Customer Reviews

Bad Or, the Dumbing of America

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book contains enough good points and valuable criticism of modern American culture that it's a shame that it's value is marred by flaws and excessive generalizing. Paul Fussell also wrote Class, a very funny and witty analysis of the supposedly nonexistent American class structure. In Bad, Fussell invents a whole new category: "BAD" --all capitals-- is distinguished from the merely "bad." In the latter category are things from which we don't expect much. BAD, on the other hand, applies to people, objects, ideas and actions that are phony and pretentious.

Many of Fussell's points are well taken and hard to argue with. The focus of modern "higher" education on athletics at the expense of academics; the silly pretensions of "gourmet" restaurants; the lack of intelligence displayed in blockbuster movies; the incoherent babble of much contemporary language...there is a lot to recommend here. The problem is, Fussell gets carried away and ends up undermining his own argument by equating BAD with whatever doesn't conform to his own tastes and idiosyncrasies. In the chapter on architecture, for example, he is contemptuous of almost anything built in the last fifty years without any real basis other than personal taste. Again, his often valid critique of modern language (e.g. euphemisms, corporate jargon and overly complex signs) ends up getting diluted by his picayune insistence on perfect grammar, even in poetry (I can agree that most of the poems he quotes are BAD, but to say that poetry must be grammatical is silly). Fussell's opinions on music border on the bizarre. Wagner, Leonard Bernstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, along with all reggae music are, we are informed, all BAD, while Beethoven and Brahms are dismissed as "B" composers. It is remarks like these that detract from the book's general thesis.

He takes many potshots at whole cities and regions, which ends up making him sound like just another urban elitist who looks down on anyone who doesn't live on one of the coasts. Finally (at least for the purposes of this review), his critique of "BAD beliefs" is so inclusive as to leave me wondering what he thinks it's good to believe in. He thoroughly despises anything new age but he also gets in his digs against religious fundamentalists and materialism. What does that leave? I'm afraid Fussell takes refuge in the kind of highbrow skepticism that mocks whatever isn't sanctioned by the so-called experts.

Many of Fussell's observations in BAD are important ones and go to the heart of what's wrong with today's culture. The ubiquity of mindless pop culture, sports and advertising and the overall anti-intellectual climate is something to be truly concerned about. Unfortunately, he couldn't resist throwing too wide a net and including many things that aren't so bad. This book comes very close at times to being an example of what it is criticizing. If you are going to equate BAD with snobby and pretentious, it's best not to come across as too much of a snob yourself. All in all, not a BAD book, but not quite GOOD either.

For me, this book had one especially redeeming quality among its many - No longer could I consider myself the grouchiest grouch on the planet.

By cutting through our phony pomposity and inability to recognize quality, Fussell exposes our us as a nation of shallow, self-congratulating losers who believe that it is alright to delude ourselves into believing we are something we are not. Specifically, deep thinking, conscientious citizens.

To take something that is merely bad, and by promotion and hyperbole, convince the public that it is not bad, but good and even better than all the rest - we then achieve BAD. From movies to books to ideas to ostentatious restaurants and all the rest. Personally, I loved his skewering rant of the soapy Andrew Lloyd Webber, who, along with Mickey Mouse are my personal poster twins for the Dumbing of America. And if Fussell ridiculed the elections of Ronald Regan and George H. Bush, one can only wonder what the temperment of the book might be if it were being written today.

Since this book was published, much more BAD has crept into our lives. From overbearing and attention needing cell phone abusers to major market quick read newspapers that make USA Today seem almost journalstic, our addiction to BAD behavior and kitsch make us considerably more transparent than we were when the book was published in 1991.

I have enjoyed some of the reader comments in this section. Especially the comments from those who are offended by the fact that Fussell has challenged the ideas with which they have been branded. Their offense comes not at the fact that their institutions have been attacked, but that they have been duped into believing that these very institutions were necessary, important and relevent.

On the downside, the book ended simply as a criticism, without relief. Unlike Steve Allen's "Dumbth," where dozens of suggestions for improvement are offered from one of the most thoughful minds of the century, B.A.D. sheds precious little light in the direction of redemption. The book could have used a few more chapters pointing the way. Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book to parents, teachers, students and to anyone in our society who believes that a college degree is a synonym for education, or that walking around the mall is the epitomy of cultural achievement.

