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

by Kammen, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780465037292
• ISBN10: 0465037291
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-05
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

In American Culture, American Tastes, Michael Kammen leads us on an entertaining, thought-provoking tour of America's changing tastes, uses of leisure, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them throughout our nation's history. Starting at the point in time that late-nineteenth-century popular culture began to evolve into post-WWII mass culture, Kammen charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the relationship between "high" and "low" art; the commercialization of organized entertainment; and the ways in which television has shaped mass culture and consumerism has reconfigured it. In doing so, he draws from sources as varied and rich as the work of esteemed cultural theorists, "The Simpsons," jigsaw puzzles, Walter Winchell's gossip columns, Whitman's poetry, Warhol's art, "Sesame Street," and the Book-of-the-Month Club.With wit and ingenuity Kammen traces the emergence of American mass culture and the contested meanings of leisure, taste, consumer culture, and social divisions that it has spawned.

Author Biography

Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University. He is the author most recently of In the Past Lane, The Lively Arts, and Mystic Chords of Memory.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
Selective Chronology	xxi
Coming to Terms with Defining Terms	3	(24)
Culture Democratized: Distinction or Degradation?	27	(20)
Consumerism, Americanism, and the Phasing of Popular Culture	47	(23)
Popular Culture in Transition---and in Its Prime	70	(25)
Blurring the Boundaries Between Taste Levels	95	(38)
Cultural Criticism and the Transformation of Cultural Authority	133	(29)
The Gradual Emergence of Mass Culture and Its Critics	162	(28)
Mass Culture in More Recent Times: Passive and/or Participatory?	190	(29)
Historians and the Problem of Popular Culture in Recent Times	219	(23)
Meetings of the Minds? Moving Beyond Customary Categories	242	(19)
Appendix: Symposia on Twentieth-Century Perceptions of Culture in the United States	261	(2)
Notes	263	(42)
Acknowledgments	305	(2)
Index	307