Ryan mentioned the Merchants of Cool during his lecture today. It's a great little documentary that shows how the corporate culture has now become a corporate vulture. You can watch it at the link above in small streaming segments from the filmmakers website, or watch the entire film at this link here.
How do you become an expert in contemporary culture, society or culture in general? How do these guys like Arnold, Leavis, Hogart, Williams and Hall rise to a point where people are looking to them for the definition of what part of culture is good and what part is bad? An overview of where culture has moved to and from in industrialization, working-class culture, and mass-produced culture is interesting -- but it further begs the question of why I should listen to these guys?
The idea that anything mass-produced destroys local cultures is the most solid one that seems to come from a objective context that is looking at the outcomes and statistics of particular cultures, versus a the anthropologists and sociologists listed above who seemingly study from a subjective standpoint.
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