Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America
YA-- Are the three great purveyors of mass culture in the U. S.--book publishing, motion pictures, and television--creating a culture that glorifies the vulgar and the mediocre at the expense of worthwhile qualities in American life? According to the author of this often humorous and sarcastic but cogently reasoned book, the answer, unfortunately, is ``Yes.'' Surveying a vast wasteland of American pop culture through a trail of such icons as professional wrestling, Madonna, Stephen King novels, and ``America's Funniest Home Videos,'' Twitchell believes that the media has raised the ``low-brow'' to a level of respectability that excludes what used to be high brow from American life. This is a provocative book that should get the attention of YA readers, who are, the author maintains, the major target and biggest fans of the new ``trash'' culture.- Richard Lisker, Fairfax County Public Library, Fairfax,Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.