But we're all shallow (except maybe for the cat lady who lives in your building and hasn't seen a comb or wardrobe change since the Seventies), so we're all hypocrites the minute we turn into the superficiality police and shame and judge people who we think are more frivolous than we are.
Hyped up with fantasy sequences, a hot air balloon and music that sounds more 1920's than 1890's, Oscar Wilde's 1895 comic masterpiece has been reduced from a scathing satire of upper-class superficiality into a goofy, gimmicky costume comedy.
It strikes me that the task of the film version, which is written by Alex Garland, who penned "The Beach" (the book, not the screenplay) and directed by Mark Romanek (the man who brought us this and this) is to avoid slipping into this sort of superficiality.
Hirst's spot paintings are icons of superficiality for a superficial age.
Should we be writing articles that feed into this type of superficiality?
Though at times it lapses into dry musicology or repetitive superficiality, at its best "American Roots Music" offers a textured and expert guide to America's many musical subcultures.
Certainly, Oliver Wendell Holmes could not have conceived of a more ironic fate for his beloved stereoscopy; namely, that the very quest for depth should dwindle into a grim guarantee of superficiality.
On the contrary, it means that we need much, much more support for our young, lest we fall into a culture of amateurism, superficiality and blind following of trends and propaganda.
It may be too harsh to accuse de Wolfe of "extraordinary social obtuseness," but her greater devotion to her possessions than to her companions bespeaks a superficiality that often shaded into obliviousness, particularly in later years.
Could it be that a culture that rewards superficiality and short attention spans evolves into a culture with a narrower definition of the term "normal"?
