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PARTISAN REVIEW
silent films, oddly enough, were silent versions of opera-seeking a
mythic and resonant power. The same kind of aspiration survives in dif–
ferent forms, in the best of American film or in American comedy.
If
the
ideology of democracy were to finally become less strident, who knows
what might be possible? Acceptance of democratic flaws; skepticism
without disgust; complexity in place of agitprop; proportion instead of
absolutes; community constructed out of difference-imperfect satisfac–
tions imperfectly accepted.
But if these are the complexities of what happens when democratic
culture faces itself, what happens when democratic culture is encoun–
tered by societies that have not experienced democracy at all? What is
the political and social impact of democratic culture? The first impres–
sion of a Hollywood film or an American television series may not be of
America as a place of democratic rights but of America as a place of
material possibilities. Democratic culture, even in Tocqueville's descrip–
tion, is inseparable from the promise of commercial prosperity. Mar–
shall McLuhan once recalled an American Army officer pondering the
difficulty of democratizing fascist Italy after World War II. "Democra–
tic freedom," the officer argued, with tongue partly in cheek, required
not worrying about politics but "worrying about the means of defeat–
ing underarm odor, scaly scalp, hairy legs, dull complexion, unruly hair,
borderline anemia, athlete's foot, and sluggish bowels, not to mention
ferro-nutritional deficiency of the blood, wash-day blues, saggy breasts,
receding gums, shiny pants, graying hair and excess weight." Some
aspects of freedom are vulgar, focusing attention not on the biggest trau–
mas or most pressing spiritual issues, but on the smallest personal ones.
Anything goes; the private matters. Allegiances to caste or class are bro–
ken; political revolutions seem hysterical; the stakes are lowered. The
individual in democratic culture is free to address other issues, includ–
ing the seven-year itch or more recently, the miscellaneous traumas of
Seinfeld
in which the fate of muffin tops, masturbation, or handicapped
parking inspire sitcom trauma.
This is why, of course, democratic culture is so easily mocked. But it
is worth giving these lower concerns their due. For they are also signs of
unprecedented opportunity and luxury; they do not exhaust democratic
desire in the least. In fact, McLuhan argued that the "luxuriant and
prurient chaos of human passions" represented in this list are unavoid–
able. And any society that attempts to ignore that chaos, to think that
it could be rigidly controlled and channeled, is doomed. McLuhan
argued, correctly I think, that this was one of the achievements of the
United States: the founding fathers recognized the range of human pas-
