Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1505183 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-14
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .76 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Amazon.com
Intellectuals are often accused of viewing mass entertainment with contempt, fear, or condescension. The rise of cultural-studies programs in prestigious universities, however, reveals that this perception couldn't be further from the truth. In American Culture, American Tastes, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael G. Kammen explores the origins and implications of this new way that academics and critics celebrate, rather than condemn, popular tastes.

In principle, Kammen supports recent scholarly forays into the effects of mass production and consumerism on Americans' leisure time. He is concerned, however, that the audience's relationship to contemporary media is greatly underappreciated. In attempting to distinguish "popular" from "mass" culture, Kammen argues that with films, music, radio, and popular fiction, certain "highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow" levels emerged, targeting specific social classes or communities. These levels were quite permeable, however, and certain works, such as Shakespeare's plays and Charlie Chaplin's slapstick comedies, allowed audiences to transcend rigid categories of taste. In the television era, Kammen believes, leisure has become more passive and homogenized, however, and the era of democratic consumption that many modern intellectuals champion may be near an end.

To combat this trend, Kammen, like Russell Jacoby, longs to resurrect "public intellectuals," such as H.L. Mencken and Dwight Macdonald, who pointedly combined a learned appreciation of popular culture with a genuine concern for preserving the vivacity of public life. In a field dominated by Marxists and feminists, this call for liberal cultural "authority" will raise some hackles in academe, but praise among general audiences. --John M. Anderson

From Library Journal
The prize-winning Kammen (American history, Cornell; Mystic Chords of Memory) is first among equals of academics devoted to American intellectual and cultural history. In his 15th book, he considers the rise of popular culture in the last century and how it has been created, received, and altered by consumers, producers, and opinion-makers. He rejects conservative jeremiads against popular cultureAwhich he distinguishes from mass culture, though not always with great clarityAby such contemporary figures as Hilton Kramer but is equally troubled by neo-Marxist condemnations influenced by the late Herbert Marcuse. Though the writing is surprisingly dry at times, given Kammen's long record of accessible scholarship, he casts a wide net in his consideration of popular culture. In the end, Kammen's liberal reasonableness counts as a new contribution to the school of consensus, an unfashionable approach in American historiography for decades. Recommended for public libraries and required for academic collections.AScott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Pulitzer-winning historian Kammen (Cornell; In the Past Lane, 1997; People of Paradox, 1972; etc.) offers a thoughtful essay on the evolution of leisure in America from the late 19th century to today. In their pursuit of leisure, Kammen estimates, Americans now spend over $1 trillion a year``far more than they spend on health care, on cars and trucks, or on housing.'' Kammen proceeds to trace how Americans have spent their leisure time and money, and how critics and other authorities have perceived American culture since the emergence of popular culture in the late 19th century. Distinguishing popular culture (participatory or interactive activities on smaller scales, such as nightclubs or amusement parks) from mass culture (passive activities on a large or societal scale, such as television), Kammen divides America's modern cultural history into three phases: the heyday of popular culture from 1885 to 1935; the period of the emergence of ``proto-mass'' culture from 1935 to 1965; and the growth of mass culture from the mid-60s through the present. Within these time frames, Kammen explores such themes as the growing democratization of culture as Americans found themselves with unprecedented time and opportunity for leisure, and the decline of ideals of ``high culture''; the growth and transformation of popular culture by advertising and other techniques of mass consumerism; the blurring of taste levels during the heyday of commercialized popular culture between what was formerly known as ``highbrow'' and ``middlebrow'' culture, and the decline of the authority of critics and the rise of such authorities as opinion polls, television ratings, and the corporate sponsor. The consequence of these phenomena, Kammen writes, is ``an increase in cultural populism,'' a decline in cultural elitism, and the growing cultural importance of powerful economic forces. A stimulating inquiry into the conflicting ways in which Americans have understood their dynamic and influential culture, more valuable for the paradigms and issues it raises than for the answers it provides. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.