![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Matt Hills, How To Do Things with Cultural Theory: This is not the book I thought it was going to be. Hills spends a chapter on what culture is and another on what theory is, and he’s basically writing about theory as a fandom. The form of the book is ostensibly addressed to students who are trying to do well in cultural theory classes, but I have a really hard time imagining a student who doesn’t already know at least academic habits of thought, if not the cultural theory literature, getting much out of it. The writing, as typical with Hills, is dense, but whereas I found Fan Cultures ultimately rewarding, this book was too insular and self-referential to be helpful to me.
Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: A terrifying study of marketing to children and its systematic effects on their values, health and happiness. Schor interviewed a number of marketers for this, and they seem generally to agree that their work was destructive to society, but no one was willing to stop because if they didn’t do it, someone else would. Schor amasses persuasive evidence that advertisers are deliberately making things more difficult for parents, setting consumption up as the source of independence, cool, and other valuable things and encouraging kids to think of themselves as inherently in conflict with parents. Saying it’s parents’ responsibility to say no to their kids is ridiculous and unfair when society has abandoned its support for that type of discipline. Schor has also done empirical work suggesting a causal, not just correlational, relationship between exposure to advertising and kids’ self-images. The more ads you watch, the more stuff you want and the worse you feel about yourself. Individuals can try to keep their kids out of this vicious cycle, but what are you going to do about other people’s kids? Only social change will help.
Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction): People say they want more choices, but the more choices they have, the more difficulty they have taking action. To take a disturbing and counterintuitive example, when an employer offers more 401(k) plans, that decreases the number of people who save money for retirement. The more choices we have, the harder it is to decide between them, and the more likely it is that we’ll feel regret for passing up the other options. That’s why ritualized patterns of behavior that limit choices can produce happiness for the average person. The problem is that each of us is only mostly average, and extra choice in something – whether it be food, clothing, sexual partners, or something else – will make us happy even as it just generates angst for other people. The way to manage modern choices is to embrace “satisficing,” looking for something that’s good enough rather than perfect. Everyone does that in at least some aspects of life, and if you do it most of the time you will get the benefits of choice without the downsides. (If you want, you can watch Schwartz give an hour-long lecture covering most of the points of this book.)
Jon Stewart, Naked Pictures of Famous People: If you saw The Aristocrats, you may remember Jon Stewart saying that he doesn’t tell jokes. Apparently, he also doesn’t write very funny material on his own. I love The Daily Show passionately, but this collection of celebrity-focused fantasies, speculations, and I-don’t-know-what is bad. Stewart tries to parody various types of texts, from transcripts to diaries to books, but nothing works, from his “inside look” at the Kennedy family to his recipe for an awards ceremony.
Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: A terrifying study of marketing to children and its systematic effects on their values, health and happiness. Schor interviewed a number of marketers for this, and they seem generally to agree that their work was destructive to society, but no one was willing to stop because if they didn’t do it, someone else would. Schor amasses persuasive evidence that advertisers are deliberately making things more difficult for parents, setting consumption up as the source of independence, cool, and other valuable things and encouraging kids to think of themselves as inherently in conflict with parents. Saying it’s parents’ responsibility to say no to their kids is ridiculous and unfair when society has abandoned its support for that type of discipline. Schor has also done empirical work suggesting a causal, not just correlational, relationship between exposure to advertising and kids’ self-images. The more ads you watch, the more stuff you want and the worse you feel about yourself. Individuals can try to keep their kids out of this vicious cycle, but what are you going to do about other people’s kids? Only social change will help.
Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction): People say they want more choices, but the more choices they have, the more difficulty they have taking action. To take a disturbing and counterintuitive example, when an employer offers more 401(k) plans, that decreases the number of people who save money for retirement. The more choices we have, the harder it is to decide between them, and the more likely it is that we’ll feel regret for passing up the other options. That’s why ritualized patterns of behavior that limit choices can produce happiness for the average person. The problem is that each of us is only mostly average, and extra choice in something – whether it be food, clothing, sexual partners, or something else – will make us happy even as it just generates angst for other people. The way to manage modern choices is to embrace “satisficing,” looking for something that’s good enough rather than perfect. Everyone does that in at least some aspects of life, and if you do it most of the time you will get the benefits of choice without the downsides. (If you want, you can watch Schwartz give an hour-long lecture covering most of the points of this book.)
Jon Stewart, Naked Pictures of Famous People: If you saw The Aristocrats, you may remember Jon Stewart saying that he doesn’t tell jokes. Apparently, he also doesn’t write very funny material on his own. I love The Daily Show passionately, but this collection of celebrity-focused fantasies, speculations, and I-don’t-know-what is bad. Stewart tries to parody various types of texts, from transcripts to diaries to books, but nothing works, from his “inside look” at the Kennedy family to his recipe for an awards ceremony.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject