"Sometimes Economic Forces Really Do Shape the Cultural Zone"

"You can almost feel Scott manfully struggling to resist lamenting the fact that no one knows how to dress for dinner anymore, or how to mix a cocktail that isn't some funny color. Even as he complains about middle-aged men wearing flip-flops, or female colleagues wearing plastic barrettes in their hair (the horror!), he tries to fend off charges that he’s a 'scold, snob or curmudgeon' with self-mockery, admitting that his instinctual responses to such phenomena are 'absurd,' 'impotent' and 'out of touch.' His piece is full of astute 'aha' moments–I particularly admire the connection he draws between the man-child heroes of classic American literature, the anxious bro-comedies of Judd Apatow et al., and the critique of male privilege embedded in the persona of Louis C.K. But by the end he finds himself pinned on the horns of a dilemma, clearly displeased with 'the general immaturity of contemporary culture' but not quite willing to reject its ethos of perennial liberation, borderless exploration and 'perpetual flux,' no doubt for fear of looking like a hopeless troglodyte.
"This fundamental confusion and ambivalence reflects a deep-seated blind spot, I would argue, one that’s endemic to the culture-vulture trade. Scott carefully anatomizes the trees but misses the forest, or to speak more precisely ignores the condition of the soil. There really is something beneath his 'death of adulthood' premise, whether or not you like the prejudicial phrase. But to coin a phrase: It's the economy, stupid."


In Salon, Andrew O'Hehir responds to A.O. Scott's New York Times essay “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture.”