Themes of culture

Many years ago anthropologists were interested for a time in what they termed "themes of culture." Ruth Benedict was one who dabbled in this genre, attempting to categorize cultures in terms of characterists like Apollonian or Dionysian. Others quickly pointed out that was an oversimplification and there were probably more than one or two themes that might characterize cultures. Like so many fads this more or less just disappeared from the literature. But thinking back on it I was led to think about what themes might characterize contemporary American culture. I think there are two obvious ones: sex and violence.

I do not believe that I have seen a single ad for a motion picture for several months now that did not feature violence, and usually a lot of violence. As I am not a big TV viewer this could be obviously biased. At the moment I watch Olberman, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, an occasional sporting event, and once in a while I catch part of some other news station. I guess if I just watched soaps or the food channel or some other programs maybe I'd see something other than violence. But given what I do watch I assure you the ads are overwhelming violent. I notice also that most of the ads for motion pictures that I see in the newspaper are similarly loaded toward violence. Now I'm not overwhelmingly opposed to violence in movies. Obviously there has always been violence. Even as a child I remember the shoot-em-ups that were featured, as well as the primitive science fiction movies, and of course the gangster movies. But in those days the violence was at least somewhat limited and usually had to do with the good guys winning over the bad guys, the white hats over the black hats, and so on. It was nothing like the sort of indiscriminate almost non-stop violence we see nowadays, and it was certainly not featured in virtually every movie that was being made. Like I say, this may be a biased viewpoint, but that's the way I see it. I am willing to be convinced otherwise, I do not have a closed mind on this.

The other major theme I perceive to be sex. Everywhere we seem to be inundated with sexual themes. Sex is featured in movies along with violence (indeed, they almost seem to go hand in hand). Standing in the checkout line at the grocery store I peruse the covers of magazines: "Seventeen ways to please your husband in bed," "Sex tricks your husband will love," "How to look sexy," "How to be sexy," "So-and-so caught in bed with another man," "So-and-so found in lovers tryst with another woman," and so on and on (these are not necessarily actual headlines but they are representative descriptions of such headlines). On top of this we also have our annual contests to pick the sexiest man, the sexiest woman, and so on. Furthermore, the photos on magazine very frequently feature women in bikinis, low-cut blouses, sexual poses, and so on. Most everything can be sold nowadays with sex, especially products designed for men like automobiles, trucks, guns, and etc. Diets are mostly designed to make people look sexy rather than actually improve their health. "I'm a grandma and I think I'm as sexy as ever," "My husband calls me his trophy wife," "I haven't had such a hot body since..." and on ad nauseam. You live here, you must know what I'm talking about. As in the case of violence, I'm not opposed to sex, not even in movies or advertising, but when it reaches what strikes me as obsessional proportions I cannot help but wonder about it. Think viagra, cialis, male enhancement, maxiderm, and so on, as well.

It seems to me that if you tried to make a movie these days without sex and violence you would be regarded as some kind of pervert (or, yeah, perversion is also big these days, what with catching them on air and all). I know from personal experience that sex and violence have always been around, but I also know we were not completely saturated with them as we seem to be now. Hollywood can't even make a movie like the sinking of the Titanic without some kind of romantic interest. It seems that to Hollywood at least, all of the major events of history were merely incidental to romance. I confess, I don't know what to make of this. But are violence and sex really the only aspects of life worth all this attention?

LKBIQ:

"After years of this training, I now find myself intimately convinced of a few unsophisticated beliefs, not very different from those I held at the age of fifteen."
Levi-Strauss, commenting on the outcome of his training in philosophy.