Decorative Culture in Nietzsche’s History for Life Essay (Article)

For Nietzsche (1983) decorative culture is a culture that is not real and is not based on reality. Rather it makes something where nothing exists or highly distorts the culture in the past. In his discussion, Nietzsche (1983) outlines the way history has come to play a larger than life part in the world for cultures that seem to embrace the past and forget the present. These cultures attempt to make immortal past figures, events, and even cultural time often at the detriment of the present time. These according to Nietzsche (1983) even they are integrated into current life remain decorative since they are not authentic.

True culture on the other hand is lived and authentic. Popular culture seems to celebrate the past and is based on a life that is not it’s own. In popular culture, it is not impossible to find glorified events or figures. For those who look at culture as true or decorative popular culture seems to look back with nostalgia without a total understanding of the circumstances during those times nor relevance in the current times. Thus movies for example about pirate-like “Pirates of the Caribbean”, cowboy movies, gangster movies, and others find their way into popularity, and yet what they have to show is largely on the entertainment level.

According to Nietzsche (1983), the reality of the past sneaks into the present without real value for modern society. Popular culture would therefore largely be regarded as decorative. Movies that deal with issues that pertain to current culture would still be considered decorative if they look at life issues in exaggerated ways since they would still be glorifying the unreal culture. According to Nietzsche (1983) however, these are quite popular with cultures that seem to want to escape their reality or are not keen enough to accept the circumstances they are in.

References

Nietzsche, F., 1983. Untimely Meditations. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21-46.