Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from "The Baffler"

by Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland

Book Overview

In the old Gilded Age, the barons of business accumulated vast wealth and influence from their railroads, steel mills, and banks. But today it is culture that stands at the heart of the American enterprise, mass entertainment the economic dynamo that brings the public into the consuming fold and consolidates the power of business over the American mind. For a decade The Baffler has been the invigorating voice of dissent against these developments,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393316734
• ISBN13: 9780393316735
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.4" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Insiteful and funny

This collection of essays provides a gutsy, incisive, and energetic critique of American consumer culture that surpasses and even ridicules the limp, flaccid, self-referential verbiage that academics try to pass off as a "radical", and "critical" examination of culture and power. "Commodify Your Dissent" is a series of critical essays, or "salvos" as the authors prefer to call them, that were printed in The Baffler during the 90's largely in response to the hypocrisy, and gluttony of the America's expanding techno-consumer culture. Using lucid, forthright language, direct examples, and actual critical thinking (not the mental self-gratification generated by tenured radicals) the authors demonstrate how corporate America has commercialized the concept of revolution and employed it along marketing and production guidelines that are-guess what-conformist and conservative. In the 90's culture, as these essays so aptly demonstrate, "free thinking, revolution" and "breaking the rules" really amounted to a double-speak ideology centered around buying more gadgets and helping companies to make more money, a process that was reinforced in words and letters by such "radical" cultural critics as Camille Paglia.This book is bound to anger a lot of readers because, it's gutsy, direct, and ruthless in its battering of the misused tropes and recycled clichés that enable legions of consumers, workers, and managers to feel like they're breaking the rules when in fact they are merely conforming to and reinforcing them. I know it's a hard fact to face, but buying a recycled pair of bell-bottoms is not an act of rebellion.

A Welcome Cannon - No Bobos in Paradise

Commodify your Dissent is a collection of essays from the Baffler magazine. The essays are social critiques of Mass Media and corporate and consumer culture. They have the sarchastic and hilarious style of H.L. Mencken and, like the latter's work, they end up exposing many false 'truths'. The quality of the writing is excellent, i became extremely envious. My favorite section was The Culture of Business and the critique of businees literature. there are also critiques of commercial grunge music, packaging of artists (one of my favorite essays, exposes pretentious writing for what it is), elites and youth consumerism. You'll learn and laugh. I enjoyed this book so much that I bouught other titles from Thomas Frank and subscribed to the Baffler.

The perfect date - smart, funny, inspiring and cheap

With topics from the lottery, the music industry, and the co-opting of rebellion, all in layman's [sic] terms, this book is a bargain at twice the price. Forget what critics have said: From solid reasons against cultural studies (which tends to look at what college professors consider "alternative," aka Lauryn Hill instead of Chopin), to how corporations control what you read and hear and how to fight back, and the fact that this can all be communicated in simple language makes this brilliant gem so much more precious.

Superb Critque of Contemporary American Culture

I've just finished reading the six or seven preceding reviews and have little to add because I strongly agree with virtually all the comments made. So at the risk of wasting more of your time, I'll say this is clearly the best book I've read in the last two years (Of course, this statement is of limited value because you have no way of knowing what my reading habits are like.) In addition to superb content, many of the articles are riddled with memorable phrases. This does not mean the collection of essays is flawless. As others have mentioned, some of the (earlier) essays are downright adolescent, with a strictly antithetical viewpoint. A few others seem to suffer from a somewhat simplistic Marxist slant. But even these make fine use of language. Of the 20+ essays the majority are incisive excoriations of contemporary, market-dominated American culture. It's very likely this book will surprise, entertain, invigorate, and inform you. I also think you'll find Tom Vanderbilt's pieces particularly worthwhile.

Faboo!

I found it purely by chance while wandering Borders in a deep blue funk. Definately the source of my happiest moments in a long time. My only reservation about the book is that it is very short on suggestions and/or solutions. Still, for putting the truth out there, many MANY thanks. A book that could change your life, or at least make you cancel your subscription to Details and try to end your slavery to corporate "alternative" culture.