From Publishers Weekly
The connection between yesterday's Victorian dime-novel denizens and today's African American rap fans, Culture Club's sudden rise to fame in the early 1980s and the demise of the Golden Age of Hollywood are just a few of the fascinating topics tackled in this analysis of popular culture from revolutionary times to the present. Cullen, who teaches history and literature at Harvard and is the author of The Civil War in Popular Culture, shows how cultural innovations are often developed by marginalized populations and (after initial rejection by cultural elites) trickle into the mainstream. Juicy details of representative people or events (e.g., the 1849 Astor Place theater riot, the band Los Lobos) accompany each chapter. Cullen's articulate prose is spiced with wicked wit and he loves a good story. He is also tolerant of the ambiguities inherent in popular culture; his treatment of the rise and fall of minstrel shows demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of complex cultural forces. Cullen looks at popular art not as escapism but as valuable work in its own right, an approach that makes The Art of Democracy a thoroughly engaging look at American culture.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This second book by Cullen (following The Civil War in Popular Culture, Smithsonian, 1995), a Harvard professor whose reviews have appeared in Rolling Stone, is an exceptionally well-written and engrossing introduction to the nonelitist art forms of American popular culture. His subjects encompass the history of the chapbook, the novel, and the mass press as well as fascinating coverage of antebellum performing arts, examining African American slave music vs. minstrelsy. Each of the six chapters has an in-depth topic, such as the humor of Bert Williams or a closer look at Chaplin and Billie Holliday, but broader views develop. A central theme to this study of the popular and profane is the frequency of black traditions and imagination revitalizing U.S. culture. The early feminist novel and the movies, Nat King Cole and Elvis, country music and Milli Vanilli, and the PC and popular culture all coexist with ease in this work that will be of considerable interest to scholars and general readers alike. Highly recommended.?Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
