In 2024, a research from the opinion analysis agency YouGov revealed that Individuals of each era may solely agree on one factor: Artwork and tradition had been extra enjoyable after they had been in highschool. It didn’t matter whether or not this occurred to be in 1968, 1988, or 2008. The purpose was that tradition merely felt a bit extra thrilling when a lot of them personally occurred to be of their late teenagers.
The YouGov research just isn’t quoted in cultural critic W. David Marx’s new e book Clean House: A Cultural Historical past of the Twenty-First Century, nevertheless it may clarify its existence. For males of my era, born within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties—at present unavoidable as thought leaders—there appears to be an awesome feeling of cultural decline over the previous twenty years, concurrent with an understanding that tradition merely peaked within the late Nineteen Nineties. So it’s no coincidence that we’re now seeing many books, essays, and sizzling takes, virtually solely written by males of this era, arguing that artwork and tradition simply don’t really feel cool anymore.
In 2024, a research from the opinion analysis agency YouGov revealed that Individuals of each era may solely agree on one factor: Artwork and tradition had been extra enjoyable after they had been in highschool. It didn’t matter whether or not this occurred to be in 1968, 1988, or 2008. The purpose was that tradition merely felt a bit extra thrilling when a lot of them personally occurred to be of their late teenagers.
The YouGov research just isn’t quoted in cultural critic W. David Marx’s new e book Clean House: A Cultural Historical past of the Twenty-First Century, nevertheless it may clarify its existence. For males of my era, born within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties—at present unavoidable as thought leaders—there appears to be an awesome feeling of cultural decline over the previous twenty years, concurrent with an understanding that tradition merely peaked within the late Nineteen Nineties. So it’s no coincidence that we’re now seeing many books, essays, and sizzling takes, virtually solely written by males of this era, arguing that artwork and tradition simply don’t really feel cool anymore.
Clean House: A Cultural Historical past of the Twenty-First Century, W. David Marx, Viking, 384 pp., $32, November 2025
In a telling sentence from Clean House, Marx writes, “Audrey Hepburn, Miles Davis, and Joan Didion stay iconic as a result of nobody has emerged who can compete with their cool.” The thought is that nothing really attention-grabbing or radical has occurred in tradition for the previous few a long time.
In his earlier work, the sometimes good Standing and Tradition, Marx argued that the web’s frictionless distribution of products and knowledge had devalued tradition by stripping away shortage and elevating cash and viewers numbers to the final word standing symbols. It’s an attention-grabbing thesis that he now pushes to the acute by proposing that up to date international artwork and tradition have dissolved right into a “clean house”—an period outlined by monocultural sameness, company cynicism, and creative timidity.
It’s an alluringly easy story that absolutely appeals to anybody who has aimlessly scrolled via the spate of actuality reveals on Netflix or considered one of Spotify’s horrible robo-curated playlists of chill brunch music. Nevertheless it’s more and more absurd to speak a couple of international “monoculture” or “cultural stagnation” in a time of unprecedented cultural abundance and ease of entry to artwork and leisure from all around the world. In actuality, we have now by no means been additional away from a monoculture.
A mannequin walks the runway throughout a style present at McDonald’s throughout Paris Vogue Week on June 20, 2019.Victor Boyko/Getty Photographs
Regardless of residing in Tokyo, Marx writes virtually solely about U.S. popular culture. As an alternative of post-punk, grunge, and rave tradition, the present period allegedly suffers via a cultural second outlined by “virtually solely reboots or sequels,” Marx claims, whereas “essentially the most radical types of cultural invention have develop into scarce.”
Taken on their very own, lots of the chapters in Clean House are glorious as micro-histories of latest cultural phenomena. Marx has a uncommon potential to maneuver seamlessly between descriptions of Japanese streetwear and literary theorist Fredric Jameson. The most effective chapter excoriates trendy luxurious manufacturers, describing how corporations as soon as outlined by craftsmanship, consideration to element, and native id have been hollowed out by personal fairness and international conglomerates. They now chase lowest-common-denominator advertising and marketing methods whereas elevating costs and reducing high quality.
It’s notably laughable when status style model Vetements defends considered one of its company collaborations with McDonald’s by calling the burger chain “the Louis Vuitton of meals”—an ideal snapshot of an aesthetic nihilism that does really feel up to date and miserable. Marx is true to assert that this development represents not a democratization of excessive tradition, however somewhat the devaluation of luxurious, a stripping away of specificity to fulfill international shareholder capitalism.
Clean House may have been an awesome e book if Marx had chosen to focus totally on the company energy of cynical conglomerates similar to LVMH or U.S. streaming giants and their unhealthy function in up to date tradition. Certainly, it’s simple to sympathize along with his demand for complicated and difficult artwork at a time when many tech platforms foist senseless content material on customers.
But Marx overshoots with a broad conclusion that tarnishes all of worldwide artwork and tradition: “In reliving the primary quarter of the century in these pages, we are able to really feel what’s lacking. … For all of the vitality invested in tradition right this moment, little has emerged that feels new at a symbolic degree. Actually, nothing radical sufficient to completely outmode the previous.”
Marx successfully reduces international tradition to a couple examples lifted from a slender slice of Twenty first-century U.S. tradition, from crypto bros to Paris Hilton to the nihilist brigade working Vice journal. He spends a complete chapter dwelling on Girl Gaga’s compromised creative integrity and her banal company collaborations with the likes of Oreo cookies, arguing that she “augured how a lot commerce would go on to completely overcome artwork.” However the chapter may simply as effectively have celebrated the numerous good pop divas who restlessly push the boundaries of latest pop music, from Rosalía to Rihanna to Robyn.
