Dreams of Millennium: Report from a Culture on the Brink

Fear of killer viruses, UFO sightings, environmental crisis, New Age gurus, apocalyptic violence (Oklahoma City, Waco, the Unabomber)--all these phenomena are symptomatic of deep-seated societal dread and desire on the brink of the millennium, asserts Canadian cultural critic Kingwell. In this reflective, at times sardonic probe, the author, a University of Toronto philosophy professor, argues disturbingly that the U.S. is rapidly heading toward a two-class society--a selfish, isolated ""cognitive elite"" comprising managers of information and money, and wage slaves. Choosing examples eclectically from Robocop movies to rock videos, TV's The X-Files, Thomas Pynchon's novels and Robert Mapplethorpe's ""gorgeous"" photographs of human bodies, Kingwell perceives millennial anxieties at work in the current craze for tattooing, body piercing and cross-dressing; in Dinesh D'Souza's The End of Racism; and in our eroticized culture, which substitutes sexual suggestion and titillation for genuine connectedness and love. His skeptical report offers no reassuring predictions and is spiked with unsettling insights on nearly every page. (Mar.)