culture, I don't mean the opera and Beethoven and NPR. I mean “the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular people.” Under the financial pressures of quarantine, several of my favorite mom-and-pop restaurants went under, including the taco joint mentioned in the final chapter of my memoir, the site of an epiphany about love that showed me the way forward after my divorce. A break in habits and friends’ fear of germs have put an end to the meetups and bonfires that once filled my weekends.

The image-conscious performance required by social media, coupled with the nihilism of queer theory and the aesthetics of porn, have flattened fashion into extremes: cartoonish eyelashes and corset-squashed bellies, labia-hugging leggings, damaged hair and impulsively-placed tattoos. The goal is not beauty, but signaling: our degree of sexual availability, our precise location along a contrived “spectrum” of gender. We do not look like a society with its own refined aesthetic. We look like self-harm, excess, surrender.

Styles used to change with each generation. The neon mini skirts and beach-bunny hair I wore in the eighties was a sharp departure from the bell bottoms my brother wore a decade before. My mom's poodle skirt and pointy bra seemed eons from both. Today moms and daughters can wear the same Hot Topic plaid and Manic Panic hair streaks. Grandma's jeans aren't retro. Nothing is new this decade, much less this year. And there is no counterculture. Face piercings are the norm. Rainbow-colored hair is status quo. Cameltoe is mainstream. Tattoos do not signify a withdrawal from polite society, as they did for sailors or punk rockers; they commemorate passing whims. A lawn chair, a dinosaur, a stack of books, a cup of coffee. Even plastic surgery has become a “human right” at every age. There is no rebellion, because there's no longer a way to rebel. Nothing is out of line.

Customs have died along with God, as Nietzsche warned. All “structures” are suspect—church, the court of law, monogamy, even employment—and thus cannot lend their support. In the arts, everything has been done. Art has become a soulless recitation of identity, random arrangements of objects declared symbolic of conformist political statements. It's art that cannot be apprehended on its own terms, but must be explained. It's everything Walter Benjamin feared about the age of mechanical reproduction and more.

This is what I want: Quality. Attention to detail. Beauty, however idiosyncratic. Objectively good design exists; style is not completely a matter of opinion. Respect for the old, the established, the soulful. Class—a topic about which I've meant to write more. Hint: it's not about lifting your pinky when you drink a cup of tea.

I want to be inspired, so I can create something new. I want to break the cycle.

What has flattened American culture? My guesses include the Internet and the lack of discipline it's engendered. Late capitalism. Political correctness and cancel culture. Political corruption. A declining mental health that primes us for distraction by shiny objects, so we won't have to sit with ourselves. Individualism, the fetishization of choice it brings, the way it compels us to dip everything in ranch dressing instead of trusting the chef. A preference for quantity over quality. In other words, greed.