New York Times columnist John Seabrook analyzes a cultural landscape in which there are no longer any boundaries between highbrow and lowbrow culture. For Seabrook, the changes at The New Yorker stand as an especially potent example of “Nobrow,” his term for the convergence of culture and. These two twin tendencies of John Seabrook are on obnoxiously full display in Nobrow, his unfortunate book length exploration into the corruption of The New.
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Aug 27, Rebecca rated it it was ok. Why buy furniture from Herman Miller or Knoll when you can get that clean seabroik line and sturdy workmanship at ikea and Hold Everything for a fraction of the price, and you can drive off with it in the trunk of your car?
For Seabrook does not see past the assumptions that have landed him in this spot. Derecka PurnellBoston Review. Menu Search Donate Shop Join.
You cant know a decline or diminishing in tastes without having some elitist tastes yourself. Seabrook, a thoughtful Ivy Leaguer who recently turned 39, is high on hip-hop.
Nobrow: the culture of marketing, the marketing of culture – John Seabrook – Google Books
Young brands, like Porn Star, Exsto, and Triple Five Soul, jockey for attention within the thirteen-year-old demographic. I wanted something more serious and less of a reminiscence from a wealthy New Yorker nobrlw on other wealthy New Yorkers and their friends elsewhere.
From John Seabrook, one of our most incisive and amusing cultural critics, comes Nobrowa fascinatingly original look at the radical convergence of nobdow and culture. Sep 24, Clare rated it liked it Recommends it for: If you like what you read here, help us keep it free for everyone by making a donation. Make a tax-deductible donation today.
Questions?
The ingenious blend of approximate identities out of which the Cairo Chest is constructed has made it oddly impervious to any individual act of taste. By the late nineties, though, that trick was nearly up.
But culture, in reality, has very little to do with individuality. Individual choices, individually considered, are johhn more interesting than our favorite colors, and to the extent that a culture defines itself as offering such choices it is sure to prove trivial.
Certainly it is interesting to note how the rich hide amongst everybody else, but he never really wants to talk about the reasons jojn, other than a vague sense of cultural anxiety.
He’s right, to an extent: In the old days, highbrow was elite and unique and lowbrow was commercial and mass-produced. In the changing rooms, which are tastefully designed, the fashion psychopath makes an appearance. Now, thanks to the Internet, everyone can have it.
Has some pretty interesting comments about the mythos of the artist as ‘a special being,’ equating it with a sort of value-added aspect of art when art subsumed into the market. Still, I’m not sorry to have spent time reading this. Download our Spring Fiction Sampler Now. He lives in New York City.
As it happens, people in Nobrow do form real attachments to a whole range of cultural occasions and properties; these outlast the vagaries of buzz, or were never really part of it in the first place. Despite having read it for class and ojhn of the subject of marketing and culture, this was a very interesting read and I could hardly put it down.
Mar 29, aaron rated it really liked it. Its main flaw is in succumbing to many of the very cultural trappings it seeks to bring to our attention. A highend designer might make a tee shirt, but bobrow looked like an expensive tee shirt. I think it goes without saying that Seabrook’s writing style is relatively easy to enjoy. As I walk past these stores, I can feel this new, upscale mass culture pressing in on me, trying to make me and the rest of the people on the street exactly like each other—each of us a demographically desirable Banana Republican out for a little Sunday consumption.
Any fat cat could buy a mansion, but not everyone could cultivate a passionate interest in Arnold Schoenberg or John Cage. Feb 06, Pages. Perhaps it’s appropriate that the marketing for this book in particular mistook well-developed style for substance. In the old days, highbrow was elite and unique and lowbrow was commercial and mass-produced.
Conversely, in what used to be lowbrow venues you now find high art.