Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler
by Thomas Frank (Editor, Introduction), Matt Weiland (Introduction)
Baffler Books (1)
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In the "old" Gilded Age, the barons of business accumulated vast wealth and influence from their railroads, steel mills, and banks. But today it is culture that stands at the heart of the American enterprise, mass entertainment the economic dynamo that brings the public into the consuming fold and consolidates the power of business over the American mind. For a decade The Baffler has been the invigorating voice of dissent against these developments, in the grand tradition of the muckrakers show more and The American Mercury. This collection gathers the best of its writing to explore such peculiar developments as the birth of the rebel hero as consumer in the pages of Wired and Details; the ever-accelerating race to market youth culture; the rise of new business gurus like Tom Peters and the fad for Hobbesian corporate "reengineering"; and the encroachment of advertising and commercial enterprise into every last nook and cranny of American life. With its liberating attitude and cant-free intelligence, this book is a powerful polemic against the designs of the culture business on us all. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Enraging & inspiring to see Thomas Frank et all call our current "disruption," weakening of labor organization, culture trust etc etc years before it was our present reality. The final essay, "Dark Age," is required reading.
A series of essays whose titles tell the story. "The Rebel Consumer", "Consolidated Deviance Inc", "Alternative to What." Slightly older than a decade, this wonderful collection actually makes us long for the time when people pretended to be different. A good read.
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- Original title
- Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler
- Alternate titles
- Salvos from The Baffler
- Original publication date
- 1997
- People/Characters
- Quentin Tarantino; Donna Tartt
- Important places
- Orange County, California, USA
- Epigraph
- the law stares across the desk out of angry eyes his face reddens in splotches like a gobbler's neck with the strut of the power of submachineguns sawedoffshotguns teargas and vommitgas the power that can feed you or leave yo... (show all)u to starve.
sits easy at his desk his back covered he feels strong behind him he feels the prosecutingattorney the judge an owner himself the political boss the minesuperintendent the board of directors the president of the utility the manipulator of the holdingcompany
he lifts his hand toward the telephone
the deputies crowd in the door
we have only words against
--John Dos Passos, The Big Money - First words
- Other than The Baffler, I can think of no American journal of opinion--leftist, new age, Ultra, post-modern, Jacobin, conservative, monarchist, evangelical, legitimist, new-gothic--that could credibly describe its essa... (show all)ys and criticisms as "salvos."
--Foreword - Quotations
- The Business of Culture in the New Gilded Age
--quotation from cover - Original language
- English US
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- 410
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- 75,711
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.93)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
