|
Sometimes, when I’m wandering in an art museum looking at the relics of an ancient civilization, I find myself wondering how a
future society would represent a defunct American culture. What objects would be chosen—or would survive—to be placed on
display? Would I agree with a curator’s choices? Were I to choose the items that some future American Museum of Art should
exhibit to represent twentieth-century American culture, here are some I would name: an Elvis Presley record; a Currier & Ives
print; a movie still from Casablanca. To put it a different way, my priority would not be to exhibit fragments of an urban cathedral, a
painted landscape, or a formal costume. I wouldn’t deny such objects could be important artifacts of American culture, or that they
belong in a gallery. But in my avowedly biased opinion, the most vivid documents of American life—the documents that embody its
possibilities and limits—are typically found in its popular culture.
Popular culture, of course, is not an American invention, and it has a vibrant life in many contemporary societies. But in few, if any,
of those societies has it been as central to a notion of national character at home as well as abroad. For better or worse, it is through
icons like McDonald’s (the quintessential American cuisine), the Western (a uniquely American narrative genre), and Oprah
Winfrey (a classic late-twentieth century embodiment of the American Dream) that this society is known—and is likely to be
remembered. |