Customer Reviews

Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America

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This text was required for a course in Mass Media and Culture. I have read many books on this very topic and find that Twitchell has some good things to offer to the discussion. However, it is horribly written. The writing is reminiscent of a college sophmore's english term paper. The chapters are long and grossly unorganized. He repeats his points, is unjudicious in the selection of his quotes, and includes superflous examples from the media with little to no connection. In short, this is an ideal example of how NOT to write.

Given the provocative title, I expected to find a full-blown critique of the state of our current culture and just how it got that way. Was I ever wrong: the book was overblown and there was no critique. Nor was there a defense of today's culture. While the book was good at explaining today's culture and its history (particularly the development of the paperback book), there is no follow-up. As one earlier reviewer perceptively noted, it's as if the author was merely writing a term paper. And nowhere is this more evident than in his description of professional wrestling, which he seems to have researched solely on his television set. As if to provide a bit of validity to this exposition, he includes a lengthy quote from Rolaand Barthes' essay on wrestling. Nice, except that Barthes doesn't know what he's talking about, either, and something I would expect from a term paper, not a book. The sections on wrestling and movies only serve to date the book rather badly, and without any sort of conclusions or judgments, the book dates as badly as an issue of Life magazine, only it lacks any nostalgia value. Skip this one and read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death instead (which, by the way, the author does critique; dismissing it as a mere jeremiad.) If you must buy this tome, buy it on the cheap; your disappointment will then be less.

This is a fantastic book for those interested in the forgotten, often-belittled world of mainstream popular culture. Although at times Twitchell seems to have a negative take on the world of Stephen King, the WWF, and Barnum himself, I found this world fascinating, even, strangely, inspiring.

There's very little written on this subject-the steady decline and vulgarization of taste values in mass media. As Mr Twitchell states, the word 'vulgar' is losing it's meaning due to the tidal wave of vulgarity which inundates our culture.

The trends which now dominate American culture were presciently beheld when they were still far more difficult to perceive in the early 90s, when the book was written. This is, by far, the best book on the subject I know of. It was written before the muzzle of PC was strapped onto American discourse.

Despite its title, this book reads more like a celebration of commercialism rather than objective criticism of it. A reader can be excused if he is seriously tempted to scribble in the margins "commercialism run amok," "mindless consumerism," or "don't you mean to say 'sterile materialism'"? The main problem seems to be that the author is unwilling to pass judgment on the mass of details he presents. In my opinion, another serious mistake is the author's belief that exportation of American popular culture has similarly debased art and popular taste all around the world. What an exaggeration! Exported American entertainment, rather extensive, to be sure, is hardly sufficient in itself to trash other countries' culture--France is an excellent case in point.The best sections of this book offer insight into the emphasis on the blockbuster movie, the bestseller and the musical hit. However, I only recommend this book to readers interested in pop culture trivia.

Twitchell, although he does bring an interesting point of view to the world of media theory, "trashes" his own book in a brain fart whereby he endlessly spews numbers, figures, and statistical information to the reader at an inconceivable rate. If you're looking for stats as opposed to critical analyse - this book's for you.