At the literary level, consider Morris Weitz's Hamlet and the Philosophy of Criticism. Weitz looked at the criticism of Hamlet's play over the centuries and discovered something startling: pretty much every point of view, positive or negative, has been covered at some time. In the 18th century, for example, Hamlet was considered "a bad play" by most critics. Later it becomes "a great play," of course. These judgements not only are subjective but vary greatly over time. Moby Dick, the work of a madman according to its contemporary critics, decades later becomes our leading candidate for "the Great American Novel" (which I think is Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy.
Erotic attraction is especially subjective and strange. When I went to Germany in the Army as a young man, I was flabbergasted by all the pretty young ladies who didn't shave their legs or armpits, which I found to be a turnoff. I think the same thing about tattoos today: for me, a turnoff, perhaps because my dad was a career sailor, who had tattoos, and who forever lamented that getting them was the stupidest thing he'd ever done.
And how do you explain erotic fetishes? I remember once sitting in a bar with a prostitute who told me about the most bizarre desires from her clients I'd ever heard, none of which were attractive to me but which the clients paid a lot of money to satisfy. Would she wear a certain costume? Who she pee on a glass top table with the client underneath? Where do such desires/obsessions come from? Well, as my dear departed mother used to say, People are more interesting than anybody.
Variety is the spice of life, goes the cliche, and the world is still filled with it despite the efforts of corporationland to make life itself a franchise that looks like all the other franchises. Quality control, I believe they call it. Despite 60 million getting excited about American Idol, a few of us still find the classics more entertaining. I don't think the world has changed as much as it seems -- it's information about the world that has accelerated, making things look different from the past. As one of my plays ends...
Still, I don't see our times as different, I confess,
Since in your age, as in mine, it's all a mess.
Though you've reached the moon, discovered strange galactic gasses,
Three hundred years later, the world's still full of asses!
(LA GRANGE enters.)
LA GRANGE: So we hope we've moved you and given you a little fun; In truth,—
MOLIERE & LA GRANGE: — there's not a damn thing new beneath the sun.
(MUSIC FANFARE AND CURTAIN CALL: THE PLAY IS OVER.)
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