Title

American culture, American tastes : social change and the 20th century

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. "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 As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion."--BOOK JACKET.

Identifier

821630

679427406

Creator

Kammen, Michael G

Format

1st ed.

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

1999

Program air date: October 24, 1999

Publisher

Knopf

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations
Front endpapers and front flyleaf contain notes on the birth of mass culture, the introduction of paid vacations after World War II and the syndication of newspapers and radio, the transformation from science to entertainment as illustrated by the creation of the National Zoo in 1888, on the contrasting categories of high or popular culture and mass culture, which is described as passive, and the replacement of cultural critics by populist sources of authority such as opinion polls, TV ratings, published statistics on movie attendance, and political preference polls. Other notes refer to the age of the two Walters - Walter Winchell and Walter Lippmann -, to historians and popular culture, e.g. Ken Burns and Oliver Stone and the History Channel and the Disney Channel, list several critics - Robert Hughes, Peter Plagens, Hilton Kramer -, and give examples of mass culture in more recent times, e.g. Andy Warhol, the impact of Sesame Street and advertising. Notes on half title page list four developments that lead to the rise in popular culture between 1885 and 1935: 1) the growth in leisure time; 2) the commercialization of organized entertainment; 3) the innovation in transportation which helped reach an audience; 4) the end of the Victorian age. Back endpapers contain a long list of examples of popular culture, mention the influence of World War II on the transition from proto mass culture to "the real thing", Daniel Boorstin's phrase "consumption communities", Eddie Bernay's phrase "man in the street", the great debate on mass culture in the 1950's, Irving Kristol's opinion that there must be someone to decide questions of moral and cultural value, and Stewart Alsop's regret regarding the decline of the old WASP elite. Also included in the notes are these questions and statements: "What does it mean [that] the longest running Broadway show 'Cats' [is] based on T.S. Eliot's book of poems?" -- "What did Alexis de Tocqueville find about culture in 1831?" -- When was entertainment democratized?" -- "Why is it that critics so often pan what the public likes?" -- "Alexis de Tocqueville: 'a truly democratic culture could be readily afflicted by mediocrity'." -- "Why do you dwell on Robert Brustein - the critic - Robert Hughes, Peter Plagens?" -- "You say the Golden Age never was." -- "Tocqueville - why do you cite him so often?" -- "What does it mean that the average time spent in [the] American History Museum is 90 minutes?" -- "[The] internet: the most international version of mass culture." -- Annotations by Brian Lamb in the margins and underlining of pertinent phrases throughout the book. -- Examples: p. 22: "I regard popular culture - not always but more often than not - as participatory and interactive, whereas mass culture (until the 1980s when computers caused significant changes that have yet to be fully charted), more often than not induced passivity and the privatization of culture." -- p. 160: "My fundamental points are, first, that cultural authority has vastly broadened the scope of its coverage - as is only to be expected in mass culture. Second, that whenever there is a gap between attendance ratings (such as film or television) and what the critics think, the ratings matter more and they prevail. Third, as a consequence, networks, sponsors, and promoters pay much less attention to cultural critics than they once did."

Subject

"Popular culture--United States--History--20th century."

"Social change--United States--History--20th century."

"Aesthetics--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century."

"Consumption (Economics)--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

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