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Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America by James B. Twitchell (Paperback, 1993)

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This study examines how the changes in publishing, movie making and television programming since the 1960s have affected taste, particularly what is considered vulgar. Show businesss, the industry of American culture, wreaks the most havoc on American taste by pandering to what most paying customers want to see. Twitchell's expose comes not to celebrate popular or carnival culture, as much as to answer questions about it: is vulgarity the result of repression or of freedom?; what is the relationship between machine-made entertainments and aesthetic values?; does television carnivalize or exalt cultural norms?; why do certain stories get told, and why do certain stories get told too often?; why are some of the most consistently profitable industries in the world those that transport audio and visual sequences we claim we can do without?; and why are today's A movies really yesterday's B movies dressed up with $50 million budgets? James Twitchell's book examines the current popularity of the high take on the low culture among academics, the contemporary view of taste as oppressive, and the reluctance to admit that something is in bad taste.