Trash Culture: Popular Culture and the Great Tradition

By Richard Keller Simon

Book Overview

Seinfeld as a contemporary adaptation of Etherege's Restoration comedy of manners The Man of Mode ? Friends as a reworking of Shakespeare's romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing ? Star Wars as an adaptation of Spenser's epic poem, The Faerie Queene ? The popular culture that surrounds us in our daily lives bears a striking similarity to some of the great works of literature of the past. In television, movies, magazines, and advertisements we are exposed to many of the same stories as those critics who study the great books of Western literature, but we have simply been encouraged to look at those stories differently. In Trash Culture , Richard K. Simon examines the ways in which the great literature and cultural work of the past has been rewritten for today's consumer society, with supermarket tabloids such as The National Enquirer and celebrity gossip magazines like People serving as contemporary versions of the great dramatic tragedies of the past. Today's advertising repeats the tale of the Golden Age, but inverts the value system of a classic utopia; the shopping mall combines bits and pieces of the great garden styles of Western history, and now adds consumer goods; Playboy magazine revises Castiglione's Renaissance courtesy book, The Book of the Courtier ; and Cosmopolitan magazine revises the women's coming-of-age novels of Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and Edith Wharton. Trash Culture concludes that the great books are alive and well, but simply hidden from the critics. It argues for the linking of high and low for the study and appreciation of each form of literature, and the importance of teaching popular culture alongside books of the great tradition in order to understand the critical context in which the books appear.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520222237
• ISBN13: 9780520222236
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 199 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

postmodernism, wondrous blend of high & low culture

This book was great. Based on the postmodern premise that there is value in both high Culture and low culture, Simon bases his chapters on well-tested (in the Cal Poly classroom where he teaches) theories that many elements of recent culture are easier to interpret when compared and contrasted with High Culture. So, he compares "Star Wars" and "The Faerie Queen", the shopping mall and the formal European garden, Playboy and The Book of the Courtier, Star Trek and Gulliver's Travels. And with each comparison, your eyes grow wide as you see the similarities. It's a wonderful way to evaluate modern cultural production. So, basically, anyone at all open to postmodern ideas will love this book. If you're a strict modernist you will probably hate it, but it'd be good for you to read it ;-)