In the '70s and '80s, the mentality of America was that everything was disposable. The notion of quality wasn't important.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I grew up in the '70s and '80s, at a time that I'd argue was the absolute golden age of American popular culture. Because not only did we have all of the fantastic new stuff in print and on screens, but we had a constant supply of everything that came before, as well.
In the seventies, a group of American artists seized the means not of production but of reproduction. They tore apart visual culture at a time of no money, no market, and no one paying attention except other artists. Vietnam and Watergate had happened; everything in America was being questioned.
In the past goodness was always a collective experience. Then goodness became privatised.
American products are marvels of production and functionality, but were unnecessarily and unbearably ugly, noisy smelly and offensive.
In their search for quality, people seem to be looking for permanency in a time of change.
It felt to me like America was always wanting to resolve things too quickly, without thinking through what the costs and consequences would be and how that affects an individual living in that world. Then as I grew up and went about my life, I think I just got more and more interested in that gray area where things are not so easily quantified.
American society was economically ill-run in the 1980s. Our society has been on a consumption binge. If the American people had a town meeting and said, 'What do we care about posterity? Posterity hasn't done anything for us; we're going to whoop it up now,' that is a rational judgment. But nobody ever did that.
The 1970s seemed particularly playful. People were trying to make work that couldn't be sold.
Quality has to be caused, not controlled.
In 1945, the world was in a shambles. American companies had no competition. So nobody really thought much about quality. Why should they? The world bought everything America produced. It was a prescription for disaster.