Bread & circuses : theories of mass culture as social decay
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Bread & circuses : theories of mass culture as social decay
Cornell University Press, 1985, c1983
- : pbk
- Other Title
-
Bread and circuses
Available at 5 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
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  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
"First printing, Cornell paperbacks, 1985"--t.p. verso
"Cornell paperbacks"
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Lively and well written, Bread and Circuses analyzes theories that have treated mass culture as either a symptom or a cause of social decadence. Discussing many of the most influential and representative theories of mass culture, it ranges widely from Greek and Roman origins, through Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Ortega y Gasset, T. S. Eliot, and the theorists of the Frankfurt Institute, down to Marshall McLuhan and Daniel Bell, Brantlinger considers the many versions of negative classicism and shows how the belief in the historical inevitability of social decay-a belief today perpetuated by the mass media themselves-has become the dominant view of mass culture in our time. While not defending mass culture in its present form, Brantlinger argues that the view of culture implicit in negative classicism obscures the question of how the media can best be used to help achieve freedom and enlightenment on a truly democratic basis.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: The Two Classicisms
2. The Classical Roots of the Mass Culture Debate
3. "The Opium of the People"
4. Some Nineteenth-Century Themes: Decadence, Masses, Empire, Gothic Revivals
5. Crowd Psychology and Freud's Model of Perpetual Decadence
6. Three Versions of Modern Classicism: Ortega, Eliot, Camus
7. The Dialectic of Enlightenment
8. Television: Spectacularity vs. McLuhanism
9. Conclusion: Toward Post-Industrial Society
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