A piece at National Public Radio bemoans the trivialization of American culture.
Perhaps the tendency to trivialize is born of bandwagonism or laziness. Idiomatically speaking: It’s easier to tear down than to build up. Or maybe we devalue valuable things because, as Herbert Marcuse observed, of society’s tilt toward repressive desublimation. In Marcuse’s mind, our capitalist culture renders a strong, often threatening urge into something weak and nonthreatening. For instance, marketers learn to satisfy our desire to be closer to nature by selling us Patagonia fleece jackets that we wear in our all-terrain Land Rovers driving to the mall.
This desublimation is repressive, Marcuse asserted, because it muffles social criticism and supports addictive consumerism. Consequently, contemporary society is spiritually and intellectually stagnant.