cultural imperialism

Brad DeLong jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu
Tue Nov 20 20:32:51 PST 2001



>Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>Can't say I didn't ask for this. There is no way to cock your
>>snoot at contemporary US popular culture without coming across like
>>William Bennett, Hilton Kramer or just some tiresome boomer old
>>fart. But again, I think schlock has gotten much schlockier in the
>>last few decades, and I think US-led turbocharged global capitalism
>>is the reason for this degeneration. Particularly irritating are
>>recent apologias -- with at least pretensions to high-dome status
>>-- that rationalize and even celebrate this market-driven
>>debasement of taste, e.g., John Seabrook's _Nobrow: The Culture of
>>Marketing, the Marketing of Culture_.
>
>
>And there's always Tom Lehrer's quip that the reason folk music
>sucks is that it's produced by the people.
>
>One of the things that bothers me about this sort of critique of pop
>culture is that it accepts the industry's notion of what popular
>culture is - the stuff produced and marketed by the culture
>industry. Some of that stuff is good, don't get me wrong - I like
>Madonna, as list veterans know...

Caught some of _Desperately Seeking Susan_ on the TV a couple of nights ago, and I'm almost ready to buy "Immaculate Collection": there's a surprising amount of really good stuff on that album...

Brad DeLong



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