tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1460774880116819702024-03-12T21:58:05.657-07:00Material Culture Book ReviewsSouthwest Journal of CulturesBridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-3985563590163950762010-09-07T09:31:00.001-07:002010-09-07T09:31:53.196-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3icFiZ0YS77SctQhyphenhyphenmllUFXHKvqVgCEqx-ThY6pCLcP8AsH1eThfWfU80JNW8d_iWwhKHoL0DwUe0DmJOsM2iPw7KqmjDmIkiaFqvG__yaAYQHblECmzqI43LiWvNgyw3Tb-XMdXT68g/s1600/31WsrIMQj5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5495337026074635682" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3icFiZ0YS77SctQhyphenhyphenmllUFXHKvqVgCEqx-ThY6pCLcP8AsH1eThfWfU80JNW8d_iWwhKHoL0DwUe0DmJOsM2iPw7KqmjDmIkiaFqvG__yaAYQHblECmzqI43LiWvNgyw3Tb-XMdXT68g/s400/31WsrIMQj5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 300px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 300px;" /></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750-1950</span></b></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">.</span> Edited by Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Burlington, VT: Ashgate, December 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0754665380, $99.95. 296 pages.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Review by Julia Hudson-Richards, Pennsylvania State University-Altoona College</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This collection of essays is an excellent contribution to the growing literature on material cultures not only as texts, but also as artifacts in their own rights.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Much of the historical literature on women’s roles in the production of textiles in the west has focused on the shift from home-based to factory production, but the scope of this book is far greater.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The editors’ selections prove that the production of needlework and textiles—women’s primary entry point into material culture—was a pivotal intersection where the “social, political, economic, ethnic, and cultural facets of humanity” converged (1).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The “world of the needle,” however, has been a blind spot for a number of scholars, and the essays in this work enhance not only to the history of material cultures, but also the construction of gender and ethnic identities, feminine culture, and the development of consumer economies.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The collection begins with an essay by Heather Pristash, Inez Schaechterle, and Sue Carter Wood that establishes a solid theoretical basis for needlework and textile production as text—a location for oftentimes coded discourses of dissent or protest, or even of gender and community identity.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The discussion culminates in the analysis of the legendary “Willard Dress,” a pattern for a dress with concealed trousers published by the American Women’s Christian Temperance Union in the 19</span></span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> century.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Willard Dress, though we cannot find any surviving examples, represented the ways that the personal – sewing – could take on not only practical but political dimensions, in the ways that women attempted to balance their own political agendas, like suffrage, with appearances in order to maintain a certain propriety in a hostile political environment.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">These political themes are traced more explicitly in Part III, “Politics and Design in Yarn and Thread.”</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The editors define politics quite broadly here, to their credit, noting the politics of the private behind knitting for soldiers during wartime (Susan M. Strawn) as well the untold story of Florence Cory as a medium for recovering the history of women in industrial design (Sarah Johnson).</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A number of essays trace the ways that textile making shifted from a woman’s necessity—as in making her trousseau, for example—to the creation of material objects encompassing a vast array of meanings.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">For example, Marcia McLean’s essay “’I Dearly Loved that Machine’” (69-89) investigated the introduction of the home sewing machine into rural post-World War II Canada, allowing women to not only economize their own home’s resources, but also to keep up with the latest fashions for themselves and their families.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Women took tremendous pride in their creations, noting the ways that they altered the patterns to make them individual, demonstrating their own professionalism in their craft(s).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beverly Gordon and Laurel Horton’s essay about quilting at the turn of the twentieth century also falls into this category.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">They argue that quilting, increasingly democratized through an abundance of cheap fabric in the last decades of the nineteenth century, allowed women to stitch family records, records of participation in societies, and even the popular culture of the period.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">They also served as records of family history, and even of women’s lives—they “embodied” their makers and the cultures in which they lived.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Cynthia Culver Prescott tells a similar story through the spread of the trendy “crazy quilts” all the way to the Pacific Northwest, as the daughters of the first settlers from the East adopted middle-class domesticity and Eastern consumer cultures, transforming them to fit their own needs (112-13).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In short, these quilts serve as a unique text we can use to read women’s cultures in turn of the century America.</span></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps most interesting, however, were the examinations of the intersections of race/ethnicity and textiles as discussed by Marsha MacDowell in “Native Quiltmaking” (129-48) and “</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mundillo</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and Identity” by Ellen Fernandez-Socco (149-66).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">MacDowell notes that Native women’s quilting flew under the radar for scholars, but like in many other contexts, this same quiltmaking, introduced by western missionaries and other do-gooders, served as a record of contact, oppression, and material and cultural expressions for Native women, though nonetheless subjected to similar stereotypes as other Native arts.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Similarly, a revival in art of </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">mundillo</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, “the traditional Puerto Rican art of handmade bobbin lace,” represented a revival in Puerto Rican ethnic identity that has helped spur the island’s tourist industry (149).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Interestingly, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">mundillo</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> also continues to articulate Puerto Rico’s long history of migration and the clashes and relationships between indigenous, African, and European cultures.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Further, the creation of </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">mundillo</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> for American consumption indicates the island’s place in a larger history of labor exploitation in the twentieth century, as the creation of market goods began to move to cheaper, and less easily regulated, locales.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Though this review cannot claim to be exhaustive, the work under consideration is an excellent contribution to the expanding field of material culture studies.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The contributors represent a wide range of disciplines—the editors’ decisions to include several museum curators in the ranks of these authors, for example, provides the work with a unique perspective.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The beautiful illustrations—of quilts, of outfits sewn by interview subjects—also offer an added dimension to each author’s discussion. Though there are certainly stories that still remain—an explicit discussion of the role of women in sweatshop labor in the late twentieth century comes to mind—the essays in this volume would nonetheless serve not only as an excellent additions to upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses in history, folklore, women’s studies, or museum studies.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">From a scholarly perspective, they offer interesting insights into the vast realm of meaning of women’s work, and the shifts in women’s work over time.</span></span></div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-28274778414638280462010-07-29T12:35:00.001-07:002010-07-29T12:35:07.669-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJL8Sh1Dcg9rdRrTrgBqF6V64c4aj_5SBQViqf80oNvdamE9vNBVtwJeZlByrQgDvziVpPuG1drU9GJLMpJrF6wLPy9K7n51OOR2DlecvgPz8q7WpeejP1JQZyOTUy5EObZr36-77qAy0/s1600/51EcQmFglmL._SS500_.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5478974317019522418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJL8Sh1Dcg9rdRrTrgBqF6V64c4aj_5SBQViqf80oNvdamE9vNBVtwJeZlByrQgDvziVpPuG1drU9GJLMpJrF6wLPy9K7n51OOR2DlecvgPz8q7WpeejP1JQZyOTUy5EObZr36-77qAy0/s400/51EcQmFglmL._SS500_.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 400px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Designing the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to Today</span></b></i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">.</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><b>Edited by Penny Sparke, Anne Massey, Trevor Keeble, and Brenda Martin.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Oxford and New York: Berg, June </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";">2009.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Cloth: ISBN </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";">978-1847882882, $150</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";">; paper: ISBN </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";">978-1847882875, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";">$</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">49.95.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">320 pages.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Review by Paul Ranogajec, City University of New York</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Modernity, domesticity, privacy, identity, taste, class, consumption—these are key among the major issues that any discussion of interior space is bound to elicit. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Designing the Modern Interior </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">engages these and many other issues; indeed, among its strengths is the breadth of its coverage thematically and also geographically. Despite its professed aims, it does not radically alter the design history field’s focus on the domestic interior as the site for modernity’s encounter with interiority—in fact, eleven of the seventeen essays deal specifically with house interiors, and only one (on Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonie) deals with an unambiguously public building. Even more, the editors state that one of their chief aims was to treat interior spaces globally, yet over half of the essays deal with one or another of just three Western nations (Britain, Germany, or the United States), and the book’s reach does not extend to Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East. Overall, despite these relative limitations, the volume is a welcome step in the direction of expanding design history’s geographic and theoretical boundaries. The essays, individually and as a whole, can be taken as both models and foundations for further interdisciplinary and more rigorously theoretical work.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Penny Sparke’s introductory essay is a useful summary of the themes outlined above and serves as an introduction to the organization of the book. It could easily serve, as well, as an overview for an undergraduate course on modern interior design history—even a more general cultural history course that touches upon the themes of domesticity, the private realm, and design—because it offers readers a coherent preface to more in-depth study by laying out the terrain of contemporary scholarship and its theoretical concerns. The book as a whole exemplifies this quality of broad reader appeal: it is organized chronologically into four sections (each prefaced by summary introductions) that trace the rise of the interface between interior spaces and the experiences and ideas of modernity, well-suited to a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in modern design and architectural history. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">One of the most promising aspects of the collection is its emphasis on popular and non-modernist design. The editors have included a number of essays that move decisively beyond the modernist-dominated discourse—largely borrowed from conventional architectural history in the mid-twentieth century—as described by the introductory essay for part one by Emma Ferry. As she notes, the study of interiors is now marked by increasing interest in the multifarious contexts of design, moving beyond the appeal to aesthetics or the modernist obsession with technology and authenticity (yet not shying from the ambiguities and problems inherent with such concepts). In reflecting on the essays in the volume, Ferry rightly notes how the volume’s studies benefit from interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives that engage a fascination “with an era of high imperialism, emerging nationhoods, religious revivals and crises of faith, contested gender and class politics and public debates on sexuality” (19). Explorations of the ideological basis of interior design are not lacking among the pages of this volume, and this fact is one of its major contributions. One of the perhaps unintended uses of the book is therefore as an anchor for young scholars in particular—as reference, certainly, but also, in the case of many of the mostly well-written and lucid essays, as methodological and theoretical models. Fiona Fisher’s essay on “public houses” in late Victorian London encapsulates these concerns when she writes of interior spaces as “highly controlled, yet permissive of new forms of social activity,” which can be considered “as sites that express tensions between social autonomy and regulation that are characteristic of modernity and which represent concerns for social status and identity that are a distinguishing feature of consumer culture” (51).</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Parts one and two are perhaps the most provocative in the volume. Comprising eight of the book’s seventeen chapters, the essays in these first two sections traverse the highly complex and contested period from 1870 to 1940. The essays explore the continued vitality of popular, historicist design and its confrontation with the formulation and institutionalization of modernism. With a broad-mindedness and diversity of perspectives, these essays negotiate this critical period in the development of modern architecture and design—a period of intense eclecticism alongside the emerging forms of modernism. Fisher’s essay on the negotiation of class and identity in the public houses of London and Christopher Reed’s essay on the “Amusing Style” as championed by the magazine </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Vogue</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> are both especially rewarding for the ways in which they explore, to use Reed’s words, “the productive diversity of modernisms that flourished in the twenties” (90). The plural in the term “modernisms” underscores the volume’s general sympathy to a wider understanding of modernism itself and to a broader conception of the design possibilities available under the conditions of modernity, thus eschewing the long-held modernist bias against eclecticism or historicism.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The two later sections also contain provocative essays covering the post-World War II period. Especially instructive are chapters thirteen and fourteen—an essay by Anne Massey on British nationalism and the design of ocean liners, and one by David Crowley on the ruined house designs of two mid-century artists (from Russia and Germany) that explore “the condition of the house in fragments—decayed and riddled with spatial and temporal uncertainties” (234). Chapter fifteen by Sarah Chaplin also merits special mention for its discussion of the production of popular and transgressive social practices in the distinctively postmodern Japanese “Love Hotel.” These essays dramatically expand the discourse on interiors and design beyond the traditional boundaries of home and bourgeois commercial structures and give indications of future research avenues.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Although the volume is by no means stingy when it comes to illustrations (there are 77), all of them are in black and white, and some are of lackluster quality (for instance, many of the photos in chapter six). Nonetheless, the essays are generally models of concision and clarity—most of the essays are seven to ten pages inclusive of illustrations. As an introduction to and expansion of the field of modern design and interiors history, the volume is a welcome addition to the literature.</span></div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-87067488628871978242010-04-15T12:47:00.000-07:002010-04-15T12:51:36.982-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTvqFe6Fyu22sfEKKuGbnkIpU5PyyOojvM30V_aqLCXQf8rqgR8RELNsWf2Wxk93rCXOy4086ow8JZRpJTz4px-3nLVKrbJR3wchYlwidd84SyDrIy751_5wuzFAQDRRqBn4nCZ9Zhxook/s1600/51Loz80njeL__SL500_AA240_.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 203px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460453899535764770" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTvqFe6Fyu22sfEKKuGbnkIpU5PyyOojvM30V_aqLCXQf8rqgR8RELNsWf2Wxk93rCXOy4086ow8JZRpJTz4px-3nLVKrbJR3wchYlwidd84SyDrIy751_5wuzFAQDRRqBn4nCZ9Zhxook/s320/51Loz80njeL__SL500_AA240_.jpg" /></a><br /><div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i><b><span style="font-size:x-large;">The Lottery Wars: Long Odds, Fast Money, and the Battle Over an American Institution.</span> </b></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>By Matthew Sweeney.</b> <b><br /></div></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal">New York: Bloomsbury,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> </i>March 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-1596913042, $25. 304 pages.<br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Review by Amanda Harmon Cooley, North Carolina A & T State University<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Lottery Wars: Long Odds, Fast Money, and the Battle Over an American Institution</i>, Matthew Sweeney provides a comprehensive and interesting discussion of the often polarizing issue of lotteries in the United States. Peppered with anecdotes that range from the story of the first American lottery winner to woeful tales of the lost winning ticket, Sweeney primarily takes a chronological approach to the structure of his volume. The threads that tie each of the explored eras together are the reiterations of the proponents and opponents of the ideology and actuation of lotteries, as well as an examination of the transformative effect—both negative and positive—that winning the lottery can have on people. By undergirding his narrative in this way, Sweeney provides continuity to his extensive history of the lottery.