Commercial Culture

Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude toward the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema. Successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and prosperous popular culture. Shakespeare and Mozart were highly popular in their own time. Beethoven's later, less accessible music was made possible in part by his early popularity. Today, consumer demand ensures that archival blues recordings, a wide array of past and current symphonies, and this week's Top 40 hit sit side by side in the music megastore. High and low culture indeed complement each other. Cowen's philosophy of cultural optimism stands in opposition to the many varieties of cultural pessimism found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt School, and some versions of the political correctness and multiculturalist movements, as well as historical figures, including Rousseau and Plato. He shows that even when contemporary culture is thriving, it appears degenerate, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of pessimism. He ends by considering the reasons why cultural pessimism has such a powerful hold on intellectuals and opinion-makers.

American mass media are the world's most diverse, rich, and free. Their dazzling resources, variety, and influence arouse envy in other countries. Their failures are commonly excused on the grounds that they are creatures of the market, that they give people what they want. 'Commercial Culture' focuses not on the glories of the media, but on what is wrong with them and why, and how they may be made better. This powerful critique of American mass communication highlights four trends that sound an urgent call for reform: the blurring of distinctions among traditional media and between individual and mass communication; the increasing concentration of media control in a disturbingly small number of powerful organizations; the shift from advertisers to consumers as the source of media revenues; and the growing confusion of information and entertainment, of the real and the imaginary. The future direction of the media, Leo Bogart contends, should not be left to market forces alone. He shows how the public's appetite for media differs from other demands the market is left to satisfy because of how profoundly the media shape the public's character and values. Bogart concludes that a world of new communications technology requires a coherent national media policy, respectful of the American tradition of free expression and subject to vigorous public scrutiny and debate. 'Commercial Culture' is a comprehensive analysis of the media as they evolve in a technological age. It will appeal to general readers interested in mass communications, as well as professionals and scholars studying American mass media.

The aim of this book is to offer an informed account of changes in the nature of the relationship between play, media and commercial culture in England through an analysis of play in the 1950s/60s and the present day.

This critique of the American commercial media comes from a writer who has wide experience in both the media business and in academia. Bogart explores how commercial demands affect the substance and form of American media, and argues that the future of the

This study overturns the assumption that it is commerce that works by logical economic models while culture is invoked to explain the behaviour of the international consumer.

This book systematically examines prevailing cultural patterns in contemporary American society. Using information on several thousands of cultural organisations, including elite ones (such as opera and chamber music companies) and popular cultural ones (such as cinemas and live rock concerts), Professor Blau examines the geography of culture, the changing demands for culture, the interdependencies among cultural organisations of different kinds, the nature of labour markets for artists, and the effects of arts subsidies on nonprofit cultural establishments over a ten year period. One of the major conclusions of the book is that the social conditions that support elite and popular culture are increasingly similar over time.

Bringing together children’s literature scholars from China and the United States, this collection provides an introduction to the scope and goals of a field characterized by active but also distinctive scholarship in two countries with very different rhetorical traditions. The volume’s five sections highlight the differences between and overlapping concerns of Chinese and American scholars, as they examine children’s literature with respect to cultural metaphors and motifs, historical movements, authorship, didacticism, important themes, and the current status of and future directions for literature and criticism. Wide-ranging and admirably ambitious in its encouragement of communication between scholars from two major nations, Representing Children in Chinese and U.S. Children’s Literature serves as a model for examining how and why children’s literature, more than many literary forms, circulates internationally.

An international business expert helps you understand and navigate cultural differences in this insightful and practical guide, perfect for both your work and personal life. Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out. In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice.