04-27-2021, 12:42 PM
If "cultural generations" are about cultural (usually mass low culture) ephemera, then "generations" mean little. People cast off fads such as bad pop tunes and tired TV series quickly enough that such things rarely have lasting significance. Culture is often related to class and ethnicity, and the cultural traits of two people born in the same year, one attending an elite prep school and one living in a squalid slum, are likely to be very different. Most likely the culture of the child raised in a highly-structured environment that plans everything is likely to be more bound to traditions that change little.
The best of the pop culture (let us say much of the repertory of Viennese waltzes, ragtime, and the Big Band Era in music) are likely to resurface among people not having connections to the time. The cultural divide is often something like "before Chuck Berry", "around when Chuck Berry made his mark", and "after Chuck Berry made his mark". The better stuff has a tendency to be exploited as background in cinema related to history or fantasy.
In my case the pop culture left me... cold... in the late 1970's as it stupefied into disco and bubble-gum rock. Like most Boomers I found something else.
The best of the pop culture (let us say much of the repertory of Viennese waltzes, ragtime, and the Big Band Era in music) are likely to resurface among people not having connections to the time. The cultural divide is often something like "before Chuck Berry", "around when Chuck Berry made his mark", and "after Chuck Berry made his mark". The better stuff has a tendency to be exploited as background in cinema related to history or fantasy.
In my case the pop culture left me... cold... in the late 1970's as it stupefied into disco and bubble-gum rock. Like most Boomers I found something else.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.