It’s also perplexing to generalize about “tradition” as if billions of individuals share the identical actuality. A British TV critic might lament that “irony is useless” after watching a nasty sitcom, however why would that imply something in Delhi, Lagos, Santiago, or Seoul, which have their very own cultural ecosystems? We will whine about Hollywood franchises and unimaginative sequels and prequels, however China, India, and South Korea all have film industries that rival that of the US.
There has by no means been a extra numerous vary of cultural choices for folks around the globe to select from. We reside in a time when international audiences can admire politically minded Chinese language artists similar to Jia Zhangke and Ai Weiwei; Han Kang wins literary awards for delving into the darkest moments of contemporary South Korean historical past; and survivors of bombings in Gaza and Ukraine write poems that depict essentially the most intimate experiences of terror. Marx claims that danger is now not rewarded in up to date tradition, however have a look at the tiny British publishing home Fitzcarraldo, which has persistently chosen risk-taking authors over secure business ones; these writers have been rewarded with 4 Nobel Prizes in 10 years: Svetlana Alexievich (2015), Olga Tokarczuk (2018), Annie Ernaux (2022), and Jon Fosse (2023).
Princess Anne (left) chats with Motown group the Supremes after a efficiency in London in 1968. Keystone through Getty Photographs
Marx falls right into a basic lure of nostalgic revisionism when he writes that our period’s defining artists have misplaced the integrity and authenticity of older occasions. This ahistorical trope ignores the truth that so many masterpieces of the previous weren’t merchandise of solitary geniuses, bravely resisting business pressures in some distant cabin, however the precise reverse. Miguel de Cervantes needed solely to pay his payments and was determined to jot down a crowd-pleasing bestseller with Don Quixote; Motown tried to mass produce pop hits with the identical effectivity and predictability that Ford produced automobiles; Johann Sebastian Bach composed his Leipzig cantatas for his day job. A lot timeless artwork was simply folks displaying up for work to pay the payments.
Marx turns to a well-recognized cohort of pessimists in an try to point out that previous generations predicted the malaise of our present period: Jean Baudrillard, David Foster Wallace, Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson (you may see a demographic sample right here), all quoted for his or her supposedly exceptional foresight. However they had been writing their screeds in different a long time, exactly in these days that males of my era are likely to see because the golden age of human creativity, be it the Nineteen Nineties or the Nineteen Seventies—at any time when New York was supposedly cooler than it’s right this moment, some bygone time of respectable cocktails and Patti Smith and Basquiat hanging out at loft events.
Marx goes all the way in which again to 1962, when Daniel Boorstin wrote The Picture, a basic work of cultural criticism and media research, to make the convoluted argument that Boorstin one way or the other predicted the self-love of latest superstar tradition. Marx writes, “For Boorstin, the 20th century marked the autumn of a golden age of heroes to the hole triumph of the superstar—‘an individual who is understood for his well-knownness.’ Regardless of his critique, superstar tradition solely accelerated all through the century, fueled by the expansion of mass media.”
Positive, Boorstin could also be eerily prescient, however extra possible his writing simply reveals that this sentiment is timeless: Properly-read critics are ceaselessly writing nostalgic complaints concerning the distinctive dumbness of the tradition of their very own time.
In 1966, Brian Wilson of the Seaside Boys sang, “I assume I simply wasn’t made for these occasions.” In hindsight, 1966 appears to be precisely the time that Wilson was made for: It was objectively one of many best years within the historical past of modern pop music, with the Beatles, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Stevie Marvel, and James Brown all dropping basic albums, whereas John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich radically invented new types of composition. And but, right here was Wilson, the pop genius, unhappy that issues didn’t really feel as cool as earlier than. The tune itself, in fact, is a timeless masterpiece, an ode to this imprecise nostalgia and alienation and maybe an implied sense of cultural superiority.
So it’s value remembering that even through the peak of the Nineteen Sixties wave of radically new cultural expression, folks nonetheless whined that music wasn’t as enjoyable because it was. Pete Townshend, the chief of British rock band the Who, dismissed the Seaside Boys’ whole masterpiece Pet Sounds (together with “I Simply Wasn’t Made for These Instances”) as an album “written for a female viewers.”
Seaside Boys singer Brian Wilson directs from the management room whereas recording the album Pet Sounds in Los Angeles in 1966.Michael Ochs Archives/through Getty Photographs
In 1884, French critic Joris-Karl Huysmans printed what’s arguably the final word masterpiece of cultural pessimism, In opposition to Nature. Within the novel, protagonist Jean des Esseintes retreats from Parisian society to reside in isolation, disgusted by what he sees because the vulgarity, materialism, and mediocrity of contemporary bourgeois tradition. Huysman’s alter ego complains that the up to date world is spiritually and aesthetically bankrupt and that artists and authors solely cater to dumbed-down mass tastes.
In fact, Huysmans was penning this within the Eighties, through the French Belle Époque, presumably the best period of cultural innovation that humankind has ever witnessed. Round him, Paris was teeming with creative and scientific genius: Émile Zola, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, Claude Debussy, Henri Bergson, Émile Durkheim. But Huysmans was satisfied that tradition was dying, that up to date artwork was empty, that true mental society was fading into the mist.
If something, essentially the most broadly mentioned screeds in opposition to cultural decline are usually timed, with virtually surgical precision, for publication precisely when tradition is at its most vibrant.
