| | | | | | All in all then, the counterculture radical demand that art could be directly apprehended by the senses, without any training, any research, or any effort by the mind, fell in step with the anti-intellectualism in American life that Hofstadter had so convincingly described. Yet the counterculture's attack against what it saw as impersonal, abstract, stuffy, intellectual art seriously misfired insofar as this was not bourgeois art at all. In fact, as Daniel Bell argued in his book on the cultural contradictions of capitalism, the original bourgeois social values, those that stemmed from the Protestant ethic and Puritan beliefs, were no longer even operating in society at the time, having been progressively engulfed, since the beginning of the century, within other ideas intimately linked to business. 44 Whereas | | | |  | | | | | the basic American value pattern emphasized the virtue of achievement, defined as doing and making, and a man displayed his character in the quality of his work . . . by the 1950's, the pattern of achievement remained, but it had been redefined to emphasize status and taste. The culture was no longer concerned with how to work and achieve, but with how to spend and enjoy.45 | | | | | | | | | Instead of attacking the encroachments of business values into the realm of culture, the radical movement hit the wrong target, assaulting modernism, an artistic style born out of distaste for the bourgeoisie and rejection of capitalism. Tragically, the counterculture's profound dislike of aesthetic distance made it an ally, on this point at least, of the culture industry. Certainly, the easy consumption and immediate pleasure already programmed in the products of the latter were not out of line with the demand for immediacy sought by the former. Although stuck creatively at the time, the entertainment industry eventually found a way to provide participatory thrill without the foreign cultural baggage of the sixties. To keep the new audience turned on, it was discovered, all you needed was a great display of energy speaking directly to the senses. And that is what we got. | | | | | | | | | At first, Hollywood was quite incapable of matching the kind of immediacy and involvement that could be generated in happenings, rock con- | | | | |
