More on Frank's One Market Under God

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>[It seems to be Tom Frank Week at the NY Observer right now.  The 
>following excerpt is from Ron Rosenbaum's current NYO column.  Full 
>text is at http://www.observer.com/index_go.html]
>
>The sheer intelligence [in One Market Under God] of Mr. Frank’s 
>close reading of the promotional rhetoric of Internet globalization 
>ideology is dazzling, but my favorite two chapters are the ones that 
>expose the interpenetration of the hot new cult of advertising 
>"intellectuals," the "account planners" and the tin-eared drones of 
>"cultural studies" in academia. The ones who claim to be engaged in 
>radical politics but, as Mr. Frank demonstrates, serve as 
>inadvertent cheerleaders for "market populism." Pretending that 
>watching TV and fetishizing the sex lives of Star Trek characters 
>are political acts of "contestation" and "resistance."
>
>"Studying fashion magazines or communities of fans was the real 
>revolutionary stuff," Mr. Frank observes of the "cult-studs" with 
>salutary contempt. "The first step in what would become an 
>irresistible assault on the powers that be 

 cult-studs 
>enthusiastically declar[ed] their firm intention to go on 
>subverting, to continue ‘fighting the power’ by celebrating the 
>counter hegemonic messages of TV sitcoms."
>
>But "for all its generalized hostility to business and frequent 
>discussions of ‘late capital’ cultural studies failed almost 
>completely to produce close analyses of the daily life of business." 
>Failed to notice as well how "the official narratives of the 
>American business community of the nineties 

 embraced many of the 
>same concerns of the cult-studs 

 their tendency to find ‘elitism’ 
>lurking behind any critique of mass culture and their pious esteem 
>for audience agency."
>
>It’s just a brilliant analysis whose sophistication and wit is 
>worthy of Mencken or Dwight Macdonald, and it confirms my feeling 
>that–with very few exceptions–whether they profess to love it or 
>hate it, academics always get pop culture wrong. They no longer live 
>it, if they ever did. But rather–despite their horror of 
>"commodification"–they commodify it to advance their careers.
>
>[end of excerpt]
>
>Carl

Some cult studs study Anime, B-Movies, & "What Makes Things Cheesy"; 
other cult studs study Tom Peters & Thomas Friedman.  (And there 
isn't any dichotomy here either.  Even that infamous bastion of cult 
studs Social Text published an issue largely dedicated to studies of 
"corporate culture" & political economy of late capitalism in 1995.)

There are, however, cult studs like Mike Davis, Robin Kelley, Michael 
Denning, Paula Rabinowitz, etc. (to say nothing of the late & 
lamented Raymond Williams).

Yoshie