American Culture, American Tastes

American Culture, American Tastes PDF Author: Michael Kammen
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307827712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them. Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades. Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion. An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century.

American Culture, American Tastes

American Culture, American Tastes PDF Author: Michael Kammen
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307827712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them. Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades. Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion. An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century.

Tabloid Culture

Tabloid Culture PDF Author: Kevin Glynn
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822325697
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
An examination of the rise of tabloid television and the political, cultural, and technological changes that have enabled its success.

A Taste for Pop

A Taste for Pop PDF Author: Cécile Whiting
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521450041
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
When Pop Art paintings depicted Campbell soup cans or comic-book scenes of teen romance, did they stoop to the level of their mundane sources, or did they instead transform the detritus of consumer culture into high art? In this study, Ccile Whiting declares this issue fundamentally irresolvable and instead takes the question itself, along with the varied answers it has generated, as the object of her analysis. Whiting presents case studies that focus on works by four artists - Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Marisol Escobar - who are closely associated with the Pop Art movement. Throughout her engaging analyses, Whiting unravels the gendered overtones of their cultural manoeuvrings, noting how the connotations of masculinity as attached to the seriousness of high art, and the presumed frivolity and caprice of a feminine world of consumption repositioned cultural frontiers and reformulated the relation between sexes.

Republic of Taste

Republic of Taste PDF Author: Catherine E. Kelly
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812292952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Since the early decades of the eighteenth century, European, and especially British, thinkers were preoccupied with questions of taste. Whether Americans believed that taste was innate—and therefore a marker of breeding and station—or acquired—and thus the product of application and study—all could appreciate that taste was grounded in, demonstrated through, and confirmed by reading, writing, and looking. It was widely believed that shared aesthetic sensibilities connected like-minded individuals and that shared affinities advanced the public good and held great promise for the American republic. Exploring the intersection of the early republic's material, visual, literary, and political cultures, Catherine E. Kelly demonstrates how American thinkers acknowledged the similarities between aesthetics and politics in order to wrestle with questions about power and authority. Judgments about art, architecture, literature, poetry, and the theater became an arena for considering political issues ranging from government structures and legislative representation to qualifications for citizenship and the meaning of liberty itself. Additionally, if taste prompted political debate, it also encouraged affinity grounded in a shared national identity. In the years following independence, ordinary women and men reassured themselves that taste revealed larger truths about an individual's character and potential for republican citizenship. Did an early national vocabulary of taste, then, with its privileged visuality, register beyond the debates over the ratification of the Constitution? Did it truly extend beyond political and politicized discourse to inform the imaginative structures and material forms of everyday life? Republic of Taste affirms that it did, although not in ways that anyone could have predicted at the conclusion of the American Revolution.

American Foodie

American Foodie PDF Author: Dwight Furrow
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442249307
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
As nutrition, food is essential, but in today’s world of excess, a good portion of the world has taken food beyond its functional definition to fine art status. From celebrity chefs to amateur food bloggers, individuals take ownership of the food they eat as a creative expression of personality, heritage, and ingenuity. Dwight Furrow examines the contemporary fascination with food and culinary arts not only as global spectacle, but also as an expression of control, authenticity, and playful creation for individuals in a homogenized, and increasingly public, world.

Carnival Culture

Carnival Culture PDF Author: James B. Twitchell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231078313
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Examines the changes in publishing, movie making, and television programming since the 1960s that have affected Americans' tastes.

The Taste of America

The Taste of America PDF Author: Colman Andrews
Publisher: Phaidon Press
ISBN: 9780714865829
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
America is a melting pot, with a palate as diverse as its various cultures. This quality is reflected nowhere better than in our own kitchen pantries. So, what does America taste like? The Taste of America is the first and only compendium of the best food made in the U.S.A. Here, award-winning food writer and passionate eater Colman Andrews presents 250 of the best regional products from coast to coast, including Humboldt Fog Cheese, Blue Point Oysters, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Whoopie Pies, Meyer Lemons, Kreuz's Sausage, Anson Mill Grits, and more. Divided into chapters according to food type - snacks, dairy, condiments, meat, baked goods, and desserts - this anthology of edible Americana reveals each product's unique history. The Taste of America features 125 color illustrations, as well as an extensive index that details how to purchase these beloved foods.

Discriminating Taste

Discriminating Taste PDF Author: S. Margot Finn
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813576881
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to eat: processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food. Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads. Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser, Finn identifies the key ways that “good food” has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class’s larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.

Putting Meat on the American Table

Putting Meat on the American Table PDF Author: Roger Horowitz
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801882401
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
How did meat become such a popular food among Americans? And why did the popularity of some types of meat increase or decrease? Putting Meat on the American Table explains how America became a meat-eating nation - from the colonial period to the present. It examines the relationships between consumer preference and meat processing - looking closely at the production of beef, pork, chicken, and hot dogs. Roger Horowitz argues that a series of new technologies have transformed American meat - sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. He draws on detailed consumption surveys that shed new light on America's eating preferences - especially differences associated with income, rural versus urban areas, and race and ethnicity. Engagingly written, richly illustrated, and abundant with first-hand accounts and quotes from period sources, Putting Meat on the American Table will captivate general readers and interest all students of the history of food, technology, business, and American culture.

Cultural Excursions

Cultural Excursions PDF Author: Neil Harris
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226317588
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Selected essays written over a period of fifteen years.