Some observations from The Daniel J. Boorstin Reader, editied by Rtuh F. Boorstin, the modern Library, New York 1995, excerpted from pp821-838 Originally published in Democracy and Its Discontents 1969.

1969 Mr. Boorstin was director of the Smithsonison's and a senior historian. In 1975 he became the Librarian of Congress until 1987. Personally, I like his style and breadth.

"... when we turn to our popular culture, what do we find? We find that in our nation of Consumption Communities and emphasis on Gross National Product (GNP and growth rates, advertising has become the heart of the folk culture and even its very prototype. And as we have seen, American advertising shows many characteristics of the folk culture of other societies: repetition, a plain style hyperbole and tall talk, folk verse, and folk music. Folk culture, wherever it has flourished, has tended to thrive in a limbo between fact and fantasy, and of course, depending on the spoken word and the oral tradition, it spreads easily and tends to be ubiquitous. These are all familiar characteristics of folk culture and they are ways of describing our folk culture, but how do the expressions of our peculiar folk culture come to us?

"They no longer sprout from the earth, from the village, from the farm, or even from the neighborhood or the city. They come to us primarily from enormous centralized self-consciously creative (an overused word, for the overuse of which advertising agencies are in no small part responsible) organizations. They come from advertising agencies, from networks of newspapers, radio. and television, from outdoor-advertising agencies, from the copywriters for ads in the largest-circulation magazines, and so on. These "creators" of folk culture - or pseudo-folk-culture - aim at the widest intelligibility and charm and appeal.

"But in the United States, we must recall, the advertising folk culture (like all advertising) is also confronted with the problems of self-liquidation and erasure. These are by-products of the expansive energetic character of our economy. And they, too, distinguish American folk culture from folk cultures elsewhere.

"Our folk culture is distinguished from other by being discontinuous, ephemeral, and self-destructive. Where does this leave the common citizen? All of us are qualified to answer.

"....Most people, even in a democracy, and a rich democracy like ours, live in a world of popular culture, our special kind of popular culture.

"The characteristic folk culture of our society is a creature of advertising, and in a sense it is advertising. But advertising, our own popular culture, is harder to make into a source of continuity than the received wisdom and commonsense slogans catchy songs of the vivid vernacular. The popular culture of advertising attenuates and is always dissolving before our very eyes....

"We are perhaps the first people in history to have a centrally organized mass-produced folk culture. Our kid of popular culture is here today and gone tomorrow - or the day after tomorrow. Or whenever the next semiannual model appears. And insofar as folk culture becomes advertising, and advertising becomes centralized, it becomes a way of depriving people of their opportunities for individual and small community express. Our technology and our economy and our democratic ideal have all helped to make that possible.

"....the American advertising style drew on another, and what might seem an antithetic, tradition of hyperbole and tall talk, the language of Davy Crockett and Mike Fink. While advertising could think of itself as 99.44 percent pure, it used the language of "Toronado" and "Cutlass." As I listen to the radio in Washington, I hear a celebration of heroic qualitative that would make the characteristics of Mike Fink and Davy Crockett pale, only to discover at the end of the paean that what I have been hearing is a description of the Ford dealers in the District of Columbia neighborhood. And along with the folk tradition of hyperbole and tall talk comes the rhythm of folk music. We hear other products celebrated in music which we cannot forget and sometimes don't want to remember.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle