Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "I was stunned when Mel Gibson's Braveheart won the Oscar for best picture of the year..." (more)
Key Phrases: dominating subjectivity, missing kitchens, conspicuous nose, New York, Unbearable Weight, Kate Moss (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

An attentive critique of both mass-media and philosophical ideologies gets trapped somewhere between the personal and the theoretical. Bordo intermittently lives up to her claim to limn a ``hidden'' life of images--as when she pursues the underlying meanings attached to slenderness in the recent wave of ultra-skinny models, or in her analyses of the representation of sexual harassment and of the continuing sub rosa ghettoization of feminism within ``advanced'' postmodern scholarship. Often, though, as when Bordo (Philosophy/Univ. of Kentucky; Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, 1993) turns to cosmetic surgery or the O.J. Simpson case, she is content with more obvious interpretations, wordily entangled in a suffocating self-narration. The cultural landscape Bordo paints consists largely of the world of produced images in the background and her own reactions in the foreground, and although she pays lip service to the intervening complexity of actual lives and social forces, it has no substantial presence in the book. Thus, a ubiquitous advertising campaign like ``Just Do It'' can be simply read as an encompassing ``ideology'' embraced by contemporary society--exaggerating its real importance and thereby, perhaps, that of criticism like her own. It becomes positively depressing to realize that it's likely, judging by an excruciating essay on the role of theory in her work, that she is in fact among the academic cultural critics who are relatively dedicated to the connection of their work to the real world. A final chapter expanding on the personal references that inflect the whole book's tone, a collective memoir by Bordo and her sisters, is strangled at birth by the mandated topics of ``bodies, place and space.'' As ripe for scrutiny as the avalanche of images around us is, it seems that the prolific academic cultural-studies industry is capable of blowing up nearly as much snow as it clears away. (31 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

"Collects the essays of the brilliant feminist philosopher of everyday life and author of the classic analysis of female body politics, Unbearable Weight. When Bordo deconstructs something, it stays deconstructed." -- Katha Pollitt, The Nation

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 252 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520211014
• ISBN-13: 978-0520211018
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,264,864 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm the author, and I've never done this before...., December 10, 2001

By	S. Bordo (Lexington, Ky USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. (Paperback)

That is, publicly comment on other people's evaluations of my work. I'm usually happy to let others decide the value of my writing...which is why I'm writing this--to encourage readers to judge "Twilight Zones" for themselves rather than on the impression created by the Kirkus Review and the second customer comment on this page. I don't care about the "stars" (I only rated myself because I was asked to.) But I do care about the misleading prominence of comments written by people whom I believe are not in touch with current cultural trends or their impact on our lives. Essays from "Twilight Zones" are being reprinted in first-year textbooks for undergraduate students. Yet the perception that this is an obscure, irrelevant, self-indulgent tome dominates this page. I think that's an extreme misrepresentation....

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The critical implications of everyday life, January 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. (Paperback)

Bordo's Twilight Zones continues the powerful critical trajectory set up by her award-winning Unbearable Weight, showing how media impacts our daily lives in the most intricate ways. More than any other public intellectual writing today, Bordo's writing is a compelling and passionate analysis that clears up many forms of mystification, academic and cultural. This book provides new and complicated ways of understanding contemporary events and how they are created/represented in the mass media, and how these creations in turn work to shape our lives.

5.0 out of 5 stars Twilight Zones, December 17, 2007

By	Michelle Nicole - See all my reviews

This review is from: Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. (Paperback)

I find Bordo's work, as always, resonant and timely. It is a strange experience reading the negative reviews on this site - every time I read Bordo I feel I have happened upon a gem.