This book is an insightful, tongue-in-cheek look at American society. Fussell argues that American culture elevates many tacky, tasteless or outright dumb phenomenon to the level of "BAD" by promoting them as elegant, luxurious, intelligent or otherwise desirable. The author examines many realms in which this occurs, including advertising, airlines, banks, hotels (the mint on the pillow phenomenon does not go unscrutinized), books, poetry, beliefs and ideas. BAD... or, the Dumbing of America is a delightful book, full of sardonic wit and astute observations

In the eight years between his insightful and trenchant "Class" (1983) and this book, Prof. Fussell has evidently come to the conclusion that the only way to get a message across to the American public is to shout at them. This is simply "Class" sectioned up into bite-sized bits, given larger print, boldfaced introductions, and a more hostile edge. Some of the book makes its points well - BAD poetry, BAD airports, BAD books, BAD movies, BAD universities (although he possesses a patrician disdain for any university outside the Ivies or their peers) - but the outrage is less compelling than his besumed take on American culture in " Class". I didn't always like his former book but at least there his observations on American cultural practices tied neatly into his thesis on their class-based character, but here an original thesis is non-existent. BAD is simply a synonym for "kitsch" - substitute the two words and Fussell's BAD becomes a tired rehash of elite American cultural criticism but made easier to read and quickier to digest. In other words, BAD is BAD Criticism - it gives the appearance of a serious and penetrating work but is geared (rather contemptuously) toward a mass audience apparently too dull to read anything that may contain a dependent clause. It's rather sad to see an intelligent critic fall victim to the disease he decries but Fussell has managed to go from "The Great War and Modern Memory" to this undisciplined rant in a mere twenty years and that's too BAD.

Fussell's ability to gainsay any grove of academe that is less than Ivy-League comes from his teaching at one, no doubt. As in "Class," I think that he shows too little sympathy for children of the lower or middle classes who sincerely wish to "improve themselves" but whose curious eyes are bigger than their wallets; and to the schools that are open to them. Self-improvement projects are one characteristic of the American middle class, at least traditionally, that it is only cruel to ridicule in principle, and there just isn't room enough in Harvard et al. to accommodate everyone.

Aside from this quibble, however, I'm all with the admiring commentators. Particularly telling is the chapter on BAD engineering, in that this output is eventually identifiable. While the BADness of a hat or a piece of music may be thought entirely a question of taste, some things need to WORK: a bridge that collapses into the water or an airplane that falls out of the air all by itself is an undoubted failure. Then comes an interesting QED, perhaps more implied than explicit: the uncanny resemblance between the producers and promoters of BAD engineering and those of BAD things-that-people-say-are-relative. Maybe they aren't so relative, after all.

BAD, acordding to Fussell, is something "boring, stupid, or inane" that can be made to look "fascinating, smart, or deep", such as, for instance, "Playboy" magazine. "Regular" skin magazines are merely bad; "Playboy" pretends to be a quality magazine, therefore it is BAD. Ice cream bars are bad (i.e., low-quality) food; "gourmet" restuarants which most of the food actually arrives frozen and is merely heated and dressed up in the kitchen, and then served on half-empty enormous plates, is BAD. Fussell lists numerous examples of BAD, some amusing ("quality" airline food), some more serious (George Bush [Sr.], Laurence Welk), some absurd (apparently, Fussell considers all music since Mozart--including Brahms, Verdi, etc.--to be BAD music.)

Fussell doesn't mind the merely bad; what bothers him is that what passed for *good* culture in the USA, the ideal to be aspired to, is not the really good, but the BAD. For example, when you stop reading the tabloids and start reading the "Wall Street Journal", you are not moving from bad to good. You're just moving from the bad to the BAD: the Wall Street Journal *pretends* it will make you "educated" about the market, but in reality knows no more about what will happen next than the tabloids do. The real reason for buying the "Wall Street Journal"--like that of most BAD products--is to make the buyer *LOOK* intelligent, well-informed, "knowledgeable" about art, without actually *BEING* so.

Quite true; but Fussell overstates his case. His thesis is that the existence of BAD "proving" the cultural decline of America. Unproven, in my view; that BAD behavior and taste (as well as bad behavior) was always more popular than good behavior and taste was already well-known to Plato. But one can ignore the general the-country-is-going-down-the-tubes thesis, and instead enjoy Fussell's acid wit and amusing, if somewhat scary, examples.

I had to nod, and chuckle, and grin, and finally get out of bed for a smoke in the middle of reading this book. The reason for the nods, chuckles, and grins should be obvious to anyone who picks this book up: kitsch is always easy to laugh at. And American kitsch is even easier to laugh at because I'm accustomed to it. But then, somewhere, in the middle of the laughs, Fussell gets pretentious. That's when I took the smoke break.

Here's what happened: in the chapter "BAD Colleges and Universities," Fussell argues (essentially) that degrees from colleges outside the IV Leagues are BAD, but degrees from stodgy old Eastern Seaboard Colleges are good. Why? Because state colleges and universities focus too much on creating professionals, and too little on imparting intelligence. I couldn't agree more with this last point. But we absolutely must recall that the IV Leagues (Harvard, Yale, and so on) crank out most of the bad players in our culture, in addition to the good ones. Both Bushes, for example, graduated from Yale. I think we can probably find a state school student who knows more about the classics than they do.

(I could talk about the way the way the Bennetton family managed to convince a friend of mine during a lecture at Harvard that THEIR brand of globalization is good because THEY donate to Buddhist temples, but I won't. Anyway, does the idea that a single clothing line should be a way of "uniting colors [nationalities]" suggest a ubiquitous European kind of BAD?)

Further, Fussell's argument in this regard absolutely contradicts itself. He lambasts small (or new) schools for focusing on athletics over academics, as he should. But he fails to remind us that the IV Leagues (all the schools he elevates to heavenly levels) got that name (and a lot of their dollars) from their at one time excellent football teams. Yes, Harvard and Yale are "Ivy" League schools because of sports, not academics. Check out the Harvard application online some time, too. They actually ask if you're blue blood! Inbreeding makes smarts?

This is not to say that the academics at the IVs aren't great, if the students want them to be. But the students from his model schools are also perfectly capable of being idiots. And students from state schools are perfectly capable of being ingenious.

Further, Fussell fails to remind us how much of the bad actually CAME FROM the "top" schools. Currently they're cranking out people called "cultural critics." In case you're not up on the latest, these cats aren't "critics" at all, and some of them have even managed to convince their friends that Madonna is an important feminist symbol.

Ironically, the so-called "BAD" state schools have resisted the trends toward academic doublethink, and it's often at those schools that a student gets to read, and APPRECIATE, the classics of thought and literature Fussell rightly praises.

Further, Fussell fails to distinguish between tacky and BAD. For example, if the Franklin Mint is BAD, what does that make the Federal Reserve? If Stallone movies are bad, what does that make Hollywood? I would say that Stallone movies are tacky, but Hollywood is BAD. The Franklin mint is tacky, but the Federal Reserve is BAD. Most of what you'll find in this book relates what is tacky in American culture, and that's not really going to help anyone progress culturally, or politically. This must be a book for the self-hating middle class. If you want to know what's BAD in American culture, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere. May I recommend checking out the Freedom Press and some free Jello Biafra MP3s that are lying around the Internet?

Yes, it was a worthwhile cigarette.

In the eight years between his insightful and trenchant "Class" (1983) and this book, Prof. Fussell has evidently come to the conclusion that the only way to get a message across to the American public is to shout at them. This is simply "Class" sectioned up into bite-sized bits, given larger print, boldfaced introductions, and a more hostile edge. Some of the book makes its points well - BAD poetry, BAD airports, BAD books, BAD movies, BAD universities (although he possesses a patrician disdain for any university outside the Ivies or their peers) - but the outrage is less compelling than his besumed take on American culture in " Class". I didn't always like his former book but at least there his observations on American cultural practices tied neatly into his thesis on their class-based character, but here an original thesis is non-existent. BAD is simply a synonym for "kitsch" - substitute the two words and Fussell's BAD becomes a tired rehash of elite American cultural criticism but made easier to read and quickier to digest. In other words, BAD is BAD Criticism - it gives the appearance of a serious and penetrating work but is geared (rather contemptuously) toward a mass audience apparently too dull to read anything that may contain a dependent clause. It's rather sad to see an intelligent critic fall victim to the disease he decries but Fussell has managed to go from "The Great War and Modern Memory" to this undisciplined rant in a mere twenty years and that's too BAD.

I was considering two different ways of reviewing this book.

First, I was going to give it 4 stars and say that Fussell's unabashedly elitist cynicism and satire comes as a great breath of frest air in our present age of delusional overvaluation of what is in fact garbage - i.e., "universities" of utter educational decrepitude, and books worth no more than the paper on which they are printed being apt examples mentioned by Fussell.

But at the same time, "BAD" falls into its own trap, as it is of questionable value itself! It is quite breezy and does not really go into to roots or even the full nature of our society's current state of cultural mob rule. It also relies on the weight of Fussell's opinion, which is why Fussell's works have always been little more than little funy snippets of snobbery. In the end, his argument comes down to, "I am better educated than you, so I am right." Which I really don't have a problem with, other than this book is kind of lame. "Class" by Fussell is equally objectionable and offensive to democratic values while being considerably more insightful and amusing.

Paul Fussell is so sarcastic and fabulous that I want to adopt him. His other book, Class, is the best book of all time for people with "enquiring minds". However, I started to feel silly carrying the same worn book to places where I was held captive: airplaines, hair salons, other people's cars, etc., so I bought the book, BAD. It is clearly an addendum to Class, and it makes me laugh out loud almost as much. NO ONE SHOULD CONSIDER THEMSELVES A TRUE AMERICAN, until they understand both Class and BAD! (Dear Mr. Fussell, please write much, much more before you go to that Great Editor in the Sky. We have current problems which need addressing!)