ABSTRACT
American culture, some insist, has become a crowd culture, dangerously trivial. The people become the crowd or the customers. One of the most interesting critiques comes from the “decline and fall” school. Pioneering two new art forms, movies and popular songs, “first half” people concentrated on love, success, assimilation. Pursuing the popular reminds the reader of poor Sisyphus, trying to get the stone to the top of the hill, always failing. Not only celebrities and fads but whole technologies get swallowed up in the Black Hole. For many young people the world not only looks but sounds, smells, tastes, and feels about the same everywhere. The seasons, which used to influence everything, have virtually been reduced to a mere change of scenery, as have night and day. Suburban and sub-rural blur; basically all brands are the same brand with a different wrapping.
