Modernism and a shallow society

We have seen that Modernism began as a criticism against the effects of the Industrial Revolution and bourgeois values. Modernism breaks with tradition, rejecting the certainty of Enlightenment (Age of Reason) thinking, and religious beliefs. Basically, Modernism is a criticism of society.

This idea is present in Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

To my mind, this fragment from the poem represents the part of society which is fond of following trends and discussing superficial and meaningless matters, in the sense that the allusion of Michelangelo symbolizes when people know just the basic information related to an artist (or any topic) but they talk about it anyway.

While I was studying for the test and this concept of criticism of society came up, I could not stop thinking about 2 movies that deal with the same idea.

The first movie is Fight Club. I'm not really good describing plots, so here is the trailer:

The movie's point of view regarding society is presented by one of Tyler's sort of speeches. It says:

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it! An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

Though this movie is from 1999 and the novel (in which is based) from 1996, its message still makes sense within our society nowadays:

We just have to log in on Facebook to see how stupid people can be.

Most Twitter-users, who consider themselves as "intellectuals", spend the whole day discussing about all the crappy programs from TV.

Materialism is out of control; malls are replete with people who keep trying to have more stuff they don't even need.

The "thesis" of the movie regarding society is that it lacks purpose. That reflexion that I took is just one part of the movie; its main theme is a psychological drama, which is quite interesting and becomes a plot twist. If you haven't seen this movie, I believe you should definitely watch it someday. It will not disappoint you, I guarantee it.

The second movie is God bless America, which is a dark comedy that deals with human ignorance and stupidity.

The movie is about Frank Murdock. He is a salesman, tired of the influence that mass media and pop culture have on society. As you can see in the trailer, he tries to end up with his life, but then he decides to kill everyone he considers don't deserve to live.

At the beginning of the movie, it is presented the decay of television while Frank is zapping: Frank changes channels and the TV keeps showing crappy programs and reality shows. The next day, at his work place, Frank notices how his co-workers talk about the last night's program, expressing the same opinion and using the same arguments employed by some TV presenters.

This happens quite often in our society, and the worst part is that people also talk about this through social media, treating these topics like important issues. 

What is your opinion? Are you proud of the society you live in?