<br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">Chapters 1 and 2 feature a historical account of the lottery in America from colonial times until the turn of the twentieth century. A key portion of this discussion focuses on the speculative lottery fever of the early 1800s and the backlash against it, which started in the 1830s and which began the process of the outlawing of the lottery in many states until the mid-1960s. Here, the book highlights a primary foundation of lottery proponents’ view, which argues the importance of lotteries as a way to bring needed money into governmental coffers, as well as a conflicting view of lottery opponents, which focuses on the negative moral, ethical, and socioeconomic components of such systems. Chapters 3 and 4 of the book detail the post-Prohibition resurgence of the lottery—first, as an underground enterprise, and, later, starting with New Hampshire in 1964, as a legal, state-endorsed and -run operation. Sweeney illustrates in these chapters the swift resulting rate of state legalization of the lottery and the meteoric rise in potential jackpots among these states, the fueling influence of media coverage of mega-wins, and how all of these factors have resulted in the creation of a bevy of peripheral businesses (from lobbying firms to corporate lottery operators to lottery cash advance companies).<br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">From this macro-analysis, the author then turns to one state’s struggle with the issue of the lottery—that of North Carolina, which provides a microcosmic view into this complicated issue: “The North Carolina Education Lottery nearly tore the state in two on its way to being passed. As it approached its one-year anniversary, the nation’s newest lottery left scandals and recriminations in its wake, along with several hundred million dollars for education” (112). This chapter provides the most compelling discussion of the book’s overriding issues as it hones in on the divisiveness that a lottery can engender within a state and among that state’s stakeholders. Significantly, this chapter details how after eighteen years of resistance, North Carolina, which was surrounded by all sides by states that had legalized lotteries and which had potential revenues flooding out of the state into those neighboring states’ lottery systems, legalized a lottery with the one tie-breaking vote of the lieutenant governor. The discussion of the extensive lobbying efforts throughout the legislative process, the significant political fallout that resulted from the passage of the lottery bill, and the socioeconomic realities of the operation of the lottery in North Carolina cover so many of Sweeney’s themes.<br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">In the final chapters of the book, which slightly pale in comparison to Chapter 5, the author explores the workings of GTECH, the largest corporate operator of lotteries in the United States; the issues surrounding gambling addiction; some of the actual statistics, rather than the marketing claims, of the revenues generated by state lotteries; and the fact that several states have begun regarding the allowance of private lotteries. In this final area of coverage, Sweeney concludes that if states adopt this type of lottery system, then it will result in “history repeating itself” (Ch. 9).<br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">This book provides a fascinating look at an issue that has generated, and will likely continue to generate, a tremendous amount of conflict. Like any complex issue, the lottery is a substantial one to take on in a single volume. Sweeney does an effective job of providing broad coverage to this thorny subject matter, but his prose is at its best when the author dedicates an entire chapter to the complex intricacies of one state’s debate over the lottery. The themes in this detailed discussion can be significant precedent for future state lottery issues. As such, given how prevalent lotteries currently are in the United States—with all but 8 states having legalized them in some form—and the gravity of the derivative issues that can arise as a result of the adoption and implementation of a lottery, this is an important volume for policymakers, consumers, business professionals, and academics. </div></div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-54540855493388041542010-02-28T15:26:00.000-08:002010-02-28T15:28:55.775-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7_GcQ8geB3wwKzPThAmlz00G1vJMNtsLXT3GPU4y_tzGCUVcxrX0fKI1lkGPATLMuofjqB4kn3PVaiuP3MVu7_kWap5r776TzkpG5Xl9IhgB1QUJ9Fd2fmA7vuFlmhpFOcxYZ7wNqCJNE/s1600-h/41PeGOHosfL__SL500_AA240_.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443440123723720210" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7_GcQ8geB3wwKzPThAmlz00G1vJMNtsLXT3GPU4y_tzGCUVcxrX0fKI1lkGPATLMuofjqB4kn3PVaiuP3MVu7_kWap5r776TzkpG5Xl9IhgB1QUJ9Fd2fmA7vuFlmhpFOcxYZ7wNqCJNE/s400/41PeGOHosfL__SL500_AA240_.jpg" /></a><br /><div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i><b><span style="font-size:x-large;">Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture.</span></b></i> </div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b>By Fabio Parasecoli.</b><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers, October 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-1845207625, $115; paper: ISBN 978-1845207618, $31. 192 pages.<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O /><o:p></o:p><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Review by Rossella Ceccarini, Sophia University, Japan</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal">Food studies is an interdisciplinary field into which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Bite Me</i> by Fabio Parasecoli fits cozily. The book delves into representations of food in popular culture and is divided into six chapters, looking at the relationship between food and: 1) brain, memory, and senses; 2) ingestion, digestion, and refusal; 3) politics of production, distribution, and consumption; 4) body and diet; 5) body and race; and 6) tourism. Issues of consumption form the common thread throughout<span lang="EN"> but, having gone through the introduction, readers can read each chapter independently according to their main interest. In fact, portions of the chapters have already been previously published in academic journals and edited books. Therefore, those curious about neurosciences can read the first chapter; readers interested on the social and cultural construction of what can be or cannot be eaten can focus on chapter two and three; those interested in issues of body shaping can read chapter four; readers interested in race stereotypes represented through food in popular culture can jump to chapter five; and those interested in culinary tourism can go directly to chapter six.</span><o:p></o:p><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">Parasecoli draws for the most part on theories from semiotics and media studies, and introduces theoretical frameworks from other disciplines as well (e.g. sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, etc.). Some theories are described in the introduction and taken up later in each chapter. Other theories are presented little by little as the reading progresses. However, while explaining some theories in depth in the introduction, Parasecoli neither quotes nor explicitly mentions them later in the book, as in the case of Antonio Gramsci’s theory. Certainly, glimpses of Gramsci can be caught in the book and in the final afterword, but because of the importance given by Parasecoli to the concept of cultural hegemony in the introduction, the readers would expect to find Gramsci’s name mentioned again in the volume.<o:p></o:p><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">The outstanding feature of the book is that popular culture examples such as movies, magazines and novels always support the theories. For instance, the author analyzes the movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory</i> (chapter one) and the Atkins diet (chapter two) through the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Pierre Bourdieu’s and Marcel Mauss’s theories fit well with Marvel Comics and science fiction (chapter three). Some chapters are more prone to give detailed examples than others. For instance, chapters one to three give meticulous plots of movies (e.g. the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Matrix, Island, Woman on Top, Chocolat</i>)<i> </i>and novels (e.g. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Interview with the Vampire, The Man in the High Castle</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">1984</i>). Chapter four details the Atkins diet with quotes from Dr. Atkins’s book. However, the final chapter devoted to tourism seems somehow detached from the rest. Though rich in number, the examples lack the detail of the preceding chapters. Parasecoli often mentions special dishes, authentic food, and localities attractive to the gourmandizing tourist, but details remain sketchy. Focusing on an example that tourists crave by detailing one particular cuisine and/or one specific culinary destination would have been appropriate. Moreover, focusing on food representations in travel magazines, travel novels, and documentaries would have made the chapter consistent with the rest. <o:p></o:p><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">The book ends with the author’s afterword on food studies, more examples, and a short research agenda. According to Parasecoli, food studies could benefit from the tools of media studies. The impact of communication on the way we perceive, consume and produce food should not be underestimated. In doing so, not only acclaimed films centered on food (e.g. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Babette’s Feast</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Like Water for Chocolate</i>) but also B-movies and cartoons could be fertile case studies. <o:p></o:p><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">Parasecoli leaves the reader without a strong conclusion to wrap up the numerous cases and guiding theories found in the volume. In addition, a glossary of food and unique dishes would have been useful for readers not familiar with every ethnic and local specialties mentioned. On the other hand, he succeeds in making available complicated theories to a more popular audience. The variety of examples (movies, novels, magazines etc.) and topics (race, gender, tourism, masculinity and femininity, etc.) makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Bite Me</i> interesting for a broad and heterogeneous audience. Finally, the volume is useful in at least two ways: as a tool to approach social science theories through contemporary popular culture (and vice versa); and to grasp the many facades of the interdisciplinary nature of food studies.<o:p></o:p> </div></div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-75533684323336574442009-11-29T16:06:00.000-08:002009-11-29T16:07:20.335-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuBNsBSV9fk4pqf-OxvUyLgcPclWYXinIJD5QuIINrZq02DTSne7KSzi5sfB8A1gfdDFL4kiaMDmn2RG7BZ0dtN8JyHYz-dUjRl8KGya6TFnxeSutrHkNfvLi3ccT7gIUJ53b14FXKvhMr/s1600/1405173726.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuBNsBSV9fk4pqf-OxvUyLgcPclWYXinIJD5QuIINrZq02DTSne7KSzi5sfB8A1gfdDFL4kiaMDmn2RG7BZ0dtN8JyHYz-dUjRl8KGya6TFnxeSutrHkNfvLi3ccT7gIUJ53b14FXKvhMr/s320/1405173726.jpg" yr="true" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><em>9/11 Culture.</em></span><br />
<br />
By Jeffrey Melnick.<br />
<br />
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, April 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-1405173728, $79.95; paper: ISBN 978-1405173711, $19.95. 200 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Waleed Mahdi, University of Minnesota<br />
<br />
As its title suggests, 9/11 Culture: America Under Construction advances a framework that captures the ongoing formation of the U.S. cultural landscape, which has been primarily triggered and shaped by the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001. With an awareness of the interwoven complexity of the social, the political, and the personal in the U.S. cultural fabric, Jeffrey Melnick offers an interdisciplinary reading of various genres in the U.S. post-9/11 popular and literary repertoire in light of the discourses of grief, memorialization, nationalism, race, gender, and religion. This is expressed in the span of two hundred pages, and layered in seven chapters, structured thematically to reinforce the post-9/11 narratives that continue to construct the U.S. cultural products, namely, rumors and the search for 9/11 truth, appeals to the rhetoric of national healing and unity, practices of censorship, and attempts to commodify “9/11.” <br />
<br />
In this work, the author articulates a critical argument that significantly contributes to the current attempts to theorize, if not guide, the post-9/11 cultural production. He emphasizes that stressing the singularity, or what he calls “the exceptionalism,” of 9/11 is conducive to generating a “reflective” rather than a “reactive” mode of thinking that translates into works of arts, both popular and literary, which are mainly contingent on the resonance of the 9/11 attacks. This, he argues, severely limits the construction of “9/11 culture” as it threatens to eventually hinder the continuity of producing cultural works appealing to 9/11 and to perpetuate the parameters of several dominating narratives that render the many “9/11 cultures” into a homogenous one. Reflecting on 9/11, therefore, serves as an important approach to generate works of arts that continue to re-examine 9/11 in view of the socio-political and even racial composition of the United States. <br />
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Alongside the strengths of 9/11 Culture, which include its use of jargon-free language, profundity of argument, and in-depth of analysis, there are two concerns that may require more attention. First, the subtitle “America Under Construction” raises the question of accuracy in using “America” as a proper descriptive term of the United States of America. This is particularly important as scholars in the field of American Studies continue to reflect this concern in their works. Second, Melnick’s analysis, though broad in perspective, seems to blur the lines between popular culture and arts. Considerations of the distinction between the two components of the U.S. culture may help the reader to further comprehend the complexity and limitations of approaches that each presents.<br />
<br />
Those concerns, however, can be considered as part of the significance of 9/11 Culture, which lies in its power to inspire future research, inquiry, and instruction. In this book, Melnick sets a broad scope for analysis, but chooses to reflect only on certain genres across the cultural spectrum, though he does claim that his analysis of music, film, photography, and fiction does not imply their primacy. Future research is needed to dwell on other cultural genres such as television drama, painting, and even photoshopping. The work opens doors not only for scholars, but also for creative artists and others involved in the cultural production arena. Following the central argument necessitates continuity of a re-consideration of 9/11 culture and its interrelationship with the social and political dimensions. And finally, the work is written by a professor experienced in teaching the U.S. since 9/11. The book can serve as an excellent primary text assigned to students taken courses related to the same field. The “Note to Teachers” letter attached at the end of the book, and the bibliography as well as the appendixes listing many 9/11 films and music, are good resources that would help guide both prospective teachers and students.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-29167706653168262572009-11-29T14:01:00.000-08:002009-11-29T14:01:44.417-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVhe1Vm0AruNTk8yCMhTfO-Vy8W3jCCRW0pE_gfAat75aM6EySDPVerzZRRD-9j6cpraZjmtuKwgtvQ67GaHiCiLE1M2ZLiv2hGREQ8rYuZcsU8AACLnUpdpeMX0ROoLZBDborPWOzpqnD/s1600/51RMPzTAdbL__SL500_AA240_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVhe1Vm0AruNTk8yCMhTfO-Vy8W3jCCRW0pE_gfAat75aM6EySDPVerzZRRD-9j6cpraZjmtuKwgtvQ67GaHiCiLE1M2ZLiv2hGREQ8rYuZcsU8AACLnUpdpeMX0ROoLZBDborPWOzpqnD/s320/51RMPzTAdbL__SL500_AA240_.jpg" yr="true" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><em>The Late Age of Print.</em></span><br />
<br />
By Ted Striphas.<br />
<br />
New York: Columbia University Press, May 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0231148146, $27.50. 272 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Vicky Gilpin, Millikin University, Illinois<br />
<br />
An exploration of the lauded power of Oprah’s Book Club, the intricately planned scarcity of the Harry Potter series, and the concept of controlled consumption might appear to be disparate topics for a single book. Even some bibliophiles might pause when confronted with a book concerning the recent history of the book industry and book culture’s relationship with consumer capitalism. However, Ted Striphas’ compact The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control elegantly presents concepts of potential interest to most readers. He uses the evolution of book culture as a lens through which he examines readers as consumers and the power behind book-based capitalism. Neither nostalgic nor pedantic, Striphas documents how books became everyday objects, the industry behind publishing, and the transformation of consumerism. <br />
<br />
The book examines and sometimes challenges commonly-touted beliefs, such as whether or not big-box bookstores truly have an impact on independent book sellers and whether Oprah’s Book Club has revolutionized the way people read. The work also includes a behind-the-scenes perspective of the exact process of ordering a book from Amazon.com as well as the security involved in the transportation of the final volume of the Harry Potter series. The combination of historical elements, scholarly analyses of cultural mores in regard to books, and interesting snippets of information create a tone of accessibility throughout the book. <br />
<br />
The sources used to explore and promote the concepts of the work range from the seminal to the trendy. Striphas delves into a variety of source styles, from juried journal articles to television excerpts to policy contracts, in order to examine the nature and power of book culture. The work takes an almost phenomenological approach, as no source is lauded as being of higher worth or with more importance to the discussion than another, and all resources serve to further the book’s exploration. The meld of sources from popular culture with works of scholarly inquiry sets an inviting and accessible tone that does not devolve into unfocused pabulum.<br />
<br />
Striphas presents concepts that lend themselves to future research in the form of questions within the chapters. The work serves as a succinct introduction to consumerism’s evolution as viewed through the lens of the book industry, but it also provides a persuasive goad for continued research on multiple topics. Potential research includes concepts of global cooperation in industry and in regard to intellectual property, the ebb and flow of the use of e-books, and increased research into the effects of big-box bookstores on independent bookstores. Another area for further exploration includes what literature classes could learn about understanding of readers and potential readers from the canny methods of Oprah’s Book Club. Finally, also relevant to the concepts in The Late Age of Print would be an analysis of what Stephenie Meyers’ choice to expose her partially-finished fifth book in the Twilight series online after a leak indicates about the relationship among created scarcity, authors, and readers. <br />
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Although the potential pedantry of the topic might be off-putting for some readers, the chapter introductions and summaries maintain a tight focus to ease a wide variety of stakeholders into the discussion. Readers adept at maneuvering through cerebral non-fiction, journal articles, and other scholarly works might find the repetition of focus within the chapters an unnecessary reliance on a traditional presentational style and redolent of academic submission formats. However, the repetition constantly hones the topic to provide a tighter emphasis on the topic while maintaining readability for a wide audience. Campus librarians, literature instructors, and recreational readers may find the work as beneficial as those readers involved in multiple facets of the book industry or researchers of popular culture, industrial trends, and the effects of cultural shifts on consumerism. The concise accessibility of the language invites readers to ponder the questions posited within the chapters as well as enjoy what might have become bland historical details in a lesser work; for example, the depiction of the development of the ISBN is fascinating. <br />
<br />
The Late Age of Print allows readers to join Striphas in his examination of book culture, the transformation of modern consumption, and the desire among corporations for increased methods of awareness of book buyers as consumers.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-45011308363522310872009-11-29T13:55:00.000-08:002009-11-29T13:57:22.132-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHqce1sZA7t4cWQm1xOHfEdy3pPm6G6kQJUS8sg-IFeQvq37roi2EzuguPQVvhLz9iq47xTm0rONVCoK8JPn9YT6glSDVr_Pc1pS3PdiSZRWo_0ReGCeNJPBEbozDWOspKdlMFpj4NnoJw/s1600/51Qz4pFP72L__SL500_AA240_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHqce1sZA7t4cWQm1xOHfEdy3pPm6G6kQJUS8sg-IFeQvq37roi2EzuguPQVvhLz9iq47xTm0rONVCoK8JPn9YT6glSDVr_Pc1pS3PdiSZRWo_0ReGCeNJPBEbozDWOspKdlMFpj4NnoJw/s320/51Qz4pFP72L__SL500_AA240_.jpg" yr="true" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Tabloid Valley: Supermarket News and American Culture.</em></span><br />
<br />
By Paula E. Morton.<br />
<br />
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, June 2009. Cloth: ISBN 0813033640, $24.95. 224 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Amarnath Amarasingam, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario<br />
<br />
In Boca Raton, Florida, stands the main office of American Media Incorporated (AMI), the owner of the six major supermarket tabloids in the United States. The mention of supermarket tabloids produces mixed reaction from many individuals: they are thought to be run by sleazy, invasive, aggressive, liars producing stories that ought to float to the seabed of low culture. Paula Morton, however, is not concerned with how these tabloids are viewed. Rather, her book is a fascinating romp through the world of supermarket tabloids, providing a mixture of history, sociology, and gossip. Chapter 1 provides a short, and fairly sloppy, introduction to the world of tabloids. Tabloids do not pretend to compete with the more respected producers of news like The New York Times or The Washington Post. Instead, they aim to tell a story that cannot be found elsewhere, focusing on who did what, rather than why they did it. They appeal to emotions, seek to provide a provocative photograph, and write headlines that invite curiosity. Chapter 2 tells the story of Generoso Pope Jr. who, in 1952, purchased the New York Enquirer and promised that it would not “become a tabloid.” Pope, however, was “an underdog in the crowded urban newspaper market,” and many of his editorial choices had been unsuccessful (24).<br />
<br />
While driving by a car accident one day, Pope realized that the sight of blood tended to transfix onlookers. This insight would lead the tabloid into what became known as its “gore years.” Pope began publishing stories of gory murders and accidents, and by the mid-1950s had enough financial leverage to expand distribution, and rebrand the tabloid as the National Enquirer. The Enquirer, famous for its gore, began to change in the 1960s. As the supermarket began to replace the corner grocer and the newsstand, Pope decided to transform the Enquirer from “a gory tabloid into a uniquely American one suitable for suburban supermarkets and the women who shopped at them” containing “rags-to-riches stories, hero awards, animal rescues” and medical breakthroughs (35). By 1970, the Enquirer was selling around two million copies per week. Even though the magazine was selling well, it was only after moving the entire operation to South Florida that the Enquirer truly prospered.<br />
<br />
Chapter 3 explores Pope’s relocation of the Enquirer to South Florida. As Paulson states, Pope’s phenomenal success in South Florida made it a “mecca for tabloid journalism” (44). With success grew Pope’s jealous guarding of every aspect of his tabloid: “Pope demanded competence, productivity, and allegiance as he aimed for his dream goal of making twenty million circulation sales in a week” (45). Pope had a sharp business sense, did not mind paying good money to good writers and reporters, and kept workplace competition at a high to spur productivity. Pope also did not spare any expense when looking for a story: reporters travelled first class to far-flung parts of the world and “the funds available for confidential information and exclusive contracts were seemingly inexhaustible” (54). A reporter named Bob Temmey, for example, scaled the Himalayas to find evidence of the Abominable Snowman, while other reporters situated behind the Iron Curtain investigated the Soviet Union’s studies of the paranormal.<br />
<br />
Such “checkbook journalism” was considered to be unethical by most mainstream journalists, but it easily “ties up an exclusive interview and builds the critical list of confidential contacts that is hoarded by each reporter and editor” (66). The National Enquirer held a virtual monopoly on tabloids until 1974, when Rupert Murdoch introduced National Star. The main battle between the two tabloids had to do with the death of Elvis Presley in 1977. The National Enquirer and the National Star dispatched dozens of reporters to Memphis, Tennessee with tens of thousands of dollars which were to be used to buy exclusives. The Enquirer eventually won the battle with an exclusive photo: a picture of Presley in his casket. The Enquirer never revealed its source for the photograph, only admitting that it was a distant relative of Elvis. The issue, published on September 6, 1977, sold a record breaking 6.5 million copies.<br />
<br />
From June 1994 until October 1995, the mainstream media and the tabloids in the United States were transfixed with the O.J. Simpson trial. As David Perel, the lead editor on the story for the National Enqurier, says, “Within a few hours it became clear O.J. Simpson himself was a suspect. I immediately put eight reporters on the story and we were at O.J.’s house before the coroner arrived” (115). The Enquirer, at least when it came to the Simpson case, was putting traditional news media to shame. As Morton states, “The Enquirer was by far the leading news-gathering team among both mainstream and tabloid media covering the Simpson case. Frequently, the mainstream media looked to the Enquirer for accurate inside information” (118). Even after September 11, 2001, some tabloid reporters travelled to Afghanistan and interviewed ex-members of al-Qaeda.<br />
<br />
The subtitle of Tabloid Valley is Supermarket News and American Culture. However, the book contains more supermarket news than reflections or insights on American culture. As this review should make clear, much of the content of the book is filled with gossip, some history, and some information about behind-the-scenes bureaucracy. While telling a compelling story from when the tabloids dealt with the death of Elvis to the trial of O.J. Simpson, with a slew of minor stories in between, Morton never gets around to adequately answering the “so what?” question. Why, if indeed they are important, should we care about tabloids? What do they contribute to American culture? Or, more importantly, what do they say about American culture? None of these questions, aside from cursory mentions of certain stories having a “national impact” and a short discussion in chapter 7, are explored in any great depth. However, the book could serve as a very basic introduction to some aspects of American culture in undergraduate courses, but only if it is supplemented with more scholarly material.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-68559778590769276812009-10-30T13:06:00.000-07:002009-10-30T13:06:24.246-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgvBC7tuA6OEJDcpJV7OuzLN4ft4DUB_bsnGBzKM7ru2rIUKXBid-F0m-xgEDRUcqJz72zk5enffSWqD2qg1IF_SvO7u5fW_FNFEAhlYKR3B5DvPsxj3T-Ohw3lEBBTKSt0vq8Qsk5MSlY/s1600-h/Cold_War.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgvBC7tuA6OEJDcpJV7OuzLN4ft4DUB_bsnGBzKM7ru2rIUKXBid-F0m-xgEDRUcqJz72zk5enffSWqD2qg1IF_SvO7u5fW_FNFEAhlYKR3B5DvPsxj3T-Ohw3lEBBTKSt0vq8Qsk5MSlY/s320/Cold_War.jpg" vr="true" /></a><br />
</div><em><span style="font-size: large;">Cold War Confrontations: US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War.</span></em><br />
<br />
<br />
By Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan.<br />
<br />
New York and London: Lars Müller Publishers, November 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-3037781234, $49.95. 423 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Antonio Thompson, Austin Peay State University<br />
<br />
Cold War Confrontations: US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War, by Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, examines the conflicts and events of the unfolding Cold War through a unique lens, that of American exhibitions. In ten chapters and 423 pages the authors examine U.S. displays from 1948 with the Marshall Plan Traveling Caravans, through the present, concluding with the abolishment of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1999 and Congressional talks proposing recreating it in 2007.<br />
<br />
The author’s aim is to demonstrate that “the World’s Fairs . . . provided key opportunities for confrontation between the Free West and the Communist East, each trying to upstage the other” (6). This is not their only goal, however; the authors are equally interested in the changes in design and technology over the nearly fifty years of the Cold War as emphasized at these fairs. Masey was a former member of the USIA (1951 to 1979), part of this time as Director of Design. After leaving he formed his own company that helped design the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Museums. Morgan is a Senior Lecturer at the Newport School of Art, Media, and Design, at the University of Wales, Newport.<br />
<br />
The book is a mixture of architecture, technology, history, and memoir. The authors place each of the World’s Fairs within the greater context of the Cold War. Each chapter has a brief introduction describing the status of the Cold War, while subheadings describe relevant changes in technology, medicine, and architecture. Each chapter is set up with numerous photographs and copies of documents relevant to the exhibition. Text and quotes of varying size are interwoven throughout the work and in between the pictures and documents. Although the book could easily fit on a book shelf, the heavy stock paper, weight of the book, and layout loan itself to be used as a coffee table book.<br />
<br />
One of the strengths of this work is also its weakness: the book is heavily illustrated. Although each picture has captions, the sheer number of photographs virtually allows the story to be told through the images. The varying text sizes and placement of text, while informative, can also be distracting. One must remember that the authors are not professional historians, but are telling history through the lens of the World’s Fair exhibits. Those interested in the World’s Fairs or the cultural and architectural side of the Cold War would enjoy this work.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-51888028971587799352009-10-19T11:03:00.000-07:002009-10-19T11:04:38.885-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXRocgeFnm1MMsFNIXDB0BBpCQ5oJbnv19WdBCFiFwCB6FbmjiMG7oHTz9qi3YwyzJ0YUnCXFUC0GxkV1p7abGmSJmgpzFm77LpVJh5GwGlbpW3vFEEsGI8959nY5NQl7aKjkriTLVmrTa/s1600-h/Medieval_Cook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXRocgeFnm1MMsFNIXDB0BBpCQ5oJbnv19WdBCFiFwCB6FbmjiMG7oHTz9qi3YwyzJ0YUnCXFUC0GxkV1p7abGmSJmgpzFm77LpVJh5GwGlbpW3vFEEsGI8959nY5NQl7aKjkriTLVmrTa/s320/Medieval_Cook.jpg" vr="true" /></a><br />
</div><em><span style="font-size: large;">The Medieval Cook.</span></em> <br />
<br />
By Bridget Ann Henisch.<br />
<br />
Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, February 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-1843834380, $47.95. 200 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Stephanie Plummer, Bowling Green State University<br />
<br />
Medieval foodways, as shown in popular film or understood in the popular imagination, rely on motifs of abundance and lack. Regardless of the historical accuracy in film, or its scarcity, what is frequently missing in these images is an interpretive framework for understanding what it meant to eat in the medieval period. Foodways scholars, anthropologists, and cultural analysts have worked to build such a framework, providing useful ways to approach what might otherwise be a forgotten force in the progression of history. In particular, the anthropologist Sidney Mintz and American Studies professor Warren Belasco, among others, have worked to outline the power, hierarchy, and cultural markers present in our understanding of taste and even our daily meals.<br />
<br />
Although food studies has made great strides toward creating unified theories about food, this scholarship has tended toward an analysis of a particular contemporary culture, as part of far-thrown anthropological fieldwork or consumerist critique. Bridget Ann Henisch, in her fourth book, The Medieval Cook, departs from the tendency toward exoticizing food or focusing on a single food item while reinforcing the previous work of foodways scholars to link social and economic class with food consumption. As Henisch states in her preface, the goal of The Medieval Cook is to illuminate the context of medieval kitchens and dining rooms, and the individuals who participated in those activities. The Medieval Cook examines much of Western Europe beginning roughly with the Norman Conquest and extending into the early 1500s. Thus, The Medieval Cook pieces together the literature, art, and visual culture of the medieval period to construct an image of chefs and cooks, abundance and lack, banquet halls and cottage hearths.<br />
<br />
In this way, Henisch eschews heavy-handed analysis while clearly outlining in six chapters the borders that marked the medieval “haves” from the “have-nots.” Chapters such as “Fast Food and Fine Catering” discuss those areas of medieval life, the market stalls, taverns, guest houses, bakeries and butcher shops, which betrayed one’s class, position, and to some medieval Europeans, one’s questionable moral character. The final chapter, “On the Edge: the Cook in Art,” deviates from the general purpose of the other chapters by discussing works of art that feature medieval kitchen workers or specific medieval foods, such as pancakes. This chapter is less about the general mood and activities of people in the middle ages and more about the visual culture which remains from that time. Nonetheless, this chapter describes the visual, medieval context of the culinary arts; thus, it fits well into the overall goal of The Medieval Cook. In this chapter Henisch also outlines The Medieval Cook’s conclusions, that medieval cookery was not entirely appreciated as an art, that food’s central position in daily life meant it could not be excluded from art and literature and that medieval cooks knew the difficult work of improvisation. That this chapter includes the author’s end remarks is not entirely clear until the last few pages of the chapter. As a result, Henisch’s condensed conclusions leave the reader wanting more guidance about the book’s overall meaning.<br />
<br />
Henisch has charged herself with no small task considering the challenges inherent in gathering information recorded over the six centuries discussed in The Medieval Cook. Illiteracy, most common among the lowest economic strata and those also most likely to be household workers in the medieval period, means that a picture of medieval cookery could only ever be partial. Furthermore, dealing with delicate and potentially deteriorating documents certainly must have been a challenge in achieving a complete image of medieval foodways. Even determining the medieval period’s beginning and end dates could be difficult given the contentiousness which surrounds academic definitions of exactly when and where medieval society was situated.<br />
<br />
Although The Medieval Cook might have benefited from addressing issues such as time frame or regional difference more closely, Henisch provides readers with a vivid description of food and preparation methods, subjects which can be especially difficult to transmit to readers. Furthermore, it is clear from the vivid language in The Medieval Cook that Henisch enjoys writing about food. This may be the reason that several recipes for medieval fare appear in The Medieval Cook for the adventurous food lover to try out. Additionally, the descriptiveness and excitement in her writing transforms what could potentially be a dry subject into a lush treat for readers. Despite The Medieval Cook’s accessibility, some excerpts taken from medieval literature could prove a stumbling block for readers unfamiliar with Middle English. Henisch combats this in some areas by providing a direct, modern translation, while keeping these excerpts to a minimum and often using their presence to enhance the drama and tension which surrounded medieval household management.<br />
<br />
What is given to the reader, then, is a fair opportunity to scrutinize for him or herself the management of medieval kitchens and foodways or at the very least, the way these things were represented by medieval artisans and writers. As a result, The Medieval Cook may be of interest to chefs, home cooks, and those interested in history or the culinary arts. However, the conclusions and research in The Medieval Cook would also be helpful to art historians, literary scholars, medievalists, cultural anthropologists, and popular culture scholars. In particular, Henisch’s research adds to a large body of work on the interaction between foodways and social and economic class, while giving readers a rather comprehensive description of the jobs, dishes, ingredients, and utensils present in medieval kitchensBridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-9712494695952710432009-10-19T11:00:00.000-07:002009-10-19T11:01:05.061-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoHNPLs9uYBW0S7lX-z90G-Odj2UUqGX2HTsPOt9dtVBtNXw2zUjMIMSG3-VuLSGBJ0f9-ldHrD5Lza3rECyD3b-xCE3GpzuAYAJ81aHl5lFym2JIPqzJOJvcNkxuZNUEsf6z2PeJtDdR/s1600-h/Screening_Nostalgia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoHNPLs9uYBW0S7lX-z90G-Odj2UUqGX2HTsPOt9dtVBtNXw2zUjMIMSG3-VuLSGBJ0f9-ldHrD5Lza3rECyD3b-xCE3GpzuAYAJ81aHl5lFym2JIPqzJOJvcNkxuZNUEsf6z2PeJtDdR/s320/Screening_Nostalgia.jpg" vr="true" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Screening Nostalgia: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film.</em></span> <br />
<br />
By Christine Sprengler.<br />
<br />
New York: Berghahn Books, January 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-1845455590, $60. 208 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Greta Methot, Rhode Island School of Design<br />
<br />
In this ambitious first book, author Christine Sprengler takes as her focus a specific form of nostalgia: the cinematic “visual pastness” made up of props, costuming, and other material cues and signifiers employed to evoke past eras. This nostalgic mode is often criticized for seemingly replacing history with an inferior aesthetic stand-in, in other words, for “turning the 1950s into Fiftiesness” (2). Screening Nostalgia asks, does this most derided expression of nostalgia sever our connection to history as some scholars charge, or, does it offer critical potential? Sprengler wants to rescue this form by delving into the aesthetic materials of nostalgia to reveal their semiotic potential. Even when not intended to critical ends, the author maintains that the visual apparatus of nostalgia film can, “reveal something about our own historical consciousness and what we expect history to do for us” (90).<br />
<br />
