American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century

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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

Book Description

Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them.

Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades.

Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion.

An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews:

If you enjoyed this book, try Also "From Lowbrow to Nobrow".......2007-05-18

If you enjoyed this book, try also a recent hit, "From Lowbrow to Nobrow," which provides a state of the art and revolutionary analysis of popular fiction (sort of a la Herbert Gans), and does it in an engaging, colourful and witty way. Peter Swirski, the author, is a literature specialist but his also ranges into sociology, leisure studies, aesthetics, economics, and many other aspects of the socio-cultural function of popular fiction, as well as a new socio-aesthetic category which he dubs "nobrow."

An excellent read!.......2000-09-03

I picked this book up on a whim, and found it an interesting mix; a somewhat anti-academic treatise written by a flourishing academic, filled with tremendous flashes of genuine insight into the perennial American ethos as it sifts out in our culture. Written in an engaging style, Kammen is clearly devoted to his own intellectual gifts but not overcome by them. His dissection of the impact of television on modern culture is particularly adept, if only the creators of TV programming possessed this much understanding of the medium in which they work! The pace of the book is invitingly brisk, and while it is thick going in a few places, it's mostly quite readable and makes its arguments in a manner that is concise, cogent, and to-the-point. Despite the somewhat dry title (although the Reginald Marsh painting on the cover really cinched my purchase of the book!), this is a penetrating and important look at the direction of American culture. Kammen's take on multi-culturalism in America seems somewhat bleached, and his occasional ruminations on cultural life played out vis-a-vis the increasingly virulent class war that rumbles just under the surface of American life seem conservative and not always informed, perhaps closeted a bit by his academic background. One other thing- the illustrations in the book are beautifully chosen, including Rockwell, Benton, and a positively magical drawing of Warhol by Jamie Wyeth. I'd never seen it before and it alone is worth the price of the book!

Well-Researched Look At American Leisure Preferences.......2000-08-16

Historian/author Michael Kammen's "American Culture, American Taste" exhaustively, deliberately examines 120 years of American leisure preferences: their classification, exploration, homogonization, and finally, exploitation. He recalls, charts, and deconstructs lines of "high," "low," and "middlebrow" taste (defined over time by everything from furniture choice to favorite "Simpsons" character). He also strengthens the divide between "popular" culture (often regional and participatory) over "mass" culture (homogoneous and sedentary), criticizing their interchangability in American society.

Kammen doesn't adhere to timeline (although he includes one to start the book) prefering to make points era to era, country to city, weaving critical opinions often 50 years apart. He cites the years 1880-1930 as when popular culture gained its footing (with increased leisure time) and inspired some of its finest (often bristling) national conversation from journalists such as Walter Lippmann. He finds unique angles in cultural hegemony (sports equipment and rule books, Walt Disney's and Charlie Chaplin's films, radio's "Amos n'Andy", and syndicated newspaper features all preceding television's ultimate conquest). Then again, Kammen also includes Timothy O'Leary's dimbulb quote that the Nintendo phenomenon is "about equal to that of the Gutenberg printing press." Uh huh.

Kammen reveals, then bemoans, the gradual shift from active to passive, social to private amusement, from reliance on cultural leadership ("tastemakers") to public opinion easily manipulated by advertising and slavishly served by mass media. Kammen also praises disparate artists like Andy Warhol and Ken Burns for their fresh, interpretive approaches to popular art, history, and their ultimate meld, acknowledging criticism of Burns in a chapter among the book's best.

Kammen writes like a professor: dryly, relying on self-reference and prepositional pile-up (ending Chapter 8, for example, with a huge excerpt from social critic Morag Shiach followed by his own terse, "I concur." Yet the sheer weight of his research, opinion collected and examples rendered make "American Culture" a fine companion piece to studying American fad, fashion, and leisure preference, a part of daily American life few scholars have seriously studied. Recommended.

Another Kammen Hit!.......2000-05-18

Kammen once again delivers the goods in this well-researched and timely discussion of how American popular culture has changed over the past century into mass culture. Popular and mass culture are terms often mis-used, so he starts with a discussion of their differences and how their meaning has changed. Kammen's range is broad and his commentary sharp. Enjoy! (I've read the library's copy, now I'm buying something I can mark on.)

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What Every Smiler Already Knows and Every Frowner Should
most comprehensive selfassessment book in cosmetic dentisty
This is the ultimate consumer guide to cosmetic dentistry

Change Your Smile
RONALD E. GOLDSTEIN
Manufacturer: QUINTESSENCE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0867152915

Customer Reviews:

What Every Smiler Already Knows and Every Frowner Should.......2006-05-04

This book should be looked at by every person who is thinking about having cosmetic or esthetic dentistry done.

If you are considering crowns, veneers, dental implants discuss your options with your dentist. Asking lots of questions is imperative. But what questions do you ask? How do you know what to expect. Paging through this informative text with amazing illustrations is one of the best ways to start.

Dr. Goldstein begins his book by explaining that "like it or not, we live in a beauty conscious society. Not all of the beautiful people were born that way."

