I have noted here before the low regard for plastic in post-WW2 highbrow culture - which was transvaluated into a positive by Warhol and other Pop Artists, and in turn espoused by Bowie as an anti-authenticity riff (plastic soul, he also described Ziggy as a plastic rocker). Sort of “synthetic and proud of it, me!”
In this eerie 1962 Monitor short film - which imagines a team of researchers in the far future visiting the ruined wasteland of Britain and trying to reconstruct the lost civilization using archeological fragments and ancient artifacts whose function and meaning can only be speculated about - the 1960s literati loathing for plastic is evident with comments about a curiously repulsive substance out of which many objects are fashioned. Their artificial colours are connected to a general critique of artifice, pretence, fantasy, and superficiality that is seen as part of the malaise that rotted out the Lost Civilization, which had waned through its loss of connection to the virile and vitalizing energies of Nature. Again, very par for the course for post-WW2 discontents against modernity, cutting across from highbrows like JB Priestley with his admass society critique, to the the counterculture of beats and hippies, with their Rousseau-esque nostalgie de la boue, earthen palette of brownish fabrics, macrobiotics etc
One of the slogans of King Mob - the UK cell of the Situationists - was “Smash the Plastic Death”
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