THE AMERICAN POPULAR LANDSCAPE

In an article entitled “The American Scene,” geographer David Lowenthal attempted to analyze the visible impact of popular culture on the American countryside. Lowenthal identified the main characteristics of popular landscape in the United States, including the “cult of bigness”; the tolerance of present ugliness to achieve a supposedly glorious future; an emphasis on individual features at the expense of aggregates, producing a “casual chaos”; and the preeminence of function over form.

The American fondness for massiveness is reflected in structures such as the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and Salt Lake City’s Mormon Temple. Americans have dotted their cultural landscape with the world’s largest of this or that, perhaps in an effort to match the grand scale of the physical environment, which includes such landmarks as the Grand Canyon, the towering redwoods of California, and the Rocky Mountains.

Americans, argues Lowenthal, tend to regard their cultural landscape as unfinished. As a result, they are “predisposed to accept present structures that are makeshift, flimsy, and transient,” resembling “throwaway stage sets.” Similarly, the hardships of pioneer life perhaps preconditioned Americans to value function more highly than beauty and form. The state capitol grounds in Oklahoma City are adorned with little more than oil derricks, standing above busy pumps drawing oil and the wealth that comes with it from the Sooner soil—an extreme but revealing view of the American landscape (Figure 2.57).

Figure 2.57 Oil derrick on the Oklahoma state capitol grounds. The landscape of American popular culture is characterized by such functionality. The public and private sectors of the economy are increasingly linked in the popular culture. Is criticism of such a landscape elitist and snobbish? (See also Robertson, 1996. Photo courtesy of Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov.)

In summary, American popular culture seems to have produced a built landscape that stresses bigness, utilitarianism, and transience. Sometimes these are opposing trends, as in the case of many of the massive structures previously cited, which are clearly built to last. Sometimes the trends mesh, as in the recent explosion of “big box” retail chains (Figure 2.58). These giant retail buildings are no more than oversized metal sheds that one can easily imagine being razed overnight, only to be replaced by the next big thing.

Figure 2.58 Walmart is one example among many of the “big box” stores now ubiquitous in suburban landscapes. Such buildings incorporate the ideals of bigness, transience, and utilitarianism common in the architecture of popular culture. (Courtesy of Roderick Neumann.)

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