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

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

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

Historian/author Michael Kammen's "American Culture, American Taste" exhaustively, deliberately examines 120 years of American leisure preferences: their classification, exploration, homogonization, and finally, exploitation. He recalls, charts, and deconstructs lines of "high," "low," and "middlebrow" taste (defined over time by everything from furniture choice to favorite "Simpsons" character). He also strengthens the divide between "popular" culture (often regional and participatory) over "mass" culture (homogoneous and sedentary), criticizing their interchangability in American society.Kammen doesn't adhere to timeline (although he includes one to start the book) prefering to make points era to era, country to city, weaving critical opinions often 50 years apart. He cites the years 1880-1930 as when popular culture gained its footing (with increased leisure time) and inspired some of its finest (often bristling) national conversation from journalists such as Walter Lippmann. He finds unique angles in cultural hegemony (sports equipment and rule books, Walt Disney's and Charlie Chaplin's films, radio's "Amos n'Andy", and syndicated newspaper features all preceding television's ultimate conquest). Then again, Kammen also includes Timothy O'Leary's dimbulb quote that the Nintendo phenomenon is "about equal to that of the Gutenberg printing press." Uh huh.Kammen reveals, then bemoans, the gradual shift from active to passive, social to private amusement, from reliance on cultural leadership ("tastemakers") to public opinion easily manipulated by advertising and slavishly served by mass media. Kammen also praises disparate artists like Andy Warhol and Ken Burns for their fresh, interpretive approaches to popular art, history, and their ultimate meld, acknowledging criticism of Burns in a chapter among the book's best.Kammen writes like a professor: dryly, relying on self-reference and prepositional pile-up (ending Chapter 8, for example, with a huge excerpt from social critic Morag Shiach followed by his own terse, "I concur." Yet the sheer weight of his research, opinion collected and examples rendered make "American Culture" a fine companion piece to studying American fad, fashion, and leisure preference, a part of daily American life few scholars have seriously studied. Recommended.

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