Sprengler’s detailed and absorbing history of nostalgia informs us that the term originated as a medical diagnosis applied to the physical manifestations of homesickness suffered by Swiss soldiers serving abroad during the seventeenth century. Over time, this geographic conception of nostalgia morphed into a kind of nationalism; to be nostalgic for one’s homeland equated to patriotism. Such an ideological shift meant nostalgia could be harnessed for political purposes. While a medical definition of nostalgia persisted into the twentieth century, the upheavals of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism saw nostalgia increasingly characterized as a temporal longing—a pining for simpler days, for an idyllic past—what Sprengler calls a “necessary coping mechanism with the capacity to make modernity inhabitable” (15).<br />
<br />
By 1970, nostalgia had become an industry. Material goods, television, radio, and film all catered to a consumer base craving a taste of halcyon days bygone. At the same time, the politicization of nostalgia crested as the battle continued to rage between conservatives advocating for a return to “traditional values,” and social liberals seeking reform. This resulted in a stigma for nostalgia in that it came to be associated with a kind of propagandizing conservative agenda, particularly in the employ of Ronald Reagan’s political juggernaut. Chief among the disparagements leveled at nostalgia by academics and cultural critics was the concern that it commodified, falsified, or fetishized the past. Not until quite recently have scholars begun to argue, as Sprengler does, for the critical potential of nostalgia.<br />
<br />
In chapter two, Sprengler investigates how the Fifties came to be the privileged object of American nostalgia for later eras. The proliferation of visual mass media during this period, particularly advertising and domestic television sitcoms, produced a canon of objects to signify the lauded values of the American Dream. Populuxe items such as the exaggerated styling of cars, fashions, and household appliances created a visual language evoking the economic values of the postwar years. As nostalgia for the Fifties gained ground in the 1970s, especially in films and television, these material objects were employed as visual shorthand for Fifties ideology. In what is an otherwise thorough and fascinating discussion, Sprengler neglects examination of the 1960s—a period when the defenders of the “traditional” values of the postwar years came into conflict with the social renegades of the various arms of the counterculture. Though the impact of this period has been considered thoughtfully elsewhere (see Daniel Marcus’ Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics, for example), some brief attention here would have been helpful to bridge the 50s-70s gap.<br />
<br />
After defining the parameters of the nostalgia film genre and engaging briefly with its chief critics in chapter three, the remaining chapters examine specific aesthetic devices employed in several recent Hollywood films. First, Sprengler investigates 1950s automobile tail fins as a metonym for post-war consumerism in Frank Miller’s Sin City. The ostentatious, rocket-like design of the tail fin operates as an emblem of postwar technology, futurity, and prosperity. Sin City’s highly stylized, comic book-inspired vision of 50s noir and the corruption and crime evoked by that realm contrasts with the film’s fetishizing of the tail-finned car. Thus, Sprengler concludes, the film manages to offer oppositional views of the Fifties and provides a glimpse of the competing mythologies of that era.<br />
<br />
The most engaging of Screening Nostalgia’s close readings provides compelling analysis of the use of costuming and color to suggest characters’ unexpressed desires and allegiances in Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven. Rather than reference the historical period overtly, Haynes’s film relies on sets, props, colors, and costumes to manifest the atmosphere established in the 1950s melodramas of filmmaker Douglas Sirk. Sprengler examines how the film strategically employs costume color and 50s fashion styles to convey the values of the era while simultaneously revealing the repressiveness and hypocrisy of those values.<br />
<br />
Next, Sprengler takes on The Aviator’s use of what she terms a “technicolor aesthetic,” referring to that film’s digital recreation of mid-century film processes and palettes. Acknowledging that such films are frequently criticized for being overly indulgent in surface at the expense of substance, Sprengler attempts to recoup the historical value of Martin Scorsese’s film. While The Aviator may not faithfully reproduce Howard Hughes’s story, Sprengler finds that Scorsese’s painstaking replication of the look of two and three strip color film processing, “does important historical work” by informing audiences of the color film technologies of the 20s and 30s (149).<br />
<br />
Finally, all the tools of visual pastness—props, costuming, black and white film— are put to work in The Good German in order to recreate the look and feel of a 1940s film. “Style is its alibi,” Sprengler asserts, and such a strategy allows director Steven Soderbergh to indirectly indict America for current geopolitical offenses while safely cloaked in the visual pastness of a nostalgia film (172).<br />
<br />
Screening Nostalgia provides a cogent summary of the history of America’s love affair with nostalgia as well as offering useful examples of how to mobilize nostalgia in critically sophisticated ways. The text is engaging and accessible and should have wide appeal, particularly among scholars and students of film and American cultural history.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-11170202243787448092009-10-19T10:54:00.000-07:002009-10-19T10:54:51.396-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmTD-bJNBj48SRCnW9owSQ8VfQTr4fHYT_T1jJiNhJMURwG2BnhaxxSCr24Fx1d0rbN-zJDgK-rvWgUJoBTDBsnvNKAwZOkybtXknJUHb4ekKT4GSWQjIxcdBE1-o1iHARePSZC1HrAEWL/s1600-h/History_of_Future.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmTD-bJNBj48SRCnW9owSQ8VfQTr4fHYT_T1jJiNhJMURwG2BnhaxxSCr24Fx1d0rbN-zJDgK-rvWgUJoBTDBsnvNKAwZOkybtXknJUHb4ekKT4GSWQjIxcdBE1-o1iHARePSZC1HrAEWL/s320/History_of_Future.jpg" vr="true" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><em>A History of the Future.</em></span> <br />
<br />
<br />
By Donna Goodman.<br />
<br />
New York: The Monacelli Press, November 2008. Cloth: ISBN-13: 978-1580932073, $45. 280 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Yves Laberge, Laval University, Quebec<br />
<br />
How did artists, writers, filmmakers and architects from previous centuries imagine and represent their idea of times to come? Now that we more or less live in what could be called their future, can we verify how precise and accurate were their visions and predictions? Did things actually evolve as planned by visionaries from the past? Were architects and artists imagining the past right in their intuitions? In other words, did we follow their plans as we built “the future”? In order to explore these questions, this richly illustrated book explains the many facets of futuristic aesthetics through the past centuries.<br />
<br />
Scholars and students in American Studies will find here an exhaustive investigation that also works of the imagination but also real projects that were achieved in real life: for example, Harvey Wiley Corbett's vision of New York in the future, with many skyscrapers and multilevel highways, as illustrated here with early-twentieth-century color postcards and excerpts from Scientific American (38). We find as well countless representations of modernity and visions of utopian future in various feature films, from Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis (1927) to Busby Berkeley's beautifully designed musicals, and William Cameron Menzies's Things To Come (1936), adapted from H.G. Wells's novel.<br />
<br />
The first section is dedicated to Europe, with many accurate references to Renaissance thought, philosopher Thomas More (who wrote the first "classic" book about utopia), but also Le Corbusier in France, Futurism in Italy, Expressionism and the Bauhaus movements in Germany. But most of the seven chapters focus on the USA during the twentieth century, especially in chapters 2-5, the "Machine Age," the "Automobile Age," and the "Space Age.” In a way, one could argue that the future has always been a part of our lives. For example, public events like World Fairs were immensely popular and depicted many forecasts of the future, as demonstrated here with the New York City case and the famous 1967 Montréal Man and His World Fair, which is commented upon and is shown on the book's cover.<br />
<br />
Chapter 6 centred on the media age also mixes various elements and mottos which characterized the post-World War II era, from Marshall McLuhan's famous predictions about the role of television in our daily lives, to the utopian visions of the Disneyland park (that incidentally included a street named "Tomorrowland"), which was then nicknamed "the happiest place on Earth" (203).<br />
<br />
The book's final chapter focuses on "The Environmental Age," which began with Rachel Carson's famous book Silent Spring in 1962. In this case, explaining how environmental thought evolved during the recent decades is done through numerous examples taken from architectural projects featuring nature-friendly aspects. The explanation takes into account the role of ideologies, often pessimistic, about the new challenges (and the appropriate solutions, like eco-tourism) for the near future, from overpopulation to global warming. In that sense, the author succeeds in bringing many accurate examples and a strong theoretical framework, which comprises recent trends like deconstruction and postmodernism (212). In other words, this thought-provoking book is not just a collection of fascinating images, but rather an invitation to reading and exploring other salient works. However, the conclusion remains open, as there is no final chapter or recapitulation about what we could tentatively name "the evolution of the idea of the future.”<br />
<br />
Many interesting ideas emerge from all these chapters. First, the idea of the future has been present in many cultures and countries, in all facets of arts and culture, from novels to movies, from architecture to fine arts, and in urban planning as well. Second, we realize that the idea of the future and the projects that can illustrate the years to come do not often become a tangible reality; furthermore, these "old images of the future" tend to become obsolete and sometimes look naïve afterwards — but not at the moment when they are being made or released. This phenomenon can demonstrate the fundamental distinction between something new (that is never been seen) and something futuristic ("that announces what is likely to happen sooner or later"). Nonetheless, some examples remind us of the important links between fiction and reality: for example, the U.S. military "Star Wars" defense system, named after a popular movie series (192). From what I learned here, I concluded that studying the many representations of the future can serve as an examination of the contemporary ideas and mentalities of a given moment, and therefore, inform us indirectly about the beliefs, values, fears, and hopes of the past.<br />
<br />
In sum, because this excellent book tells us more about the past than the future, A History of the Future is already an essential book for historians in many fields (culture, ideas, literature, science, and technology), as well as a very stimulating study of modernity itself. I would define that concept of modernity as the capacity to show how things are changing at a particular moment, focusing precisely on the change in itself. In this case, modernity should not be confused with modernism, another twentieth-century concept that is presented here, as is the reaction against it that occurred during the 1960s (196). Perhaps the only major artist missing in this book is French filmmaker Marcel L'Herbier (1888-1979), who directed a modern masterpiece, L'Inhumaine, in 1924, which remains difficult to find nowadays.<br />
<br />
For students in architecture, design, and Cultural Studies, this comprehensive History of the Future will be a delight. The author's style is jargon-free, with short paragraphs that are always easy to follow; her lavish book should be ranked in the category "history of ideas.” It could be appreciated by undergraduates and non-scholars as well; in my eyes, this History of the Future seems to be essential for public libraries and universities as well. Once again, this gorgeous publication reconfirms the reputation of Monacelli Press as a high-class publisher of art books.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-34177609272433419662009-10-19T10:50:00.000-07:002009-10-19T10:51:33.636-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEianaozrxGC6Fi_WBZ2g5r2k854puQxXW2S6dbUr6Dx68aNredbZlQgXctacf4zSyoBjo5Wsu3w0Cq6VA1e1WIotFfKDWltzjHQO3mekP-Oy7kxCTbyTH5jlt_BnYCjf_Mx-ZvD0Gaq_hlA/s1600-h/Fabricating_Fake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEianaozrxGC6Fi_WBZ2g5r2k854puQxXW2S6dbUr6Dx68aNredbZlQgXctacf4zSyoBjo5Wsu3w0Cq6VA1e1WIotFfKDWltzjHQO3mekP-Oy7kxCTbyTH5jlt_BnYCjf_Mx-ZvD0Gaq_hlA/s320/Fabricating_Fake.jpg" vr="true" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture. </em></span><br />
<br />
By Jaap Kooijman.<br />
<br />
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, December 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-90-5356-492-9, $45. 224 pages.<br />
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Review by Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara<br />
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Fabricating the Absolute Fake offers an incisive look at how American culture – as represented by Hollywood cinema, television and popular music – has penetrated the world. Kooijman argues that “Americanization” has less to do with politics and more with “an imagined America, an imagined community that goes far beyond the boundaries of the nation-state USA” (143). Drawing on Umberto Eco’s concept of the absolute fake, Kooijman shows how American pop culture consists of fakes that succeed as “the real thing”—in other words, improved copies of the “real” originals. This is particularly evident, for instance, in the way Dutch popular culture appropriates artefacts based on an original, and presents them as their own version of “America.” Kooijman avoids making any value-judgments on such appropriations, but rather invokes Thomas Elsaesser’s concept of “Karaoke Americanism” to show how “America” can be represented in different ways in culture-specific contexts, ranging from “explicit hyper-Americanness to implicit mimicking of an American original in which the association with ‘America’ is almost lost” (144).<br />
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The book is divided into two sections. The first, comprised of three chapters, uses specific case-studies to show how “America” and Americanism now dominates the world. Such terms are often synonymous with universalism; this is evident, for example, in USA for Africa’s single “We are the World” (1985) whose ostensible purpose was to broaden awareness of the Ethiopian famine, but nonetheless “invest[ed] its ideal of global human universalism with the star myth and the American Dream, both based on a belief in meritocracy which promotes individual agency and self-reliance.” The video bears strong visual resemblances to the famous “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial, produced by Coca-Cola in 1971; this turns “an act of benevolence into an act of consumption” (140). Koijman subsequently analyzes how American television disseminates a view of the world based on individual and personal choice (through shows like Oprah). The third chapter treads a familiar path by showing how the American media constructs a hyperreal world, in which the first Gulf War of 1991 becomes a major television event, and where occasions such as the Super Bowl are transformed into patriotic celebrations of the American war effort in Iraq: “the intertwining of sports, the military, patriotism and popular entertainment presents a combination that is difficult to resist” (83). Hollywood cinema assumes such a dominant position in popular culture that it now influences the media’s presentation of current affairs: the 9/11 catastrophe played out on television like a disaster movie. Koijman quotes Jean Baudrillard, who argues that “the American experience as fiction . . . shapes . . . imagination into the form of reality” (90).<br />
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The second part of Fabricating the Absolute Fake looks at how Dutch popular culture has appropriated American images. He cites the example of Lee Towers (né Leen Huyzer), a popular crooner described as a cross between Sinatra, Presley and Tony Bennett. While performing standards such as “You’ll Never Walk Alone” or “I Can See Clearly Now,” he has translated his hyper-Americanness into a local and national idiom: “[Towers’] star image is rooted in Rotterdam working-class culture, exemplified by his identification with the Rotterdam harbor and the local soccer club Feyenoord” (102). Towers’s example parallels that of the 1950s British rock ‘n roll singer Tommy Steele (né Thomas Hicks) who established his own version of the genre rooted in Cockney culture. Kooijman also focuses on the Moroccan-Dutch hip-hop artist Ali B (“the American rapper that never was”) who uses the imagery of African-American gangsta rap to assume the persona of a streetwise rapper (113). The author believes that such performers have indulged in Karaoke Americanism, “an active performance of mimicking and mockery, based on the clichéd conventions of pop culture, yet also paying tribute to the [American] original in a specific local or national manner” (117).<br />
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Despite Richard Dyer’s claims in the publicity blurb that Fabricating the Absolute Fake is a “daring and persuasive” piece of critical analysis, the book actually covers familiar ground by showing how non-American artistes have adapted American cultural icons for their own purposes. Ali B’s example resembles that of Sacha Baron Cohen, who began his career by assuming the comic persona of Ali G, the streetwise rapper from the quiet London suburb of Staines. Kooijman’s argument depends on familiar binary oppositions (global/local, American/non-American), which tend to minimize the capacity of individual artistes to respond to American popular culture in different ways. Kooijman is well aware of this, as he points out that “Not all American viewers will be hailed successfully into the position of ‘docile patriot,’ or ‘infantile citizen,’ and not all non-American viewers will be seduced by the uncritical portrayal of America as the Beacon of Freedom and Democracy” (66). Nonetheless some evidence of how viewers react to shows like Oprah—in the form of surveys, ethnographic studies or blogs—might have given a sense of how (or even whether) dominant images of American culture as disseminated through the media affect individual consumers.<br />
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The book contains distracting proofreading errors that could easily have been avoided: Capital instead of Capitol Building (44), NYDP instead of NYPD Blue (53), Bagdad for Baghdad (81), and Top of the Pop rather than Top of the Pops (104). Nonetheless, Fabricating the Absolute Fake is an entertaining read, lucidly argued with a wealth of examples from both Dutch and American popular cultures. What we understand from the book is how “pop culture can be both manipulative and empowering,” allowing for the creation of an imagined America that opens up new spaces for “a shared sense of belonging across different cultural and ethnic identities” (124).Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-58276852005677173922009-10-19T10:46:00.000-07:002009-10-19T10:47:07.427-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFTHoCvptPhekm-LG2UM4NbVgXwpWg9hNWiRCwqCWwyAoS7LcqeA5wdAh-AAhB7VMRGR9fkQYQRLM_r4pfXVs_U0djvj9B8kHE-k2AuhIHX97v5sF3vD1t1s3OjoIVacmg2sAj0m49sAya/s1600-h/orson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFTHoCvptPhekm-LG2UM4NbVgXwpWg9hNWiRCwqCWwyAoS7LcqeA5wdAh-AAhB7VMRGR9fkQYQRLM_r4pfXVs_U0djvj9B8kHE-k2AuhIHX97v5sF3vD1t1s3OjoIVacmg2sAj0m49sAya/s320/orson.jpg" vr="true" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective.</em></span> <br />
<br />
By Marguerite H. Rippy. <br />
<br />
Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, April 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-0-8093-2912-0, $35. 248 pages.<br />
<br />
Review by Chris Pallant, Bangor University, United Kingdom<br />
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Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective proves a useful addition to film scholarship, particularly in its dissection of the Wellesian star persona. Divided into four chapters, Rippy’s study details the unfinished Life of Christ, Heart of Darkness, and It’s All True RKO projects, while also spending time discussing Welles’s early radio work, his First Person Singular performances, and the completed Citizen Kane (1941).<br />
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Welles’s name commonly features in debates concerning the film auteur, yet Rippy argues that the maverick figure be reconceived as a “star director,” in order “to emphasise the director’s commercial connection to a work while avoiding the tendency to assign the director sole artistic authority” (3). Early in the study, Rippy illustrates how, in addition to being one of the first star directors, Welles, by revealing specific artistic constants, which RKO then publicized, anticipates many of the strategies of contemporary branding. The postmodern nature of the Welles brand is most visible in its malleability. Rippy writes: “The essence of the Welles creation tale is that he is a cosmopolitan genius. The specifics of the tale vary according to the audience (or potential consumer)” (23-24). Ultimately, the decentered nature of the Welles brand, which included a proclivity towards both commercial and commercially unpalatable ventures, led not only to the abandonment of projects such as Life of Christ, but also his break with RKO.<br />
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Later in the study, Rippy discusses the unfinished It’s All True, arguing that, because of its well documented incompletion, the project provides a rare insight into the politics of national identity and Hollywood commerce in the mid 1900s. Welles was, albeit unintentionally, central in orchestrating one of the most damaging exploitations of South America during this period. In a typically uncompromising attempt to fuse truth and fiction during the production of It’s All True, Welles sought to recreate a famous civil rights event, where four jangadeiros (impoverished Brazilian sea fishermen) sailed to Rio de Janeiro to meet President Vargas. As Rippy observes, while Welles’s decision to hire the four original jangadeiros would have undoubtedly have been part of a scheme to romanticize their plight, it “still held the potential to let poverty speak for itself, a revolutionary concept for mainstream Hollywood” (119). However, during an ocean shoot, the boat carrying the four capsized, resulting in the death of Manoel Olimpio Meira—known as Jacaré to the jangadeiros.<br />
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Welles has been the subject of much scholarly interest. The Films of Orson Welles, (Robert Garis, 2004), Despite the System: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood Studios (Clinton Heylin, 2005), and Discovering Orson Welles (Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2007), have recently added to earlier editions such as Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (Simon Callow, 1996) and This is Orson Welles (Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1998). The Medium and the Magician: Orson Welles, the Radio Years, 1934-1952 (Paul Heyer, 2005) and and It's all True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey (Catherine L. Benamou, 2007), partially anticipate Rippy’s study, yet neither offers such a consistently postmodern revision of the star director. In addition to demonstrating an awareness of current research, Rippy also makes good use of archival material. Ultimately, despite Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects suffering from some minor editorial lapses (resulting in occasional repetition), Rippy’s text provides a good starting point for those wishing to learn more about Welles’s unconventional early career.<br />
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Interestingly, Rippy discusses how recent projects, such as The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004), War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005), and The Daily Show (Comedy Central, 1996-present), reveal artistic and ideological debts to Welles’s work. There is room, perhaps, to extend this debate to include figures such as Sacha Baron Cohen, who, at times, also exhibits a strong inclination towards Wellesian “truthiness”—the negotiation of the line between news and entertainment. Rippy closes by identifying how contemporary media have provided viewers with the means to return to Welles’s unfinished texts, and, rather than seek ways to “complete” them, enjoy their hermeneutic freedom. Welles’s unfinished projects are, as Rippy concludes, ideally suited for “interactive presentation as a series of fragmentary texts, audio files, correspondence, photographs, interviews, blogs, storyboards, and media ephemera” (169).Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-19611159799717997642009-10-13T14:26:00.000-07:002009-10-13T14:26:56.270-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghiFJRD90z5q-79cozfudIhrorIRJJgzAqFSMlevxUFrNAjgnNAdrWa2EDjKi08Q5gHpWxhNrny56K9cdr2qH__XJf2q35Ud4UnKMjbxGd2gRO7yrPT2baciUQY2TGG4iDkTHuTrf_YqPJ/s1600-h/Pop+Culture+Values.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $r="true" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghiFJRD90z5q-79cozfudIhrorIRJJgzAqFSMlevxUFrNAjgnNAdrWa2EDjKi08Q5gHpWxhNrny56K9cdr2qH__XJf2q35Ud4UnKMjbxGd2gRO7yrPT2baciUQY2TGG4iDkTHuTrf_YqPJ/s320/Pop+Culture+Values.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;">Popular Culture Values and the Arts: Essays on Elitism versus Democratization.</span></em> <br />
<br />
<br />
Edited by Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr.<br />
<br />
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, June 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-0-7864-3944-7, $39.95. 230 pages.<br />
Review by Stephen Gennaro, York University, Toronto<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In their current collection of essays, Popular Culture Values and the Arts: Essays on Elitism versus Democratization, editors Ray Browne and Lawrence Kreiser Jr. examine the question, is art democratic? More precisely, the collection seeks to explore if the interpretation of art is (or can be) a democratic process, or if “the full range and depth of the arts and aesthetics should be left with and controlled by the elite in power” (21). In order to do so, the editors provide the reader with a collection of thirteen essays , divided into five sections, which further illuminate the history of folk , high, and low (popular) culture and the role that technological and socio-cultural changes have played in the democratization of the arts; that is, the process by which art, as a communicator of ideas, values, ideologies, and expressions of the surroundings in which it is created, is made available to all—or restricted in access.<br />
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In examining the relationship between the high/low divide, Browne and Kreiser are participating in a larger discussion in academia that continues to assess (and re-assess) the value of this type of binary distinction in the study of popular culture. The popularity of the Birmingham School’s adaptation of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony over the last quarter century has created a widely recognized interpretation of the relationship between the individual and the culture industries, which accounts for the agency of the individual even in the midst of a mass consumer society. According to recent work in the field of Cultural Studies, the text is not a site of domination, nor is it a site for the reproduction of dominant ideologies. Rather, the text is viewed as a meeting place where meaning is negotiated (and re-negotiated) between the dominant ideologies of production and the active agents of consumption. This optimistic approach to the relationship between the individual and the culture industries provides the readers, viewers, and consumers the agency to resist, subvert, or accept the text’s explicit and implicit ideologies, and has replaced earlier discourses of the dangers of mass society, which were often entangled in larger and more problematic representations of power and privilege through its use of terms such as high (elite) and low (popular or folk) culture.<br />
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One of the interesting ways that Browne and Kreiser’s collection of essays attempts to deal with the high/low divide is to problematize the binary by suggesting that the categories for research and appreciation are actually three-fold; and that popular and folk culture, both categories often grouped into the meta-category of low culture, are each deserving of their own “space.” As such, the collection of essays attempts to provide spaces for discussing popular and folk culture as separate entities, and does so quite successfully in the first three sections of the book on “Folk Roots,” “Developing the Oversized Spirit,” and “Breaking the Cast” through an examination of both the current American society and its historical roots. The collection is less successful in providing a space for critiquing the high/low divide in the last two sections of the book, “Promoting the American (and World) Dream” and “Outsider Views of American Cultures,” which deal more specifically with the imperialistic elements of American popular culture and in many ways buy directly into the very elements of the high/low dichotomy that the collection seeks to problematize.<br />
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The discussions surrounding American popular culture found in the last two sections of the book are the low point of this collection and take away from the excellent insight to be gained in the scholarship of high, low, and folk, culture that the first ten essays offer the reader. For starters, the pieces chosen for the discussion of American popular culture do not appear to fit with the earlier themes of the collection. Whereas earlier pieces such as Urish’s “Cultural Aesthetics: Anthropology and the (In) Visible Values of “Art” or Crawford’s “Who Gets to Play? The Hegemony of Copyright and Trademark in Art and Popular Culture” are well-written, thoughtful pieces that not only survey the field of contemporary scholarship but then add to that with insightful case studies, essays such as Batchelor’s “Selling Culture to the People: Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations in a Changing World” appear lacking in scholarship. The article is grounded in generalizations and assumptions and fails to connect with any existing work in the field. For example, within Batchelor’s discussion of advertising and marketing as education, he quote’s Irene Costera Meijer’s use of the term “positive realism” and then proceeds to uses it as an anchoring term for his own work. However, nowhere in either the text, or the notes to the essay is there any discussion of how Costera Meijer borrows this term from advertising historian and cultural critic Michael Schudson’s work on “capitalist realism.” Equally frustrating is how Batchelor grounds his discussion of the current social role of advertising on Christopher Lasch’s 1991 work The Culture of Narcissism, and Batchelor’s referring to Lasch as the “brilliant cultural historian” (177). Missing from Batchelor’s piece is any reference to the significant amount of work over the last eighteen years in this field by scholars such as Kellner, Giroux, or McChesney, just to name a few.<br />
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Despite these weaknesses late in the volume, this collection can and should be viewed as an excellent resource for scholars interested in folk art, visual arts, popular culture, the high/low divide, and democracy. The collection provides the reader with a current and thought-provoking discussion of the connection between art and democracy, grounded in an excellent history of the relationship between the two entities. Whether it is Browne and Kreiser’s excellent essay “Garden of the Folk Arts” or Neal’s extremely well-thought-out discussion of “Values, Popular Culture and Social Change,” the collection explores the subject of the democratization of arts from multiple disciplines and a variety of viewpoints and only really falls short of its mandate, to “outline some, though not all, [of the] battlefields between the cultures in control and those in rebellion, in art enjoyment” (31), in the last two sections where the essays appear more interested in re-affirming the high/low divide than in discussing the spaces for both enjoyment and resistance.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-81957380196999797562009-07-16T14:55:00.001-07:002009-07-16T14:57:04.493-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiBZqPspwqPJzKLAZyGL3kIOYKF049pQ4QY_uSFiGt-cfPjXAwB-eyBrfSKVu-yxuM3BgFJHQ8TPlXh_h9n6L239DyvyIu9RSjOWhOtjf8FDwaoxaze7tzEKl12VSr5db3xAc8SmLSALdo/s1600-h/Inventing_Entertainment.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359180047406111074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiBZqPspwqPJzKLAZyGL3kIOYKF049pQ4QY_uSFiGt-cfPjXAwB-eyBrfSKVu-yxuM3BgFJHQ8TPlXh_h9n6L239DyvyIu9RSjOWhOtjf8FDwaoxaze7tzEKl12VSr5db3xAc8SmLSALdo/s320/Inventing_Entertainment.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:130%;">Inventing Entertainment: The Player Piano and the Origins of an American Musical Industry</span></em></div><div> </div><div>By Brian Dolan. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, January 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0742564619, $39.95. 264 pages.</div><div> </div><div>Review by Justin Patch, University of Texas, Austin</div><div> </div><div>Player pianos are nothing if not antique. The ghostly specter of ebony and ivory keys pressing themselves without a human hand is a spectacle, a novelty, a show that occurs in someone else’s parents’ or grandparents’ living room. And the music of these mechanized marvels: old-fashioned “classics” from Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven to the ragtime of Scott Joplin and virtuosic stride piano of James P. Johnson. Everything about these mechanical beasts screams, or rather delicately performs, “dated,” from the sounds they produce to the paper rolls that convey musical information into their mechanical organs. In the age of MIDI, iTunes, and digital streaming, the player piano just seems little more than semi-hip anachronism. I recently came by not one but two used player pianos for sale in the Austin area in two days, both for over $2000, not exactly cheap kitsch. So one then feels compelled to ask, why pay for such a piece as a player piano? Why invest in an outdated mechanism that plays old-school music with little to no hope of ever updating its repertoire?</div><div> </div><div>The answers to those questions are the driving force of Brian Dolan’s <em>Inventing Entertainment: The Player Piano and the Origins of an American Musical Industry</em>. The book is an absolutely delightful read that chronicles the author’s travels in the West-coast world of player piano connoisseurs, collectors, aficionados, fans, museums of mechanical instruments, and sepia-toned memories as much as it illuminates the history of the invention. From the outset Dolan is clear about his fascination and love for this turn-of-the-century invention in both its original and modern forms. He writes with all of the fascination of a man in a museum filled with previously unseen masterpieces by his favorite artist. The book does an incredible job of performing the player piano: humanizing the mechanical and showing the human hands that toiled to make the instrument what is was, a short-lived but highly influential phenomenon of the early twentieth century. Given the rapid rise and demise of the player piano – its dominance existed for a few decades – one might think of it as the first creation and casualty of the fickle and fast-moving music industry.</div><div> </div><div>Much of the book gracefully oscillates between an ethnography of modern player piano culture, which roves through the houses of collectors, museums, and the National Association of Music Merchants convention, and a history of the growth, development, and demise of the industry. The descriptions and narratives are spotted with colorful figures, visionaries, and the myriad musicians, such as legendary stride pianists James P. Johnson and Eubie Blake, virtuoso Rachmaninoff, and composers Stravinsky and Gershwin, who were part of player piano culture as well as shaping greater international musical development. In particular, Dolan illuminates the life of a relatively unknown hero, a man named J. Lawrence Cook, whose deft fingers and artistic input provided much of the ragtime, stride, blues, and jazz piano rolls made throughout the history of the player piano. A man with a sadly tragic upbringing, Cook was a talented pianist who saw the player piano as the wave of the future. His career moved from cutting and independently selling home-made piano rolls, to recording rolls, including one top-20 hit, to supervising sessions with piano giants “Fats” Waller and James P. Johnson, among others. Cook is responsible for bringing high-quality, artistically-rendered performances of African-American music to the ear of countless Americans who would not have heard it otherwise. Dolan begins the book with the touching story of Cook’s granddaughter “hearing” her grandfather for the first time since his death—she had no idea that he recorded piano rolls—and includes a sensitive biographical chapter about Cook’s upbringing and his contributions to the player piano.</div><div> </div><div>When not telling the history of the industry or the stories of those who made the industry, Dolan turns his attention to some of the meta-questions lingering over the player piano. One of the most interesting concerns the legacy of the invention, not as machinery, but its social impact on U.S. society. The player piano changed the very ideas of performance and reproduction in ways that have resonances today. In a nation emerging from the nineteenth century with a burgeoning middle class, the player piano was marketed as home entertainment that did not require extensive training (as was commonly expected of middle-class women at the time). One could simply pump a foot pedal and be regaled by the classics which were unattainable by most. Yet this was still considered “performing,” as the gramophone had yet to take hold and the amplified radio was still decades away. One who operated the player piano was still considered to be performing and playing the classics to such an extent that instructions, as well as pertinent historical information, was printed on the rolls for the performer. Player pianos also served to teach young performers, such as Duke Ellington, to play music that they might not have encountered otherwise. In these ways, the social impact of this now kitschy technology does deserve to be taken as seriously, and humorously, as Dolan does.</div><div> </div><div>While this book may seem from the outset to be a niche book, it is much more than just a quirky book about a side-line slice of Americana. For one, it is an excellent model of a combination of research, ethnography, biography, and theory. It artfully jumps genres, is a consistently smooth read, and presents thoughtful theoretical queries about the history of technology and socio-auditory culture without getting bogged down. For another, it opens the doors to queries about the auditory culture of the early twentieth century and the first age of mass production of music. Finally, it brings to the surface questions about the first attempts to musically humanize a machine and to mechanize humans, as the standardization of the player piano may be responsible for our aesthetics of perfection and reproducibility in music. As we enter the new millennium with the promise and fear of artificial intelligence over the horizon, and music constantly a click away, it is worth contemplating the magic of the player piano and the reproduction of human-ness. </div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-85291456161676536062009-05-28T11:42:00.001-07:002009-05-28T11:46:21.857-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF_DeMkj2776TPguCqQlg5EjqvfbVvI2ElGWgTE-NjocXwMUezcdjD1KjUaHyn6rB6tfn1fVtczT6yWweZKIw3SbxNw68W4jBItxf6R_A9yhhn3o5Z9INXKchbCRESie-zl9uu6lhDIc-L/s1600-h/Washington.