Carnival Culture

James B. Twitchell teaches English and advertising at the University of Florida in Gainesville. His many books include Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture and Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism, both published by Columbia.

• Untended gates - the triumph of vulgarity in an age of show business; paperbacked culture - how candles became shoes; peepshow America - Hollywood and popular taste; programming television - reflections on the electronic midway; vulgarity victorious - the collapse of cultural hierarchy in postmodern America.

[Twitchell cites] numerous examples of crassness, inanity and sheer disregard for the idea of quality in publishing, television, and the movies... A veritable catalogue of vulgarity. New York Times Book Review Vividly dissects American entertainment. Newsweek More horrifying than anything Stephen King could concoct. San Francisco Chronicle Twitchell is on to something when he argues that democracy has canonized a new culture as, driven by the will of the majority, books have given ways to movies, which in turn have been usurped by TV in a canon he describes as 'carnival culture.'... Twitchell shows that the mass media, a forum for our common concerns and anxieties, have made possible the ascent of the tastes of the young and the unsophisticated to cultural dominance. Publishers Weekly