- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group - Academi (1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0304339547
- ISBN-13: 978-0304339549
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,598,233 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In the 1990s, both politics and pop culture have been dominated by the twin motifs of the victim and the child. This book traces the history of these motifs all the way back to their origins in the counterculture of the '50s and '60s, and concludes that the counterculture, far from being liberatory, has provided a ready-made verbal and visual language for today's victim culture and the authoritarian politics arising from it. The erosion of adulthood is discussed as a pop cultural phenomenon that requires demystification and as a social problem which must be overcome.
Former record producer Andrew Calcutt is currently a commissioning editor at web content providers Cyberia Online, and a contributing editor at LM magazine. As 'The Smoker', he plays in a satirical R&B band and hosts evenings of entertainment and debate in cafes and bars around London. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Are you fed up with people talking about Bagpuss and playing with computer games; grownups reading Harry Potter; do you find kitsch, well, not ironic, just naff? In your 20s do you yearn for more then a life of endless adolescence (but with more money)?
This book will help you to understand why, despite the fact that we should all be deliriously happy with all our leisure time, the ability to do what we want when we want at whatever age we want, ours is a society that is riddled with anxiety and depression and consumed with a desperate search for 'meaning' . Read this and shake off the dead weight of contemporary sensibility, and understand why todays culture is more opressive, anti-intellectual and less progressive then 'straight' and conservative pre-counterculture culture.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this tremendous work the former record producer and journalist, Andrew Calcutt, deftly analyises popular culture, starting with its origins in the "Beats" and the counterculture and demonstrates how its values have become internalised into the contemporary political landscape.
Far from delivering us from oppression, the culture of the draft dodgers and 1960s radicals have emasculated our ability to affect change in our society.
Calcutt demonstrates how pop culture, through for example its use of Victim, Madness and Child motifs, have undermined the values of adulthood and heralded a new era of banal conformity where radical change is off the agenda. Essentially the pop culture of today acts as an authoritarian mould that holds us all back in its derision of rational adult activity.
The book covers much more than can be described in these few lines - suck it and see.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
An outstanding analysis of contemporary society.
29 Sep 1998
Format:Paperback
'Arrested Development' is a brilliant critique of the relationship between popular culture and today's society. Politicians with little to offer in the way of vision, turn to popular culture to try and look for a dynamism that they haven't got.
Calcutt's book exposes the superficiality of this embrace and the divisive consequences it has for today's society. The author also writes with great honesty about his own forays into pop culture and all of it's follies which many of us have fallen for in our youth.
The book puts forward the case for adulthood in an environment where it appears more desirable to remain a Peter Pan character espousing throwaway 'popstar' type attitudes rather than develop the critical faculties and reflective capabilities that come with maturity.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Disappointed
5 Nov 2003
Format:Paperback
I was hoping for some insight into the reasons behind what appears to be an increasingly narcissistic attitude behind modern culture. Instead I found a frustrated pop star wannabe who rails at everyone and everything that prevented him from becoming a superstar. Calcutt is not a sociologist and this book prooves it. Rather, he comes across more like a pulp writer hacking away at a tell-all.
While there may be a shred of value in this poorly written attempt at explaining modern culture's woes, readers would be better served to look into James Cote's work, Arrested Adulthood.
While there may be a shred of value in this poorly written attempt at explaining modern culture's woes, readers would be better served to look into James Cote's work, Arrested Adulthood.
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