Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in AmericaThis study examines how the changes in publishing, movie making and television programming since the 1960s have affected taste, particularly what is considered vulgar. Show businesss, the industry of American culture, wreaks the most havoc on American taste by pandering to what most paying customers want to see. Twitchell's expose comes not to celebrate popular or carnival culture, as much as to answer questions about it: is vulgarity the result of repression or of freedom?; what is the relationship between machine-made entertainments and aesthetic values?; does television carnivalize or exalt cultural norms?; why do certain stories get told, and why do certain stories get told too often?; why are some of the most consistently profitable industries in the world those that transport audio and visual sequences we claim we can do without?; and why are today's A movies really yesterday's B movies dressed up with $50 million budgets? |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Untended Gates The Triumph of Vulgarity in an Age of Show Business | 13 |
Paperbacked Culture How Candles Became Shoes | 67 |
Peepshow America Hollywood and Popular Taste | 131 |
Programming Television Reflections on the Electronic Midway | 193 |
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advertising American Andy Warhol artist become bestseller blockbuster book publishing box office broadcast cable called carnival cassettes century channels commercial Company conglomerated critics Danielle Steel Disney distribution distributor editor electronic elite entertainment film Freddy Freddy Krueger gatekeeper genre hardcover high culture Hollywood houses Hulk Hogan images industry junk L.A. Law magazines mass media medium million modern moguls Mort moviemakers Museum Nielsen novel once opera P. T. Barnum Pantheon paperback Paramount percent picture play popular culture Press production professional wrestling programming radio readers rental Revs Cost Profit romance SAM RAIMI screen sell shift show business Simon & Schuster sion sold stars station Stephen King stories studio syndication taste television television shows theaters tion titles Tom Clancy Twentieth-Century Fox viewers vulgar Warner Warner Bros watch York