It has been said that voting is like eating in a bad restaurant… Regardless of what you order, you always get food poisoning.
Whoever your candidate was, John Wayne has given us the clarity and insight to move forward with his words; "Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday."
So with the 2016 election now behind us, let’s back look at our cultural path that forged two great post war era forces that emerged from vapor to define the Yin and the Yang of the American landscape to come, that continue to shape society and our culture into the first century of our 3rd millennium – the Conformity and Counter Culture movements.
David Ogilvy and the 1950’s Madison Avenue advertising mavericks of Mad Men lore painted a canvas on early television that drove consumerism to its zenith. Suddenly the power of advertising drove families to want the same things, drive the same cars, buy the same electric refrigerators and wear the same latest fashions. While the creators of this advertising challenged the world with new and diverse ideas, their work’s effect on the public assured a culture of mass conformity that continues to drives us a generation later to have the same designer handbags, and own the latest iPhone.
But just a few blocks away from Ogilvy in Greenwich Village, a bohemian counter culture was emerging of those who shunned consumerism, searching instead for the meaning in life down a more authentic and artistic path. What emerged would later be called the Beat Generation, where we had much to learn about ourselves from bums, prostitutes and prophets “On the Road” with Jack Kerouac.
While the righteous conformers move to the suburbs to compete with their neighbors for the latest brands, the bohemian rebels were expressing their individualism with their impulsive and flawed sprits. Brando and Dean defined what it meant to be a badass, Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser” laid the soundtrack for this new generation that Pollack would soon visualize on canvas.
Hence the origins of the Yin and the Yang of the American landscape that drives our culture today – the consuming conformers and the counter culture rebels.
Here’s wishing all of you the best for the coming New Year; all the consumer goods your family needs and the artistic rebel attitude to enjoy it well.