Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“America is another word for opportunity.”
Charlie Chaplin: “I felt at home in the States–a foreigner among foreigners.”
The sociologist C. Wright Mills (“The Power Elite”) has said: “We need to characterize American society of the mid-twentieth century in more psychological terms, for now the problems that concern us most border on the psychiatrist.”
American culture has shown twin obsessions that may reflect national neuroses.
Obsession with physical health (and physical appearance) and obsession with death. Though seemingly contradictory, the twin obsessions are interrelated, even complementary.
Self-preoccupation has become a dominant subject of our contemporary culture.
Self-preoccupation results from the loss of a sense of personal connection with the environment.
Once an idea enters into pop culture, it moves very fast.
In the spoof comedies and other films of the late 1960s, everything is gross, ridiculous, and insane.
To make sense of the world would to risk being square.