Is There a “Common Culture”?

In his Washington Post column David Von Drehle inches towards a conclusions that I reached years ago:

Not so long ago, professors of literature were known to wonder what would happen when the steep decline in church attendance produced a generation of students unfamiliar with the Bible. How would those readers make sense of the Western world’s books and poetry?

The Bible was the lumberyard from which Western writers drew their material. They could discuss Solomonic wisdom or Job-like suffering, write phrases such as “turn the other cheek” or “prodigal son,” or give their books titles such as “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” or “East of Eden” with confidence that these two-by-fours — these lengths of rebar — would bear weight in a reader’s mind.

As it turns out, that rather large question was actually much too small. Yes, the shared biblical framework crumbled, but as part of a broader collapse of all common cultural structure. History will likely conclude that the 20th century was the high-water mark of mass communication.

It made sense to speak of “the audience” for television, for movies, for music. It made sense to measure “audience share.” The television set pulled in maybe half a dozen channels. Everyone watched whatever was showing at whatever time of day the programmers chose to show it. The radio dial was the same in every automobile dashboard.

On Feb. 28, 1983, more than 60 percent of all households with a TV in the United States watched the final episode of the sitcom “M*A*S*H” — all on the same platform, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and all in the same evening. It was a fair bet that everyone you met, young and old, knew what “the Swamp” looked like and what drink was served there. They knew that Capt. B.J. Hunnicutt of Mill Valley, Calif., was named for his parents, Bea and Jay, and that Max Klinger was a fan of the Toledo Mud Hens baseball team.

Today, little remains of that common culture. Only the Super Bowl, played this Sunday in Los Angeles, attracts an audience of comparable proportions. Even the Olympic Games, unfolding on the fake snow of Beijing, cannot compel the American people to sit down and share an experience together.

I don’t watch professional athletics, whether won television or in person and I haven’t watched a second of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Chesterton noted that the United States was a country founded on a creed. It doesn’t have ties of blood or land or ancient history to bind people together. That creed, sort of a secular religion, included the sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Independence, belief in the benignity of the Founding Fathers, and, admittedly, glossed over lots of darkness and shortcomings. So what? Name for me a country whose mythology doesn’t do the same thing. The difference is that our mythology is all that bound us together.

Now, as Mr. Von Drehle observes, the mythology has eroded and there are no forces with which to build a common culture. I don’t believe the outcome will be as benign as those who laud the abandoning of that common culture seem to believe.