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340947150331134322" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 164px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 247px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF_DeMkj2776TPguCqQlg5EjqvfbVvI2ElGWgTE-NjocXwMUezcdjD1KjUaHyn6rB6tfn1fVtczT6yWweZKIw3SbxNw68W4jBItxf6R_A9yhhn3o5Z9INXKchbCRESie-zl9uu6lhDIc-L/s400/Washington.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:130%;">Here, George Washington Was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History of a National Monument</span></em></div><div> </div><div>By Seth C. Bruggeman</div><div> </div><div>Athens: University of Georgia Press, November 2008. Cloth: ISBN: 978-0820331775, $59.95; paper: ISBN 978-0820331782, $24.95. 280 pages.</div><div> </div><div>Review by Nancy Zey, Sam Houston State University</div><div> </div><div>Most driving maps and road atlases feature “points of interest” so that motorists can pick up a bit of history and culture as they make their way toward a particular destination. Some of these points are the birthplaces of famous individuals, such as the house in Mississippi where Elvis Presley made his earthly entrance. The house in Iowa where John Wayne first appeared is similarly highlighted. Many Iowa maps also mark the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.</div><div> </div><div>The future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk?</div><div> </div><div>Honoring a spot where a fictional character will be “born” more than two hundred years represents an extraordinary example of a general American fascination with natal sites. But of the numerous birthplaces sanctified around the country perhaps none has inspired as much devotion or commemorative activity as the little corner of Virginia where George Washington came into existence. In his new book, Seth C. Bruggeman skillfully details the complex and highly contentious process of memorializing and then reconstructing Washington’s earliest home on the Potomac, a story that ultimately centers on “memory, ownership of the past, and the wonderfully slippery meaning of authenticity” (6).</div><div> </div><div>The story begins with Washington himself. Born in 1732 on Popes Creek Plantation, the future first president spent only three years there before the family packed up and moved forty miles westward. Popes Creek subsequently passed from one relation to another until fire reduced the house to rubble in 1779. Nearly four decades later, Washington Parke Custis traveled to the location where his adopted grandfather was born and placed a stone maker there proclaiming the spot’s significance, an act that seems commonplace today but, according to Bruggeman, was quite novel at the time. A renewed surge of patriotism as well as a Romantic captivation with historical sites and relics compelled Custis to make his pilgrimage, and interest became so widespread that, by midcentury, the Washington descendant who owned the acreage gave it to the state as a permanent landmark. Lack of funds as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction prevented the creation of a monument, and the Commonwealth of Virginia eventually passed the deed to the federal government. Finally, in 1896, Congress funded (and the War Department erected) a fifty-foot granite obelisk near the ruins of Washington’s ancestral abode.</div><div> </div><div>However, almost as soon as the mortuary monument appeared it seemed out of date. Americans at the turn of the twentieth century were becoming enthralled with historic house museums, particularly those associated with the Founding Fathers, such as Monticello and Mount Vernon. Groups of philanthropic ladies had orchestrated the preservation of those structures, and benevolent women would rally again on behalf of Washington’s birthplace. Yet nothing, save a few stones, remained of Popes Creek Plantation. Josephine Wheelwright Rust, a descendant of the Washington family, believed that a replica of the house represented the only fitting tribute, and she launched an association to build one, even though no one really knew what it looked like. When Rust suddenly died, the National Park Service took over and what became known as the Memorial House opened to visitors by the bicentennial of Washington’s birthday.</div><div> </div><div>Questions about authenticity immediately arose among the visiting public, and the questions only became more complicated with the introduction of historical archaeology and the uncovering of “Building X,” the remnants of the Popes Creek house. In a quixotic search for the authentic, the Memorial House underwent several decorative overhauls, and a bizarre living history component was added: farming demonstrations by “Uncle” Annanias Johnson, purportedly the last slave to be born on the plantation. Indeed, living history ultimately proved a saving grace for the site by functioning as a bridge between imagined and authentic past.</div><div> </div><div>When Bruggeman first visited the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in 2003, both the Memorial House and farm demonstrations remained, and an oyster shell showed visitors an outline of the original home. Bruggeman came to the site as a graduate student with the task of writing an administrative history and left with heaps of data as well as a captivating idea for a book. Each chapter reveals rich details of the numerous individuals involved in commemorating the birthplace over nearly two hundred years, as well as the historical circumstances that facilitated or hampered the ongoing project. At the same time, Bruggeman deftly paints the broader context of each development, such as the ancient roots of creating a “locus sanctorum” and of fetishizing relics, the gender politics informing the effort to construct a historic house museum during the Progressive Era, and the lingering Jim Crow tensions surrounding the place as it became a national destination among American tourists. The author inserts himself periodically, inviting the reader to observe the historian’s craft in progress.</div><div> </div><div>Toward the end of the book, Bruggeman notes that current birthplace stewards still endeavor to bring visitors as close to Washington’s first breath as possible, even though research suggests he may have drawn it elsewhere in the county. The story he tells—of Custis, Rust, and others—is verifiable but unlikely to draw many visitors to the remote patch on the Potomac. For those interested in public history, however, Bruggeman’s account of Washington’s birthplace provides an engaging tour through our longstanding, perhaps innate, fixation on relics and pilgrimage sites as well as the complicated process of remembering the past. </div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-35090714390872688802009-05-28T11:18:00.001-07:002009-05-28T11:21:20.626-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXbppreAhAen96AzR78b1QiHJZvPxA3YQrIiMmc2c7vVMiiBUrBTHipdcmVNNSztocBhgz3Joix9nGenWTxP32IVFI3ZaT3RTBGdqyGePDZ2OvX21N8zzKkGEM_Cnd6eQJqWXZ9g4x2gxk/s1600-h/Route_66.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340940939564434674" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 302px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXbppreAhAen96AzR78b1QiHJZvPxA3YQrIiMmc2c7vVMiiBUrBTHipdcmVNNSztocBhgz3Joix9nGenWTxP32IVFI3ZaT3RTBGdqyGePDZ2OvX21N8zzKkGEM_Cnd6eQJqWXZ9g4x2gxk/s400/Route_66.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:130%;">The Complete Route 66 Lost and Found: Ruins and Relics Revisited</span></em></div><div> </div><div>By Russell A. Olsen</div><div> </div><div>Osceola, WI: Voyageur Press, September 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0760334928, $25. 320 pages.</div><div> </div><div>Review by Anna Thompson Hajdik, University of Texas at Austin</div><div> </div><div>Russell Olsen’s <em>The Complete Route 66 Lost and Found</em> is a notable contribution to the history of the most fabled of America’s highways. Olsen was motivated by his own fascination with the travel route and set out to document not only the still-thriving, more touristy businesses along the highway, but also to rediscover the history and stories behind many of the now-abandoned gas stations, cabin courts, motels, and trading posts that were bypassed after the development of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. While sections of historic Route 66 still exist throughout the country, much of it has been lost in the name of modernity, progress, and industrialization, replaced by what many scholars consider an indistinct homogenization and placelessness that pervades contemporary American life.</div><div> </div><div>Olsen’s main goal is to reclaim the heyday of Route 66, an era he characterizes in the book as dominated by small towns, eclectic road culture, and a wide-eyed innocence that viewed the early automobile as a symbol of freedom and adventure. The book is organized by state, beginning with Illinois and ending with California. In addition to individual businesses, Olsen devotes sections to cities, regional centers, and small towns on the route, including Albuquerque, Amarillo, Flagstaff, and Tulsa, but also Victorville, California, Baxter Springs, Kansas, Rolla, Missouri, and Chenoa, Illinois among many other communities. Historical and contemporary images of small-town main streets are juxtaposed with one another, and Olsen includes concise summaries of the town’s development and relationship to the highway. Most of the towns are still around, their main streets a bit sleepier and not quite as bustling as they once were.</div><div> </div><div>Olsen is a storyteller, and that is this book’s great strength. Each stop he documents includes both a historical and contemporary photograph as well as concise vignettes about past owners, geographic details, or colorful tales related to the Old West. What is especially remarkable is the sheer number of sites that have been entirely reclaimed by the elements and natural landscape. From an abandoned meteor crater observatory near Winslow, Arizona to the now desolate Road Runner’s Retreat, a deserted truck stop outside East Amboy, California, Olsen’s chief project is to bring these pieces of roadside Americana to life. This is vividly accomplished through the use of such materials as souvenir postcards and vintage photographs that captured these businesses in all of their prosperous glory. Olsen doesn’t stop with the past however, and includes fascinating material gathered from interviews with current business owners, leaders of local preservation groups, and civic boosters. In this way, Olsen engages in a kind of vernacular approach to the history of Route 66, one that emphasizes the mostly working-class stories of the small business owner -- those individuals who lived alongside the highway, rather than the romanticized figure of the traveler and tourist that endures in popular culture.</div><div> </div><div>One site that stood out in particular was the long abandoned Conoco Station near Arcadia, Oklahoma. In fact, the images from this site grace the cover of the book. The historical photograph shows the probable proprietors of the station along with their genial looking black lab staring into the camera. During the Great Depression, Olsen states, the station’s owners began a counterfeiting operation in the back room of the station. Soon enough the U.S. government traced the funny money back to the owners and only months later the station was abandoned. Olsen includes an evocative contemporary photograph of the stone remnants of the structure and intones, “The stone ruins remain, seemingly daring time and the elements to take their best shot” (222).</div><div> </div><div>However, Olsen’s project falls short of the more scholarly studies of Route 66 that have been released in recent years. Because no more than a few paragraphs are devoted to each site, he’s never quite able to provide the historical background of Arthur Krim’s <em>Route 66: Iconography of the American Highway</em> (2005) or William Kaszynski’s <em>Route 66: Images of America’s Main Street</em> (2003). It is clear at times that Olsen prioritized quantity over quality with his project, especially as entries in different states begin to blur together into one giant scramble of gas stations, motels, and eating establishments that have seen better days. One also gets the sense at times that Olsen was under the gun to finish a few of his entries because he often ends each selection with trite and cliché phrases that become repetitive about mid-way through the book. Finally, the author fails to engage with other serious scholars of tourism history, a rich and diverse body of literature that has offered a much more complex understanding of the role travel has played to the formation of American identity than what Olsen presents here.</div><div> </div><div>Olsen’s book however still has a place in the varied body of Route 66 literature. It may find its most receptive audience in the still vibrant community of Route 66 aficionados largely made up of nostalgic baby boomers and historic preservationists that continue to treat the highway as the original “Mother Road” of America’s transportation system. It should also be noted that Olsen includes two Route 66 fan periodicals, <em>Route 66 Magazine</em> and <em>National Historic Route 66 News</em> in his list of sources and so he knows his target audience very well. In addition, while the majority of businesses along the highway have faded into obscurity, Olsen brings much needed attention to efforts of local historic preservationist groups by showcasing sites like Soulsby’s Service Station in Mount Olive, Illinois – restored to its original appearance in 2003 and the U Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas – restored in the 1980s. These grassroots restoration efforts are inspiring and stand as useful examples of what small communities can accomplish when they share common goals and band together. For anyone planning a Route 66 road trip, Olsen’s book would be an indispensable guide to the lost landscapes and still thriving businesses along America’s most historic of highways. </div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-44221722183186234062009-04-29T12:13:00.000-07:002009-04-29T12:19:13.465-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh71fUx_ikbkmoOj6id6XtvYYmKoFbFSIjsNXr9ZvLoeoBKrLmOumV0c65wAu16n5LEII7VfO7PbHl4Rok7C1Y4nk63CeeCc8uOncnU_qRzR8bWpot7whZ-14rgy2GfhKC14cctRrjskJ2U/s1600-h/old+roots.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330193657352479506" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh71fUx_ikbkmoOj6id6XtvYYmKoFbFSIjsNXr9ZvLoeoBKrLmOumV0c65wAu16n5LEII7VfO7PbHl4Rok7C1Y4nk63CeeCc8uOncnU_qRzR8bWpot7whZ-14rgy2GfhKC14cctRrjskJ2U/s400/old+roots.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:130%;">Old Roots, New Routes: The Cultural Politics of Alt.Country Music</span></em></div><div> </div><div>Edited by Pamela Fox and Barbara Ching. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, December 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0472070534, $70.00; paper: ISBN 9780472050536, $26.95. 296 pages.</div><div> </div><div>Review by Justin Patch, University of Texas, Austin</div><div> </div><div>Musical genres are famously difficult to definitively define apart from, or even with, their expressed parameters and limits within the marketplace and para-market spaces – television, radio, print and internet. Statements by musicians and fans are often contradictory, simultaneously playing on the local and the global, popular appeal and artistic indifference, ecstasy and depression, isolation and network. Most often, the experience of both the musicians and fans of any genre lies somewhere in between the poles and boundaries that are used to define what is inside and outside of any genre. The fences that are meant to secure the borders are frequently porous and easily traversed through cracks, tunnels, and well-placed leaps. The art of existing in a genre may actually lie in the use of the bypasses—are they well-worn or newly conceived and constructed? Are they arduously dug, or nonchalantly strolled through? Have they been manufactured according to a plan or are they spontaneous and magical? The game of defining the genre more often than not lies in experience: you’ll know it when you hear (or see, or buy) it.</div><div> </div><div>Enter alt.country, a genre born of opposition – to the growing dominance of stadium rock and AOR-infused Nashville and pop-country radio, to their discursive forgetting of “roots” and loss of “authenticity” in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Alt.county and its performers have captivated millions from the small clubs in cities like Austin to Chicago and Seattle to Minneapolis, to college and internet radio, and music festivals around the world. Drawn together by a cosmopolitan love for old-time music of the Carter Family, hard-country icons Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, and an emotional investment in the spit-in-your-face aggressive attitude and sound of punk-rock, the musical parameters of alt.country are virtually non-existent as a unifying force. A truly post-modern genre, perhaps the only thing that holds alt.country artists together is that they are talked about and bought together, by fans, musicians and writers. The constant “outside” quality of the genre in some ways prevents them from being marketed together.</div><div> </div><div>Grappling with the urge to say something substantial about a genre that is meaningful to so many but very, very slippery, Pamela Fox and Barbara Ching’s <em>Old Roots, New Routes</em> takes on alt.country in one of its primary concerns: cultural politics. How are the politics of authenticity generative and operational in this genre? How do these myths and realities clash upon examination? How do these discourses blend and clash with their counterparts in country and bluegrass? How do they impact performance practice and audience reception? While Fox and Ching’s introduction provides a historical and theoretical overview of the conflict between authenticity and selling out, the entries in the book deal with individual or small groups of artists who are seminal as proponents or progenitors of the genre. Case studies are given of Neko Case, Justin Trevino, Gram Parsons, Jay Farrar (of Uncle Tupelo and Sun Volt), Gillian Welch and Freakwater and three alt.country acts from Austin in the 1990s. There is also a masterful analysis of two “alt.country” films – <em>Songcatcher</em> and <em>O Brother, Where Art Thou?</em> by Barbara Ching.</div><div> </div><div>This format, which provides in-depth analyses of artists within the genre, both demonstrates the complexity and contradiction inherent in the definition and opens up further lines of inquiry into specific questions about the construction of emerging forms of music, marketing and sound as well as the role of literature and film in both defining a genre and acting as heuristic tools. No doubt, this was the only way to comprehend such a pastiche of sounds and stories—through grasping at parts, rather than the elusive whole. The theoretical backbone of most of these essays is surprisingly coherent, swirling around Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu. Although they are far from the only theorists represented, it seems as though their interests in the City/Country dichotomy with its attendant theories on traditional culture, structures of feeling, and taste loom large over all of the essays, as does the urge to represent not oppositional, but co-occurring transformations, desires and developments. In this sense, one can take away a great amount about applying specific aspects of a body of theory to case studies by attending to the nuances used in each of the case studies.</div><div> </div><div>Of note are essays by Diane Pecknold, Jon Smith, Aaron Fox, and Barbara Ching, as well as Fox and Ching’s “Introduction: The Importance of Being Ironic—Towards a Theory and Critique of Alt.Country Music.” Tying a book this diverse together is never easy or logical, but the Introduction does an excellent job of laying the theoretical ground on which all of the essays tread, pre-exposing the ready contradictions and simultaneities of the genre, taste, audience, and market to which the ensuing essays will put a microscope. The summaries and applications of theories of taste and tradition, and the antagonisms and meddling of capital in alt.country, serve as both illuminations of the texts as well as an effective summary of several lines of interrogation into alt.country as a genre and practice.