The dentist can help you achieve that beautiful first impression; that is, extenuate the positive force of your smile. Careful consideration is given to removing stains on teeth, repairing fractured and crooked teeth, filling in gaps in your smile and helping with bite problems.

"Change Your Smile" should be common reading in every cosmetic dental practice, which means all dental offices. Informing yourself on what is possible makes the end result that much more positive.

most comprehensive selfassessment book in cosmetic dentisty.......1997-04-21

This book is an excellent description of the extensive renge of issues dealing with changing the appearance of a patient's smile. The book is clear about its objectives and is very easy for anyone to read and follow.After reading this book, patients can easily decide whether they are candidates for cosmetic dentistry and get a reasonably good idea of the procedures involved. The author has discussed several treatment options for every situation, and he has included self-evaluations for patients to use in making informed decisions. An introductory chapter of relating the smile to the entire face presents a unique perspective. Dr. Goldstein discusses contemporary interdisciplinary approaches in creating different aesthetic effects. The explanations are accompanied by excellent illustrations that demonstrate the changes possible by procedures in modern dentistry and medicine. Often the patient and the doctors are not on the same page as far as the patient's chief complaint is concerned. This may lead to a situation in which the treatment provided may be superior; however, the treatment did not address the patient's chief complaint, leading to the patient's being dissatisfied. This book may provide the critical link to complete the communication circuit between the doctor and the patient. After reading it, patients can have a better understanding of their problems, the steps required to address these problems, and the advantages and disadvantages of each procedure.Further, details of expenses provide the consumer with an idea of the financial commitment involved. In summary, this 324-page hardcover book with 575 high quality illustrations is the most comprehensive and clear presentation of an important self-assessment tool used in cosmetic dentistry. A must-read for patients, students, and clinicians involved with cosmetic dentistry.......reviewed for the Journal of the American Dental Association by Dr. Pramod K. Sinha, Assistant Professor, Univ. of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, April l99

This is the ultimate consumer guide to cosmetic dentistry.......1996-12-06

This book lets you analyze your smile and come up with the most practical solutions for whatever smile problem you have. There doesn't seem to be anything left out of the cosmetic problems and solutions to a better smile.....and a more attractive face as well. This is because there are chapters that involve the role of facial plastic surgery, orthognathic(done by the oral surgeon) surgery, and cosmetology. It contains a simple smile analysis in the first chapter and logically helps you understand what your problem or problems are. It is easy to comprehend what your choices are because both the patient photographs and illustrations are so easy to understand. In each treatment summary the author describes not only what the result can look like but more importantly, the maintenance required with each restoration as well as a realistic range of fees and life expectancy. Too often people fail to get what they want mostly because they really don't know what they want,and they don't know how to get it. The best way is to take this book with you to your dentist!!!

Aesthetics of Change (Guilford Family Therapy Series)

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A great introduction to cybernetic thought!
A breakthrough psychotherapy book

Aesthetics of Change (Guilford Family Therapy Series)
Bradford P. Keeney
Manufacturer: The Guilford Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

A great introduction to cybernetic thought!.......2006-11-03

Want to learn about cybernetics and systems thinking? Start right here with Keeney's Aesthetics of Change. With a couple of read throughs and some thought, you will be well on your way to comprehending an interesting subject. AFter reading this book try some of Bateson's work!

A breakthrough psychotherapy book.......1998-10-22

Keeney's unique understanding of cybernetics and human systems is presented in this scholarly work. Here, Keeney attempts to bring the wisdom of Gregory Bateson to working with families and other interactional systems, and it remains a classic in the field of family therapy. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to work outside the normal skull-bound explanations of human experience -- although it may be a mental stretch, it is well worth the resulting wisdom that results from working with both the pragmatic and the aesthetic ("the patterns that connect"). Frank Thomas, PhD

Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition (Media in Transition)

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Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition (Media in Transition)

Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0262701073

Book Description

The essays in Rethinking Media Change center on a variety of media forms at moments of disruption and cultural transformation. The editors' introduction sketches an aesthetics of media transition -- patterns of development and social dispersion that operate across eras, media forms, and cultures. The book includes case studies of such earlier media as the book, the phonograph, early cinema, and television. It also examines contemporary digital forms, exploring their promise and strangeness. A final section probes aspects of visual culture in such environments as the evolving museum, movie spectaculars, and "the virtual window."

The contributors reject apocalyptic scenarios of media revolution, demonstrating instead that media transition is always a mix of tradition and innovation, an accretive process in which emerging and established systems interact, shift, and collude with one another.

Hegel's Art History and the Critique of Modernity (Res Monographs in Anthropology and Aesthetics)

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Beat's Book Helps with Hegel

Hegel's Art History and the Critique of Modernity (Res Monographs in Anthropology and Aesthetics)
Beat Wyss
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521592119

Book Description

In this study, Beat Wyss provides a critical analysis of Hegel's theories of art history. Analogous to his philosophy of history, Hegel viewed the history of art in dialectical terms: With its origins in the Ancient Near East, Western art culminated in Classical Greece, but began its decline already in the Hellenistic period. Yet, as Wyss posits, art refuses its programmed demise. He highlights the political dimension of this contradiction, showing the implications of theories that subordinate art to the will of absolute rule.

Customer Reviews:

Beat's Book Helps with Hegel.......2000-08-02

This is an introduction to an increasingly "hot topic" among academics and art types: how much modern art history owes to the philosopher Georg Hegel and his ideas. This is a second edition of the author's work and she admits that she's changed a few of her ideas. The monograph is a good beginner book on Hegel's art history, but assumes a basic knowledge of his works. Art history students will find it an easy read (easier than most other Hegel commentaries, that is), but still requiring concentration. Her explanation of Hegel's "three periods of art" could have been a little less coy, but readers wanting a more straightforward account of the lectures (from which this is culled) can look up Karsten Harries or the Hegel entry in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Wish it didn't cost $60, but it's the kind of book art historians, philosophy students and even collectors will refer to from time to time.

Icons and Aliens: Law, Aesthetics, and Environmental Change

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Icons and Aliens: Law, Aesthetics, and Environmental Change
John J. Costonis
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0252015533

Birth of a National Icon: The Literary Avant-Garde and the Origins of the Intellectual in France

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Birth of a National Icon: The Literary Avant-Garde and the Origins of the Intellectual in France
Venita Datta
Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Birth of a National Icon examines the emergence of the intellectual in fin-de-siecle France, setting this important phenomenon against the backdrop of an emerging mass democracy and concentrating on the key role played by the avant-garde.

"Birth of a National Icon is an outstanding piece of scholarship. It makes a significant contribution to the history of the French intellectual for a number of reasons. First, Datta convincingly argues--against the long-standing conventional wisdom--that the birth of the French intellectual cannot be seen simply as a product of the Dreyfus Affair. In a richly textured survey of the 'little magazines' of the 1890s, she establishes that the set of concerns later attributed to the 'intellectual' were already very much in evidence in the years preceding the Dreyfus Affair. Second, she documents the role of the literary avant-garde in the construction of the French intellectual. Her impressive mastery of the avant-garde literary groups in the 1890s allows her to paint a portrait of their hopes and, even more importantly perhaps, their anxieties, both of which combined to give shape to the emerging intellectual. Third, in perhaps her most impressive contribution, she demonstrates that emphasis on the political division between Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard obscures the degree to which each side shared a common outlook, especially in regard to the role of the intellectual." -- Paul Mazgaj, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

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The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions: Change and Continuity in the Victorian Art World (Art Patrons and Public)
Christopher Newall
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521612128

Book Description

The Grosvenor Gallery was the most progressive exhibition space of the Victorian age. The paintings and works of art shown there - by Burne-Jones, Watts, Whistler and a host of other figures associated with the aesthetic movement - challenged artistic convention and were the cause of virulent debate about the means and purpose of modern art, while the very existence of a gallery which attracted so much fashionable attention and which lent such great prestige to the artists who exhibited there served to overthrow the stultifying influence of the contemporary Royal Academy. Christopher Newallâ€™s book tells the story of the rise and fall of the Grosvenor Gallery, and his invaluable index of exhibitors, compiled from the now very rare original catalogues, allows the reader to discover which artists showed which works and what they were during the fourteen years of the Grosvenorâ€™s summer exhibitions.

Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon (Berkeley Tanner Lectures)

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Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon (Berkeley Tanner Lectures)
Frank Kermode
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195309359

Book Description

The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. Pleasure and Change contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir Frank Kermode. In essays that were originally delivered as Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in November of 2001, Kermode reinterprets the question of canon formation in light of two related and central notions: pleasure and change. He asks how aesthetic pleasure informs what we find valuable, and how this perception changes over time. Kermode also explores the role of chance, observing the connections between canon formation and unintentional and sometimes even random circumstance. Geoffrey Hartmann (Yale University), John Guillory (New York University), and Carey Perloff (director of the American Conservatory Theatre) offer incisive comments on these essays, to which Kermode responds in a lively rejoinder. The volume begins with a helpful introduction by Robert Alter. The result is a stimulating and accessible discussion of a highly significant cultural debate.

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Exploring the Modern
John Jervis
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0631196226

Book Description

This book provides the first comprehensive account of the social and cultural aspects of modernity over the past two centuries. The author draws on and synthesizes recent research on the socio-cultural dimension of modernity and draws connections between disparate elements of cultural and social life in the modern era. Topics covered include the civilizing process, gender identity, sexuality, consumerism, city life, the role of popular culture and the media in structuring experience and aspirations, and the significance of modernism in culture and the arts. Exploring the Modern is an invaluable guide to the roots of contemporary experience. It provides an essential context for evaluating current discussions of the late 20th century cultural crisis and debates over a possible shift into the postmodern. The book is theoretically sophisticated yet written in a lively and accessible style making it an ideal text for students across the humanities and social sciences.

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