The Decline of Western Civilization is an American documentary film filmed through 1979 and 1980. The movie is about the Los Angeles punk rock scene and was directed by Penelope Spheeris. In 1981, the LAPD Chief of Police Daryl Gates wrote a letter demanding the film not be shown again in L.A. Over the years the film has gained cult status.
The film's title is possibly a reference to famous music critic Lester Bangs' 1970 two-part review of The Stooges' Fun House for Creem magazine, where Bangs quotes a friend who had said the popularity of The Stooges signaled "the decline of Western civilization". Another possibility is that the title refers to Darby Crash's reading of Oswald Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West). In We Got the Neutron Bomb, an oral history of the L.A. punk rock scene collected by Mark Spitz, Claude Bessy claims that he came up with the title.
The film is the opening act of a trilogy by Spheeris depicting life in Los Angeles at various points. The second film The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years covers the Los Angeles heavy metal scene of 1986-1988. The third film The Decline of Western Civilization III chronicles the gutter punk lifestyle of homeless teenagers in the late 1990s.
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization, Western lifestyle, Western society or European civilization is a term used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies that have some origin or association with Europe, having both indigenous and foreign origin. The term has come to be applied by people of European ethnicity to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration, colonisation, and influence, such as the continents of the Americas and Australasia, whose current demographic majority is of European ethnicity, and is not restricted to the continent of Europe.
Western culture is characterized by a host of artistic, philosophic, literary, and legal themes and traditions; the heritage of Greek, Roman, Jewish,Celtic, Germanic and other ethnic and linguistic groups, as well as Christianity including the Roman Catholic Church, and the Orthodox Church, which played an important part in the shaping of Western civilization since at least the 4th century. Also contributing to Western thought, in ancient times and then in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance onwards, a tradition of rationalism in various spheres of life, developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism, humanism, the Scientific revolution and the Enlightenment. Values of Western culture have, throughout history, been derived from political thought, widespread employment of rational argument favouring freethought, assimilation of human rights, the need for equality, and democracy.
The Decline is an EP by NOFX. The CD version consisted of only the 18-minute title track, but the vinyl included a different version of "Clams Have Feelings Too" (from Pump Up the Valuum) on the B-side. The Decline is largely a satire of American politics and law, with an overwhelming concern for blind behaviors of the masses, such as complacency, indifference, gun violence, drug-use, and conformity, as well as destruction of constitutional rights, and condemnation of the religious right. Although the lyrics are somewhat disjointed, they all refer back to the unifying theme of the "decline" of America. The trombone is played by Lars Nylander of Skankin' Pickle.
According to the band,
The first 155 copies were pressed on clear vinyl, a version which is no longer available.
The first 1 min and 20 seconds of a live version of The Decline is played as an encore after "Stickin' In My Eye" on They've Actually Gotten Worse Live! (2007) before being faded out. A DVD featuring a live performance of The Decline was released on September 12, 2012.
A civilization (US) or civilisation (UK) is any complex society characterized by urban development, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment by a cultural elite. Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming as an agricultural practice, and expansionism.
Historically, a civilization was a so-called "advanced" culture in contrast to more supposedly primitive cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists or hunter-gatherers. As an uncountable noun, civilization also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure.
"Civilization" is the ninth episode (production #109) of the television series Star Trek: Enterprise, and was written by Phyllis Strong and Michael Sussman. Mike Vejar served as director for the episode. TrekToday gave the episode a positive review.
Enterprise investigates a pre-industrial civilization of about 500 million people. They discover that there is another warp-capable species among the unsuspecting inhabitants. After Captain Archer, Commander Tucker, Ensign Sato, and Sub-Commander T'Pol arrive, they discover a local scientist who believes a local merchant is causing the sickness in the town.
Enterprise locates a planet inhabited by pre-industrial humanoids. Scanners also detect technology which does not correspond with the planet's technological level. Against Sub-Commander T'Pol's recommendation, Captain Archer decides to visit. Going in disguise, T'Pol suggests a distant rural landing site. Once in the Akaali city, Ensign Sato notices inhabitants that appear sick. Scans lead them to an old curio shop, but they encounter a force-field blocking the way. They are then confronted by a local apothecary, Riann. T'Pol stuns her, and when she awakens, Archer persuades her that he is an investigator from another city.
Civilisation—in full, Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark—is a television documentary series outlining the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy since the Dark Ages. The series was produced by the BBC and aired in 1969 on BBC2. Both the television scripts and the accompanying book version were written by art historian Lord Clark (1903–1983), who also presented the series. The series is considered to be a landmark in British Television's broadcasting of the visual arts.
The BBC remastered the original films onto HD in 2011. The series was re-broadcast on the BBC HD channel from 9 February to 4 May 2011, and shortly after was released on Blu-Ray. In 2014 the BBC announced that it intended to make a new version of the series, sparking some debate as the best approach to take.
Civilisation was one of the first United Kingdom television documentary series made in colour, commissioned during David Attenborough's controllership of BBC2. For technical reasons, colour television was to come to BBC2 before BBC1 and, as a channel aimed at a more highbrow audience, it was appropriate to commission a major series about the arts. It was Attenborough who prompted the title, but because of time constraints the series only covered Western Civilisation. Clark did not "suppose that anyone could be so obtuse as to think I had forgotten about the great civilisations of the pre-Christian era and the east", though the title continued to worry him.
We call ourselves real civilized
but possession is our master
I think we're just paralyzed
Our greed is our disaster
Look at your lovely furcoat
Just eat your tasteful steak
Let's kill another Tiger
And call ourselves unique
You call it civilization
I call it rapacity
Don't you call us descent
'cause that's not what I see
We dump our nuclear garbage
In the name of our civilization
But there is not a bit of respect
in our great white Western Nation