</div><div> </div><div>Following up on these theories, Pecknold’s historicist “Selling Out or Buying In?” traces the development of alt.country as a genre along the lines of its grassroots and institutional developments (particularly the Gavin chart and the Americana Association), arguing that both public taste and market institutions that function as arbiters and sellers of commodities grew up together. She cites earlier (pre-Uncle Tupelo) experimenters in the fusion of country and punk and the discourses around the effect of the utilization of technology, and the grassroots and mainstream institutions that impacted the development of alt.country as a genre and a community.</div><div> </div><div>Smith’s “Growing Up and Out of Alt.Country” stands out as both a close reading of Neko Case, one of the darlings of the genre, as well as an artful reading of so-called “Generation X” literature into an understanding of the development of a career, a style, and a genre. He artfully argues that the legacy of the angst of Generation X was the lineage of alt.country. That generation was searching for new ground in the authenticities lost to the hippie-turned-yuppie upwardly-mobile baby boomers. He then traces Case’s development from punk through mimetic alt.country to her current work as a liberatory trajectory that moves away from feigning authenticity and revels in artistic spirit, musical creation, and being safe within its own artistic self, without channeling the ghosts of artists past in token musical gesture.</div><div> </div><div>Fox’s “Beyond Austin’s City Limits,” an exegesis and reflection on the current career of South Texas journeyman Justin Trivino, asks questions about the nature of “alternative” in alt.country, especially in light of Austin’s position in that scene, and of the sound of country. Fox expands on the materiality of class conflicts that surround country as well as those that the actors within them carve out for themselves. He argues that artists like Trivino are both kept outside as well as keep themselves outside by their decisions—alliances to communities outside of the mainstream and the sound of their recordings.</div><div> </div><div>Finally, Ching’s “Meeting in the Marketplace” offers insight into the role that film has in the makings of a genre and its communities as well as film as a heuristic tool for music. In both <em>O Brother, Where Art Thou?</em> (2000) and <em>Songcatcher</em> (2000), she analyses the protagonists’ relationship to the market, as both pursue their own ends via hillbilly music. In the finales of both movies, she finds a comfortable location for new, rootsy music in the market. The market offers the characters a way out of their older, less successful lives, and points to a way forward with music as the engine.</div><div> </div><div>What is most compelling about this book is the way it diverges from previous models of analysis on alternate or resistant culture. Rather than homogenizing the culturally hegemonic and setting the resistant against it, many of the essays portray both as gears that turn simultaneously, both exerting their own forces. Although there is still room to look seriously at the impact of 1990s Nashville with its attendant artists and businesses as actors, not as a monolith, there is ample reflection in <em>Old Roots, New Routes</em> to say that it does point towards ways to successfully analyze a music that is constantly emerging.</div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-90643168516513905842009-02-12T19:41:00.000-08:002009-02-12T19:42:43.174-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-Ik8m1gAG0Hgq8Jiwy_yAD2REd_thzT6ObaYg3Vd7-ndg4YIpDqfp0V7gmxTpe1uUmDkSmEJMyi0xInwwdvg1x0qvV7kIvE-NiIDhG4DdpqayMwjYT12tD8yuBvlNCgChdCM21MKejaB/s1600-h/catalog.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5302122312779563218" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 220px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 220px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-Ik8m1gAG0Hgq8Jiwy_yAD2REd_thzT6ObaYg3Vd7-ndg4YIpDqfp0V7gmxTpe1uUmDkSmEJMyi0xInwwdvg1x0qvV7kIvE-NiIDhG4DdpqayMwjYT12tD8yuBvlNCgChdCM21MKejaB/s320/catalog.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Catalog: The Illustrated History of Mail Order Shopping</span></strong></em></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>By Robin Cherry. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, December 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-1-56898-739-2, $35.00. 272 pages.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Review by Crystal Z. Campbell, University of California-San Diego</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>In Catalog: The Illustrated History of Mail Order Shopping, Robin Cherry takes readers on a rollercoaster ride of capitalist desires. Cherry’s eighteen years of direct marketing experience for Dow Jones, Rodale, and Time, coupled with written contributions to such periodicals as Travel + Leisure, inform this hardcover text, which includes color advertisements that spill off the page, some reproduced large enough to be read in full. Useful for the budding entrepreneur who seeks to carve a niche market and modernize Aaron Montgomery Ward’s initiatives, the pop culture junkie, art enthusiast, or historian who wants to trace the connections between trends, desire, and culture, or one who has stumbled upon a mail-order catalog in the mailbox, Catalog offers an accessible introduction to mail-order history. Catalog can be read in one of three ways: as a text outline of mail-order catalog history, as a visual essay of carefully selected catalog excerpts where color, font, captions, product, design, and targeted audiences can be observed in detail, or as an illustrated text where Cherry narrates the reader’s journey through the visual essay. Catalog begins with a brief chronology outlining political, demographic, leisure, economic, and industrial changes to America’s landscape from 1865 to 2000(+). With this timeline, Cherry swiftly reminds readers of historical events, such as: the jazz-induced Roaring Twenties and an increase in leisurely activities; the classic film The Wizard of Oz, which led to a surge in posable Judy Garland dolls; and finally the beloved glowing television, which invaded mail-order catalogs as early as 1949. Mail-order catalogs swept the American consumers in the late 1800’s when most lived in rural areas and had limited options for buying goods. For savvy businessmen such as Aaron Montgomery Ward, the mail-order catalog was an invitation for consumers to buy directly from him and eliminate the middleman. Some catalogs were used creatively as pin-up girls for deployed soldiers, makeshift goalie pads for resourceful hockey players, paper dolls for imaginative young ladies, and even toilet paper. According to Cherry, both need and desire have sustained the mail-order industry over time, while the catalog itself is an historical archive of American culture. In Chapter 1, Cherry traces the origins of major retailers such as Montgomery Ward’s, Sears, and J.C. Penny, and some niche markets such as Frederick’s of Hollywood and The Vermont Country Store. Consumers can thank Montgomery Ward’s for spearheading money-back guarantees and the creation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for a Christmas marketing campaign. Chapter 2 reveals changes in fashion and a growing obsession with beauty and image with classic “Members Only” bomber jackets, Nudit facial-hair remover, and python-printed undershirts complete with matching boxers. Toys are introduced in Chapter 3, replete with material changes from wood to plastic and miniature gender training for future housewives and engineers. The prefabricated construct-it-yourself home, authentic Egyptian mummy cases, and his and her camels have cameos in Chapters 4 and 5. Submarines, flying dirigibles, and Victorian velocipedes dot Chapter 6, followed by an edible Chocolate Monopoly board in Chapter 7. Hobbyists and gardeners find a haven in Chapter 8, while Chapter 9 relates the history of book of the month clubs and the missed opportunity of a private concert with Elton John courtesy of Neiman Marcus. Chapter 10 is the final chapter of the book and focuses on Christmas-related goods: Christmas trees, chocolate petit fours, and Christmas soap. While Catalog provides a highly accessible and visually generous introduction to the history of mail-order shopping, the text also paves the way for future research. Cherry’s images rely heavily on Sears and Neiman Marcus, which leaves room for thorough investigations of niche markets. In the latter part of the introduction, Cherry discusses the advent of online shopping, and a whole text could easily be devoted to the shift from printed to online catalogs. The author also mentions the intersections of art and the mail-order catalog with artist-designed covers, Vincent Price’s painting reproductions in Sears catalogs, personalized portraits in chocolate syrup by Vik Muniz, and the meticulously drawn walnut and zebra veneer bedroom sets in a 1934 Sears catalog. Subsequent texts could focus on catalog covers designed by artists, shifts in graphic design standards for catalogs, or single texts devoted to catalog representations of toys, holidays, patriotism, lingerie, or technology. Nevertheless, one closes this book knowing that anything can be ordered via Catalog.</div>Alana Hatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07006211600219601627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-89398325749216100082009-02-11T14:29:00.000-08:002009-02-12T18:49:02.186-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHa-w-eYFV_NB_EPoeMdj0kqeQj7SHkYI_5ykGemEtMWoA9wtYAFnfTEA8reiJBP9pqobz9RmxCckO4aKz3I6KRpCouAv0eZOjgtom1RF76hT2fChGLWowvsd9K4fkGhq042t-MKHPxaLS/s1600-h/perfection_salad.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5302108493333617426" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 160px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHa-w-eYFV_NB_EPoeMdj0kqeQj7SHkYI_5ykGemEtMWoA9wtYAFnfTEA8reiJBP9pqobz9RmxCckO4aKz3I6KRpCouAv0eZOjgtom1RF76hT2fChGLWowvsd9K4fkGhq042t-MKHPxaLS/s320/perfection_salad.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century</span></strong></em><br /><br />By Laura Schapiro. Berkeley: University of California Press, rpt. October 2008 (originally published 1986). Paper: ISBN 978-0-520-25738-2, $16.95. 296 pages.<br /><br />Review by Michelle Moravec, Rosemont College, Pennsylvania<br /><br />Add one part food history to another part women’s history. Stir in a dash of feminism. The result is an intriguing concoction that uses middle-class women’s attitudes towards food as an entree (pun intended) into their changing status at the turn of the century. Journalist Laura Schapiro, the author of two previous works about women and cooking, brings a deft hand to what could easily have become a trivial subject in Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century.<br /><br />While Schapiro’s focus on “scientific cookery” may seem insufficiently broad, she uses culinary oddities such as “marshmallows stuffed with raisins” as a jumping-off point to explore how middle-class women’s shifting status at the turn of the century led to both class and gender anxieties. This angst made a certain population of women particularly receptive to this new approach to housekeeping, although it ultimately proved to their detriment. As women’s historians have illustrated, domestic science may have been the thin edge of the wedge that got scientific studies into female curricula, but not without exacting a huge toll. Ultimately, cloaking science in the respectable mantle of domesticity served only to reinforce, rather than repudiate, a gendered division of labor and study.<br /><br />As with cooking a fine meal, timing is everything, and women’s transformation of housewifery into domestic science unfortunately coincided with the risk of consumer food production in the United States. While these pre-packaged foods initially seemed to promise libration for women, Schapiro argues that they contributed to the degradation of women’s productive creative labor as cooks and reduced them to mere assemblers of prepared products. Furthermore, through the near dictatorial influence of the Boston Cooking School, the efforts to increase the scientific nature of cookery reflected a darker backlash by native-born women to the changing demographics of the United States. Literally, you were, or could be, what you ate. The bland blanket of “white sauce,” the virtues of which domestic scientists extolled, and for which Schapiro provides a brilliant genealogy, could coat even the most recalcitrant of foods. By implication, it blanched immigrants, labor radicals, and any other unruly force that threatened middle-class stability during those tumultuous days.<br /><br />In eight chapters, Schapiro charts the rise and eventual demise of the promise of domestic cookery. Domestic science was a well-documented subject even two decades ago when Schapiro first penned Perfection Salad, and she draws on this literature extensively. The first chapter explores the “domestic drudgery” that dominated women’s lives in the United States until the Civil War. The second chapter focuses on the wealth of prescriptive women’s literature that emerged due to cheap printing processes in the post-bellum period. Chapter three analyzes the various institutions of the scientific cookery movement, most notably the famed Boston Cooking School. Chapter four traces the proliferation the ideals of scientific cookery through various cookbooks, magazines, and newspaper columns. The brief fifth chapter provides a biography of the highly influential Fannie Farmer, who brought a sophisticated zest to the highly scientific standards of the Boston Cooking School, and to women across America who attempted her elaborate recipes at home. Chapter six traces the efforts of domestic scientists to bring their ideas about cooking and nutrition into social reform movements. By chapter seven, some of the pioneers of the scientific cookery movement begin to express doubts about the wisdom of their strategies. These doubts are confirmed in the final chapter, which documents the conservative impact that the scientific cooking movement ultimately had for women once it was co-opted by food manufacturers. A brief conclusion discusses modern food mania, which is largely dominated by male chefs, with the exception of Julia Child, about whom the author has previously written. First published in 1986, then reprinted for famed Gourmet food editor Ruth Reichel’s Food series (1991), this current edition comes complete with a new afterword by the author. In a brief seven pages, Schapiro considers gender roles in the new millennium, the local food craze, as well as the fate of the ideals of domestic science in the 21st century.<br /><br />Although Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century is now over twenty years old, it was extraordinarily well received at its initial publication and it has held up remarkably well. Despite further investigations into the fields of gender and food history, Schapiro’s work remains an intriguing and highly readable analysis and is still an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the field. As with all books that focus on the prescriptive, the reader is left wondering what actual women thought of these transformations. While their responses may be imputed or inferred, Schapiro makes little use of diaries or letters that might have revealed more nuanced aspects of women’s responses, but this quibble is minor compared to the wealth of detail Schapiro does offer.</div>Alana Hatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07006211600219601627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-60830829821047685352008-12-14T16:51:00.001-08:002008-12-14T16:51:26.235-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCpDxTLU6HBSkUzedxgU3fcsO8RGg7aytrigjMrqXhRJi47nZwnbcckRB2hW9criGpCoqEaTDn-lJHUKV_GvhN9b7E6ZFo_Siy7Til-uQZ280E2807xGQP0JyQ4wnRtADPA-jpZHaYCo/s1600-h/christmas_ideology.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269351789392921202" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 200px; height: 200px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCpDxTLU6HBSkUzedxgU3fcsO8RGg7aytrigjMrqXhRJi47nZwnbcckRB2hW9criGpCoqEaTDn-lJHUKV_GvhN9b7E6ZFo_Siy7Til-uQZ280E2807xGQP0JyQ4wnRtADPA-jpZHaYCo/s200/christmas_ideology.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong><em><span style="font-size:130%;">Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture</span></em></strong>. Edited by Sheila Whiteley. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, September 2008. Paperback: ISBN 978-0-7486-2809-4, $35. 222 Pages.<br /><br />Review by Joseph Michael Sommers, University of Central Arkansas<br /><br />One of the risks any reader runs, examining a scholarly collection, is that collection’s capacity to be hit-or-miss in regards to the quality, capacity, and breadth of its essays. Sheila Whiteley, author of numerous works often centered around the pairing of gender and popular culture, such as <em>Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender</em> (1997) and <em>Too Much Too Young: Popular Music, Age and Gender</em> (2005), centers her most recent work around a very specific constellation of subject matter in <em>Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture</em>. It is in that third term of the set, though, “Popular Culture,” that the volume runs into a minor issue worthy of immediate note. “Popular Culture,” as defined by Whiteley’s choice of essays, is limited to multi-modes and media published in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. Given the overarching knowledge and seeming ubiquity of the controlling term “Christmas” in this collection of essays, it seems remarkably odd to limit the scope of the volume’s contributions to Great Britain and two of its former colonies. Without being overly critical in considering the scope of the collection, it still seems reasonable to suggest that the breadth of possible entries into Anglophone cultures worldwide might have been more appropriate for such a global topic. In excluding these other cultures, larger questions are left unasked. For example: What of the British Empire’s reach into Indian, African, and South American culture? How does/did Christmas become characterized and/or commodified in non-Western colonies? Whiteley’s own introduction questions the idea of how “we understand Christmas […] as characterized by cultural rituals” (emphasis mine, 1). Under that rubric, it seems unusual to truncate the idea of multiculturalism in the essays provided, literally, the shrinking of that “we” to exclude more global cultures. Perhaps these are questions better left to the consumer of the collection.That being said, consumerism and consumer ideology lie at the heart of this collection of essays. The professed goal of the volume “is to explore the ways in which the production of meaning is mediated by the social and cultural practices surrounding Christmas” (4). Minor criticism concerning the scope of Anglophone culture aside, the collection largely succeeds. Whiteley’s volume is divided into four sections that: 1) discuss the history of Christmas from Victorian England forward into the twentieth century in the United States; 2) interrogate the specious Christian hegemony imposed on the religiosity of the holiday through examining cultural artifacts and adornments associated with the season; 3) examine the identity of Christmas as a propagandistic device used during war times; and, finally, 4) “explore the contradictions inherent in Christmas ideology” (13). While not obvious in its construction and organization, Whiteley’s divisions do follow a solid and somewhat causally-linear argument surrounding the commodification of the pagan celebration and the distribution of its use across three countries over the last three centuries. For example, George McKay’s “Consumption, Coca-colonisation, Cultural Resistance – and Santa Claus,” from the historical section, strikes straight into the American Christmas experience directly from Whiteley’s