RR: Killer Culture

RR: Killer Culture

While reading the article Killer Culture by David Kupelian all I felt was anger and frustration. My entire childhood my parents and other important figures in my life have all raised me to believe that everyone is beautiful and that you should be able to express yourself in any way you want. Kupelian however believes that society should follow the 1950’s ideal of the manly man and women can vote but not think.

Kupelian comes from a generation where White Judeo-Christian males ruled, and by being one misses the power that it would entitle him to. In the 1950’s white men ruled but everyone else was prosecuted and shunned. Women in general in the 19950’s were depressed because they had no say in their life and that the unmarried women in that society were actually happier, because they had what control they could get. “On the growing number of women that were getting regular psychiatric help, the married ones were reported unhappy and unsatisfied, the unmarried ones were suffering from anxiety and depression”(Pg. 32 Lamb). As women decided that they were over being less than, they changed and allowed much more freedom of who you are and what you could be.

Be who you are, do what you feel is right and express yourself in any way you feel is right. This is what every important figure in my life has told me. I believe this with my whole being. When Kupelian compared our society to the biblical cities of sin Sodom and Gomorrah. “Drunken men with multiple piercings and bright red robes, one loose woman under each arm, cavorting in orgastic revelry against a background of annoying, mosquito-like music?”(pg. 55 Kupelian). I wasn’t quite sure whither to laugh or to get angry. The notion that we are “sinners” is that we are not following the exact ideals of a past generation. Kupelian also states that to go back to his ideal society we would have to start a subculture. He is completely right that to go back he would have to start a subculture. My reaction to this was that he wants to take away freedoms and make being who you are a bad thing and this really made me think he was trying to create another neo-Nazi, skinhead culture.

Kupelian may think we are headed down a bad road and that we should head back and stay at the spot where his people were in charge, but I think that we are headed in a better direction by letting people express themselves and can think for ourselves to make informed decisions about what ever we want.

Works Cited

Kupelian, David. "Killer Culture." Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. By Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 1992. N. pag. Print.

Lamb, Venessa Martins. "The 1950’s and 1960’s and the American Woman: The Transition from the “housewife” to the Feminist." Dumas (2011): n. pag. Dumas. Web. 4 May 2013. <http://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/68/08/21/PDF/V_Martins_Lamb_-_Civi_2011.pdf>.