News of the Culture or News of the Universe?

Abstract

There is widespread and justified concern over the steady decline of culture in America—and in the West generally. In this article I examine the societal forces I believe to be largely responsible for this disquieting tendency. Among them I identify the loss of psychic and intellectual immunity to Bad Art; the century-long slide into vulgarity, tawdriness, and sleaziness, which have helped turn America into the Land of Entertainment; the loss of standards and criteria of taste and judgment in both the production of art and its critical evaluation; the loss—especially in America—of innocence brought on by the corrosion of human values; and, finally, the rise of sentimentality and the consequent triumph of kitsch, which has come to be accepted as an illusory substitute for genuine seriousness and sentiment. In this context I juxtapose what I call “news of the culture” with “news of the universe.”