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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
What do Humphrey Bogart with a cigarette, Bertholt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich's cheekbones, Billie Holiday, James Dean, Lenny Bruce's irony, Eldridge Cleaver, Chrissie Hinde, heroin and gangsta rap all have in common? They are, for lack of a more precise word, cool. Taking their cue from Susan Sontag's germinal 1964 essay "Notes on Camp," Pountain and Robins attempt to delineate that ambiguous and elusive entity, a cultural sensibility. Declining to investigate the "ontological status" of cool ("is it a philosophy, a sensibility, a religion, an ideology... an attitude, a zeitgeist?"), they claim that we all know cool "when we see it." Their working definition is that "cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals to express defiance to authority"Aand while this might seem obvious, the pleasure of their brief, elucidating study is in the delicious details. Casting their net widely, to include films like Trainspotting, Hollywood icons, obscure books (e.g., an Italian Renaissance etiquette guide), British punk bands, Dadaists, pornography, the American Beats and gay sensibilityAthey chart how rebellions against standards of sexuality, gender, race, class, artificiality and "decency" lead to coolness. The most adventurous and insightful aspect of their investigation emerges when they trace a concept of "cool" back to the ancient Yoruba and other West African cultures. This is a cool book on cool.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
See all Editorial Reviews
What do Humphrey Bogart with a cigarette, Bertholt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich's cheekbones, Billie Holiday, James Dean, Lenny Bruce's irony, Eldridge Cleaver, Chrissie Hinde, heroin and gangsta rap all have in common? They are, for lack of a more precise word, cool. Taking their cue from Susan Sontag's germinal 1964 essay "Notes on Camp," Pountain and Robins attempt to delineate that ambiguous and elusive entity, a cultural sensibility. Declining to investigate the "ontological status" of cool ("is it a philosophy, a sensibility, a religion, an ideology... an attitude, a zeitgeist?"), they claim that we all know cool "when we see it." Their working definition is that "cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals to express defiance to authority"Aand while this might seem obvious, the pleasure of their brief, elucidating study is in the delicious details. Casting their net widely, to include films like Trainspotting, Hollywood icons, obscure books (e.g., an Italian Renaissance etiquette guide), British punk bands, Dadaists, pornography, the American Beats and gay sensibilityAthey chart how rebellions against standards of sexuality, gender, race, class, artificiality and "decency" lead to coolness. The most adventurous and insightful aspect of their investigation emerges when they trace a concept of "cool" back to the ancient Yoruba and other West African cultures. This is a cool book on cool.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
Cool Rules introduces the reader to a new cultural category. While the authors do not claim to have discovered Cool, they believe they are the first to attempt a serious, systematic analysis of Cool's history, psychology, and importance.
The contemporary Cool attitude is barely 50 years old, but its roots are older than that. Cool Rules traces Cool's ancient origins in European, Asian, and African cultures, its prominence in the African-American jazz scene of the 1940s, and its pivotal position within the radical subcultures of the 1950s and '60s. Pountain and Robins examine various art movements, music, cinema, and literature, moving from the dandies and flâneurs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through to the expropriation of a whole cultural and psychological tradition by the media in the 1980s and '90s. What began as a rebellious posture adopted by minorities mutated to become mainstream itself. Cool is now primarily about consumption, as cynical advertisers have seized on it to create a constantly updated bricolage of styles and entertainments designed to affect the way people think about themselves and their society.
The contemporary Cool attitude is barely 50 years old, but its roots are older than that. Cool Rules traces Cool's ancient origins in European, Asian, and African cultures, its prominence in the African-American jazz scene of the 1940s, and its pivotal position within the radical subcultures of the 1950s and '60s. Pountain and Robins examine various art movements, music, cinema, and literature, moving from the dandies and flâneurs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through to the expropriation of a whole cultural and psychological tradition by the media in the 1980s and '90s. What began as a rebellious posture adopted by minorities mutated to become mainstream itself. Cool is now primarily about consumption, as cynical advertisers have seized on it to create a constantly updated bricolage of styles and entertainments designed to affect the way people think about themselves and their society.
See all Editorial Reviews
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Look Inside This Book
Citations
(learn more)
10
books
cite this book:
- Matrix of Meanings, A: Finding God in Pop Culture (Engaging Culture) by Craig Detweiler on page 119, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Blessed Are the Uncool: Living Authentically in a World of Show by Paul Grant on page 14, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Capoeira: The History of Afro-Brazilian Martial Art (Sport in the Global Society, 45) by Matthi Assunção in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing by Alex Wipperfurth in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Cool Men and the Second Sex (Gender and Culture Series) by Susan Fraiman in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)