aarontassano.com

I hit a lull with the American Mind series but finally bore down and finished the thing. Really glad I did.
Once WWII was over the series took a leap for me, when it started getting into mass culture criticism and theory. One perspective living in Korea has given me is that the identification of culture as being something high or low, and any criticism thereof becomes muddled when one lives in a radically different culture. Koreans sometimes think Americans are dirty because they don’t scrape an outer layer of skin from their bodies as Koreans to in public baths. Americans think the idea of eating a dog or a live octopus is barbarian.
Aside from moral grounds it becomes difficult to criticize one or another. I don’t spend so much time thinking about Korean culture vs. American or Western culture. I accept most aspects of Korean culture for what it is; a several thousand year old culture, which has many admirable features and several that I don’t like.
But one thing I do think a lot about is American culture. My culture. And how so much of America’s ideas about itself have been acquired and developed via Europe. I think many Americans, including myself for some time; have looked at Europe as being somewhat culturally superior to America. Even though America, since its existence, has always remained democratically superior (although, it’s getting more debatable recently), Europe and its culture have often been held in higher esteem, certainly by Europeans, and by many Americans.
American Mind gets to the heart of where this game from, citing the examples of people like Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, who both fled to New York City from Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. Both raised issues of conformity vs. freedom in capitalist America. Fromm was specifically interested in the use of mass culture and its effect on the American populous. How America’s culture became so barren, so devoid of….I suppose all the things that European culture theoretically was…to Fromm.
Surely someone like Fromm would be disgusted at the conformity in Korean society, but, then again who’s to argue that it’s wrong? I’m also sure someone like Fromm had little to no experience living in an Asian culture, cultures that have survived much longer than either German or French culture. Koreans watch more television than everyone in the world, except the Japanese. Who is to argue that’s a waste of time? In any event the European style of life is disappearing, so I suppose it won’t matter much for long. It was unstable 75 years ago, and will be highly unstabe within the next 100 or so years.
American mind goes on discuss the Harlem Renaissance, Nation of Islam, up through the neo-Conservatives, which start with Reagan and continue through today.
I can’t recommend these series highly enough.