Eclecticism of contemporary culture signals a general slackening of taste

Evidence

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. By becoming kitsch, art panders to the confusion which reigns in the “taste” of the patrons. Artists, gallery owners, critics, and public wallow together in the “anything goes,” and the epoch is one of slackening. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 486

Categorization

• CANDY: The reggae/western/McDonald’s/Paris-perfume list is a vivid, tweetable snapshot of late-70s cultural eclecticism.
• XREF: This is the passage Jameson cites as the eclecticism-pastiche claim he both develops and critiques — central to the reader’s comparative project. — connects to: Contemporary aesthetics is slackening representation and dissolving medium; Postmodern culture is essentially visual with a slack and flabby linguistic element — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 652; Omnivore taste flattens the past into an accessory and prevents new culture from emerging — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 387 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Contemporary aesthetics is slackening representation and dissolving medium #corroborates (0.85)
• Monoculture changed from narrow stylistic conformity to boundaryless genre mixing #expands (0.85)
• Postmodern culture is essentially visual with a slack and flabby linguistic element #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 652
• Postmodern cultures lack a stylistic norm that modernist deviation presupposed #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 76
• Omnivore taste flattens the past into an accessory and prevents new culture from emerging #corroborates (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 387
• Under the culture industry the concept of taste has become obsolete. #corroborates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 68