thesis. His analysis of Santa and the products Santa has been used to shill both adorn the cover and highlight the power of Whiteley’s purpose. In essays prior to it, Whiteley defines the scope of the investigation by beginning with John Storey’s “The Invention of the English Christmas” and transitions into the commodification of the concept “across the pond” through Sara Dodd’s essay on Victorian consumption during the holiday.Less successful are entries that attempt to retread extensively covered and seemingly ubiquitous topics concerning Christmas that actually seem to deviate from the book’s stated goals. Chapters dealing with Christmas and religious controversy seem old and academically tired by comparison to livelier discussions of Christmas’s cultural complexity and paradoxical usage (essays which occupy the third and fourth sections of the book). As such, Barry Cooper’s extremely short excursion into Christmas Carols makes the claim that “the genre has a long history,” yet completes his discussion in a very brisk eight pages. It must be said, though, that one of the collection’s strongest essays, “The Musical Underbelly of Christmas,” by Freya Jarman-Ivens, resides and outshines everything else in the second section with its delicate prose belying significant body blows to the idea of a “’perfect’ Christmas” (113). Jarman-Ivens offers a unique, quirky, and witty examination of the less-idealized public display of Christmas that also offers intertextualization with other essays within the collection to enhance the affect achieved.The final two sections offer delightful (a word more in keeping with the event under examination than the essay examining it), counter-intuitive investigations of Christmas from perspectives usually little discussed. John Mundy’s consideration of the filmed usages of Christmas (including some of the more subversive and grin-inducing selections such as <em>Silent Night, Deadly Night</em> and <em>Gremlins</em>) illustrates profound cultural re-imagination of the original pagan intents of the holiday. Thom Swiss’s personal narrative surrounding the investigation of his own life from the mid-1960s through the uses of “specific artifacts [and] cultural texts” marks his own experiences with the holiday in a touching, home-spun manner that only an autobiographical essay could provide (179). It is an unusual essay given the rest of the volume, and a welcome surprise gift left in the book’s stocking that, while highlighting the discontents associated with the author’s own life and connection with the holiday, also reminds the reader of the personal connection the subject matter plays into the life of many of those consuming the text. Likewise, Gerry Bloustien offers a welcome Jewish perspective that, in many ways, compensates for a primarily anglicized record. It is the final essay in a solid, if slightly scattered, collection of essays that contains more hits than misses.Julie Cannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13595689506976367006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-40437687670798137582008-11-16T15:02:00.001-08:002008-11-16T16:37:10.404-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiTwsZvFdawc7XMn11gJIaXT1x1gAmXZDfYCprLVq-ckZeQzD7ih1wbwPTmwDL2nmLlGLEa5f0fcCrXbcK1W3O3uGg4IJA2tVW8JXkkr9XjToLxTowXsv-6GlvCowxfKop1GUGjOstnZK9/s1600-h/080721patternsofexchangecover_.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269394655484591234" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiTwsZvFdawc7XMn11gJIaXT1x1gAmXZDfYCprLVq-ckZeQzD7ih1wbwPTmwDL2nmLlGLEa5f0fcCrXbcK1W3O3uGg4IJA2tVW8JXkkr9XjToLxTowXsv-6GlvCowxfKop1GUGjOstnZK9/s200/080721patternsofexchangecover_.jpg" border="0" /></a><em><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Patterns of Exchange: Navajo Weavers and Traders</span></strong></em>. By Teresa J. Wilkins. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, May 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0806137575, $34.95. 231 pages.<br />Review by Robin O’Brian, Elmira College<br /><span style="color:#000099;">from SJC post 2 (10/13/08)<br /></span><br />In <em>Patterns of Exchange</em>, Teresa J. Wilkins documents the long and vexed interrelationship between Navajo or Diné weavers and the non-Native traders with whom they have long done business. The work explores in detail the roles that traders played in shaping and developing the commercial Navajo rug trade and thus adds to ongoing theorizing about the nature of “authenticity” and craft production.Wilkins begins with a brief history of Navajo weaving. Accounts differ, but Navajo likely acquired weaving knowledge from their Hopi and other Pueblo neighbors. Weaving has become sufficiently central to Navajo identity that weavers say that the spider gave Changing Woman the ability to weave as a gift and that Navajos have woven ever since.While there had long been a small trade in Native American crafts items, the role of non-Navajo trading posts shaped and expanded the trade in the late nineteenth century. J. L. Hubbell and Clinton Cotton were particularly influential. An 1868 treaty following the Navajo Long Walk by several years mandated rations of food, farm equipment, clothing and weaving implements to Navajos, and many certainly accepted some of these items. The reservation trading posts encouraged the trade of Navajo wool for food and other goods, and by the mid-1870s hundreds of thousands of pounds of Navajo wool was shipped east each year for commercial textile production. The posts also functioned as a form of economic assimilation, “an opportunity to usher Navajo people into a capitalist economy.” By the 1880s Navajos were bartering hides, pelts, wool, and blankets, and the way trade functioned began to change.J. L. Hubbell had acquired a store in Ganado, Arizona, and he took on Clinton Cotton as his partner. Cotton sought to market Navajo products, including piñon nuts and Navajo blankets, even as he and Hubbell continued their active wool trade. Cotton, and later Hubbell, encouraged the use of Navajo blankets in U.S. homes, especially as rugs, and eventually began to suggest designs for weavers to produce. By the mid- to late-1890s Hubbell was using small paintings to provide weavers with examples of designs to copy, and Cotton began a mail-order catalog specializing in Navajo products.The marketing strategies of Cotton, Hubbell, and others intersected with the rise of industrial capitalism and a growing upper-middle-class anxious about the changes in their way of life. Some of this anxiety expressed itself in an anti-modernist sentiment that prized the objects produced by crafters like Navajos. Wilkins points out the irony of seeking the “real” and “authentic” through the consumption of crafts objects, a pattern that only reinforces and intensifies class-based consumer society.Still, demand grew and traders sought to meet it. John Moore, whose first catalog appeared in 1903, described items in terms of their natural origins and so-called “primitive” production. He often described objects as sacred to increase their perceived value, noting that such items were rarely available to outsiders. Moore increased his control over weavers by arranging a specialized production system where some women specialized in spinning and others in weaving. Moore introduced and encouraged adoption of designs drawn from other sources, particularly those used in Oriental rugs. Moore emphasized the “authenticity” and “naturalness” of such items, qualities that collectors of ethnic textiles still seek and value today.Hubbell’s small blanket paintings had a similar role in the rise of the Navajo craft market. The paintings likely served several purposes. As a trader, Hubbell probably used the paintings as examples of possible available blankets. The paintings also provided models of what Hubbell wanted copied. But while early accounts tended to emphasize the role of traders in the development of blanket designs, Wilkins examines the weavers’ own experiences. Unlike traders, Navajos remained deeply embedded in a web of relations and obligations. And while some weavers did produce close copies, many others modified designs and colors, both as an assertion of autonomy and as a means of avoiding the risks that could come with appropriating another weaver’s work.Navajos extend the tension between individual agency and cooperation to their understandings of the creation of the world, when First Man created this world: its animals and plants, its land, the Navajos, their ideas and way of life, exist through the action of his thoughts. In much the same way, weavers create their weaving designs, bringing them to life through their own thoughts and actions. Thinking as both a process and an action can affect what it creates. Weavers may leave a design in an item open—closed designs can close up thinking and action in one’s life, as well.Further, weavers with their looms create persons in the form of blankets or rugs. The original loom given to the First People by Spider Woman was created from the elements of life, and looms are themselves alive. Weavers use their living looms and their own thoughts and actions to create their works, sometimes guided by the loom itself. Said one weaver, “I can’t force it. The loom has to communicate what it wants me to do.” Weavers feel a sense of communication with the rugs they make and “feel” them in the trading post or traveling the world. The complexity of the rug-weaver relationship shapes weavers’ understandings of copying designs.And what of trading relations themselves? Navajos have ideal expectations of what they want from traders, framed in values about helping. Traders can help by buying all rugs offered for sale. They should not overcharge customers. They should extend credit for unfinished rugs, and when they buy a rug they should extend a small “extra,” perhaps some jewelry or sodas, as a token of the trader’s ongoing relationship with the weaver. Because Navajos consider the weaving of the rug to expand beyond its production into its purchase and circulation as a commodity, they regard the trader as a participant in the process.When weavers sell rugs to traders they have a price in mind and will use different methods to convince the trader to meet that price. A weaver may not specify the amount of work she has put into a weaving. A weaver may again invoke relationships, saying perhaps, “My son, I want this rug to cost this much.” Traders who know and respect Navajo kin obligations recognize this and say that it is almost impossible to refuse.Wilkins provides a wealth of such detail in this excellent work. Wilkins outlines the history of trading posts, the development of commercial weaving, the ways that the changing U.S. economy opened new markets for such weavings, and how weavers themselves engage with these changes. Its multi-sited approach makes it invaluable for those interested in Navajo society or more broadly in weaving or textiles as well. Well-written and generally free of jargon, it will be of interest to general readers with these interests as well as specialists.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-76296532496854227192008-10-13T20:25:00.001-07:002008-10-13T20:26:49.581-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjreXGqwfkMYlU3sXaDitEfoW8zZ3cqNvMkXY2UqN-I6gUiUWoVcSUEKWp_vG2XXhHok0p0cwEWvaX_K5kjocSSZtq-hyMwkVwV6_xj2P1oWucc6RS0Cy9jCphWc53SGLzdmQnyehUndEgS/s1600-h/Identifying+Consumption.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256845773120388418" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjreXGqwfkMYlU3sXaDitEfoW8zZ3cqNvMkXY2UqN-I6gUiUWoVcSUEKWp_vG2XXhHok0p0cwEWvaX_K5kjocSSZtq-hyMwkVwV6_xj2P1oWucc6RS0Cy9jCphWc53SGLzdmQnyehUndEgS/s400/Identifying+Consumption.jpg" border="0" /></a><em><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Identifying Consumption: Subjects and Objects in Consumer Society</span></strong></em>. By Robert G. Dunn. Philadelphia: Temple UP, June 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-1-59213-870-8, $23.95. 235 pages.<br />Review by Mary C. Carter, University of Oklahoma<br /><br />Only recently have critics in cultural and language studies, particularly in response to postmodern analyses, begun to examine how identity is constructed through consumption. Robert G. Dunn claims that such critique is imperative because modern practices of consumption form “the most powerful link between the economic and socio-cultural realms” (3). Whereas commodity critique has in the past been effective to analyze the socioeconomic effects of capitalist culture, in Identifying Consumption Dunn focuses on the subjective relationships between commodity objects and human actors, and how those relationships serve to structure individual identity.As Dunn notes in the introduction, unpacking the nature of the effects of consumption and its subsequent repositioning is an interdisciplinary process; consequently, his analysis draws from many sources. First, Dunn attempts to plot a structural lineage for a theory of consumption, beginning with the commodity critique of Marx. While Marx does anticipate the structural detachment of the commodity object in keeping with the overall alienation of the worker, he could not perceive the enormous influence of what he called a “‘mysterious thing’” (qtd. in Dunn 27). His omission of a deeper analysis of the commodity object is overlooked, argues Dunn, because the breadth and depth of its social imbrication was impossible to fathom. Tracing Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism, Dunn then moves to Georg Lukacs, who posits that commodification restructures social relations. Dunn sees the commodity as increasing in value to the worker as a possession, and as such, as an indicator of position within a larger social organization.The influences of modernity, which Dunn notes “can be read as the systematic commodification of need and want,” are also accounted for (4). He follows the motif of increasing alienation next to Georg Simmel, whose critiques of modernity focus on the abstraction and social detachment created by monetary exchange. Dunn uses Simmel to connect overarching structures with individual subjectivities, emphasizing the relationships between them. According to Simmel, culture occurs at the point of interiorization of objects and exteriorization of subjectivities. This is one of Dunn’s most convincing evidential connections between material analysis and individual interior life. Dunn also uses the class analysis of the Frankfurt school as a bridge to theories that see the consumption of commodities as a way of expressing status or of experiencing desire, pleasure, social control, narcissism, and hedonism. He cites Veblen and Galbraith to show how artificially created needs are initiated by production and by the impulse of economic drivers, creating a never-ending cycle of consumption in pursuit of elusive status.The metamorphosis of the commodity object from a necessity to an artificially created need is well substantiated by Dunn in the first part of the text; next, he looks at the influences of postmodern theories of consumption.The turn to textual analysis and to anthropology is a postmodern necessity for Dunn as he extends his theory of consumption beyond Marxist critique. He interprets the relationship of commodity to consumption to consumer through semiotics, the form of analysis used by Boudrillard. In this understanding, the commodity becomes a sign with multiple layers of signification in a semiotic system contained within and structured by the political economy. The value of commodity is not merely economic, but also constructed so that it signifies in a greater web of social meaning. Boudrillard perceived the slippage between sign and signifier as representing a potentially dangerous avenue of social control. Dunn next examines the usefulness of an anthropological view, noting that anthropology may be the postmodern discipline: it considers all realities to be constructed culturally. Due to its focus on tribal societies, anthropology’s lens of analysis disregards issues of class stratification and instead observes how social relations are structured in part through a system of goods. Dunn posits British cultural studies’ penchant for drawing from multiple disciplines as a way to address the subject that also recognizes agency.The move toward agency and away from structural forces is a key point that Dunn uses to discuss the subjectivity of consumption. While Boudrillard locates commodities within a semiotic system of signification among other commodities, Dunn looks beyond the limitations of his structuralism to acknowledge consumption as driven also by the agency of the consumer. By positioning consumers as agents seduced by aesthetics and pleasurable attributes, or compelled by sensual materiality, he proposes them as reflective consumers of commodity goods seeking to fill a need unaccounted for by sign/signification analysis. He posits the notion of insatiability as the elusive drive behind the acquisition of goods and as the crucial point where economic structures interact with individual subjectivities. Capitalism cannot exist without insatiability, and factors of desire, emulation, and larger signification all play a role in compelling consumers’ insatiability. Commodity consumption signifies in the larger culture as lifestyle choices or as outward manifestations of how individuals fit into their cultural surroundings. Dunn argues that discussions of status relations are decreasingly centered around class and more often focused on lifestyle. Lifestyle is clearly demarcated through specific patterns of consumption of goods and experiences. Lifestyles are often sold packaged as total experiences and take on an iconic life of their own, primarily built through the consumption of related goods. Observing that style and its antecedent fashion are notoriously capricious, Dunn observes that style is the perception of what defines a lifestyle, and that fashion is its realization. A vital component of the drive for consumption, fashion dictates that the old must be replaced by the new, keeping the stimulus for production intact in a self-perpetuating cycle. Consumers look to fashion as a lifestyle indicator to pattern their choices on those characteristic of a desired cultural group; these choices function not only as outward indicators of cultural belonging, but also as ways in which individuals continually construct themselves.Dunn offers no either /or choices as to the roots of modern consumption; instead, he expertly constructs a careful lineage of the transition of the commodity object to one of insatiable consumer desire.Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-56910785166229845502008-08-19T15:55:00.001-07:002008-08-19T15:57:33.236-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfF7d7CHo1xvQVlzVbAu7InEuremDjEmGrM3SrnhUPbxiGnGXfYUcR-rbwnHVQ7-ggkLOlx7jOPPqK7-FcodP-yAEC7zQN2enq2sbbSYIjuFQyYAZeCOJg4XHVcwDYKv-Di628As1aWmTE/s1600-h/indian+made.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236366661174318050" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfF7d7CHo1xvQVlzVbAu7InEuremDjEmGrM3SrnhUPbxiGnGXfYUcR-rbwnHVQ7-ggkLOlx7jOPPqK7-FcodP-yAEC7zQN2enq2sbbSYIjuFQyYAZeCOJg4XHVcwDYKv-Di628As1aWmTE/s400/indian+made.jpg" border="0" /></a>from University Press of Kansas<br /><em><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1868–1940</span></strong></em><br />by Erika Marie Bsumek<br />under review by Novotny Lawrence, Southern Illinois University, CarbondaleBridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146077488011681970.post-58953477899471963412008-08-19T15:47:00.001-07:002008-08-19T15:49:09.527-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9CiRBVH0Yl2ZsOhDflbmADKC3enSTvPuBEcZAtfZsMiEl0yc39OOGabtt-ysdIk821vxCazrWztXLNaHTTzvg26rL1ujQ7XH2JntIFCrOib6gXmvIA1m1XoDtnURkPp7bIN2_tVxj5ODZ/s1600-h/the+mouse+machine.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236364532281015778" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9CiRBVH0Yl2ZsOhDflbmADKC3enSTvPuBEcZAtfZsMiEl0yc39OOGabtt-ysdIk821vxCazrWztXLNaHTTzvg26rL1ujQ7XH2JntIFCrOib6gXmvIA1m1XoDtnURkPp7bIN2_tVxj5ODZ/s400/the+mouse+machine.jpg" border="0" /></a>from University of Illinois Press<br /><div><em><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology</span></strong></em> </div><div>by J. P. Telotte </div><div>under review by Bow Van Ripper, Southern Polytechnic University, Georgia </div>Bridget Cowlishaw, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13990580353645654390noreply@blogger.com0