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Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler
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, in the grand tradition of the muckrakers and The American Mercury. This collection gathers the best of its writing to explore such peculiar developments as the birth of the rebel hero as consumer in the pages of Wired and Details; the ever-accelerating race to market youth culture; the rise of new business gurus like Tom Peters and the fad for Hobbesian corporate "reengineering"; and the encroachment of advertising and commercial enterprise into every last nook and cranny of American life. With its liberating attitude and cant-free intelligence, this book is a powerful polemic against the designs of the culture business on us all.
288 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1997
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859 people want to read
About the author
Matt Weiland
12 books10 followersMatt Weiland was formerly the Deputy Editor of The Paris Review. He has been an editor at Granta, The Baffler and The New Press, and he oversaw a documentary radio unit at NPR. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Observer, The Nation and The New Republic. He is the co-editor, with Sean Wilsey, of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup and, with Thomas Frank, of Commodify Your Dissent: The Business of Culture in the New Gilded Age. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
February 6, 2015
Like fellow rag Adbusters (est. 1989), The Baffler (est. 1988) is a part of the pre-history of the 1999 WTO and 2011 OWS protests. As a Chicago-based enterprise, it shares the irritability of Steve Albini (featured here) and Liz Phair with the self-satisfaction of Pitchfork (est. 1995) and Ira Glass's This American Life (est. 1995).
Symptomatic of the cultural deceptions it claimed to address, the Baffler is a publication of gleaming surfaces, betraying no depth. The thesis: cultural "revolution" had masked political and economic reaction. The culture industry appropriated the language of marginality and anarchy to sell consumption goods. Living culture high and low was corrupted. Dissent was commodified.
These essays are premised on certain silent antipodes, and certain ingrown antimonies, because it implies – sometimes asserts – that commodification is new, and that the authors had borne witness to a new and unique moment: the dawn of the Culture Trust, MTV, and The Year Punk Broke (1991). As if middle-class mass culture and affluent youth culture could ever produce genuine "dissent". As if a renewed semiotics of masscult could escape the political irrelevance of a Benjamin, a Horkheimer, an Adorno, a Marcuse. The result is an Ouroboros of cultural criticism.
Frank claims the Thirties for himself, claims Odets and Dos Passos. He rejects the utopianism of the Sixties. But Frank shares far more with the latter than he does with the former. He is provocative, not sober. He does semiotics, not economics, not history. His métier is consciousness-raising, not organizing, a war of position, not of maneuver. But this is a war that Frank will never win, and that he cannot win. For all the cultural capital in the world (and Frank does not have much), you cannot beat the culture industry unless you own it. And this alternately self-satisfied and despairing set of "salvos" does not speak well of Frank's talents at wars of position, to say nothing of its effectiveness as Left strategy.
The book is instructive on the thought and themes of the American Left during the 1990s, but little more.
Symptomatic of the cultural deceptions it claimed to address, the Baffler is a publication of gleaming surfaces, betraying no depth. The thesis: cultural "revolution" had masked political and economic reaction. The culture industry appropriated the language of marginality and anarchy to sell consumption goods. Living culture high and low was corrupted. Dissent was commodified.
These essays are premised on certain silent antipodes, and certain ingrown antimonies, because it implies – sometimes asserts – that commodification is new, and that the authors had borne witness to a new and unique moment: the dawn of the Culture Trust, MTV, and The Year Punk Broke (1991). As if middle-class mass culture and affluent youth culture could ever produce genuine "dissent". As if a renewed semiotics of masscult could escape the political irrelevance of a Benjamin, a Horkheimer, an Adorno, a Marcuse. The result is an Ouroboros of cultural criticism.
Frank claims the Thirties for himself, claims Odets and Dos Passos. He rejects the utopianism of the Sixties. But Frank shares far more with the latter than he does with the former. He is provocative, not sober. He does semiotics, not economics, not history. His métier is consciousness-raising, not organizing, a war of position, not of maneuver. But this is a war that Frank will never win, and that he cannot win. For all the cultural capital in the world (and Frank does not have much), you cannot beat the culture industry unless you own it. And this alternately self-satisfied and despairing set of "salvos" does not speak well of Frank's talents at wars of position, to say nothing of its effectiveness as Left strategy.
The book is instructive on the thought and themes of the American Left during the 1990s, but little more.
April 19, 2014
An interesting collection of essays. I loved how Mr. Frank and crew deconstructed the rampant faux-philosophy at the heart of modern business thinking. I'll now look at vapid business books about "destruction" and "revolution" with a better trained eye.
The world Mr. Frank pitches to us is a bleak one. It's one where corporatism runs rampant and threatens to consume our very way of life. It's one where people struggle to find real communities and real ways of expressing themselves. It's one where no matter how clever you think you are, there's always an ad-man who's beaten you to the punch. There's still a glimmer of hope, but don't expect Mr. Frank to pull an about-face and tell us at the end that everything is going to be ok.
For a book written back in the 90s, I was struck by how every single essay still rung true. For all the corporate talk of revolution and disruption, some things don't seem to change. That being said, if you don't care about the grunge movement or why Eddie Vedder was a big phony this book might seem a little outdated. Grunge music made an excellent target at the time, though it's hardly as relevant today, so I would hope the Baffler crew has moved on to new targets.
Some would probably find Frank to be arrogant and shrill. I thought he struck just the right tone, but I have no doubt he could come across as overbearing to others. He tends to use big words to show how smart he is.
Overall, would recommend to anyone looking for a provocative book of essays.
The world Mr. Frank pitches to us is a bleak one. It's one where corporatism runs rampant and threatens to consume our very way of life. It's one where people struggle to find real communities and real ways of expressing themselves. It's one where no matter how clever you think you are, there's always an ad-man who's beaten you to the punch. There's still a glimmer of hope, but don't expect Mr. Frank to pull an about-face and tell us at the end that everything is going to be ok.
For a book written back in the 90s, I was struck by how every single essay still rung true. For all the corporate talk of revolution and disruption, some things don't seem to change. That being said, if you don't care about the grunge movement or why Eddie Vedder was a big phony this book might seem a little outdated. Grunge music made an excellent target at the time, though it's hardly as relevant today, so I would hope the Baffler crew has moved on to new targets.
Some would probably find Frank to be arrogant and shrill. I thought he struck just the right tone, but I have no doubt he could come across as overbearing to others. He tends to use big words to show how smart he is.
Overall, would recommend to anyone looking for a provocative book of essays.
Read
December 17, 2009I love the combative tone of this collection of Baffler essays. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a strongly worded, and very entertaining attack on, the all-too-common doctrine of market populism: that the market always arrives at optimal wealth distributions and that the market is the only true source of democracy. If the book, and this style of "salvo," has a flaw, it is the repressive lack of a positive program. Unlike the muckrakers who these writers emulate, these essays do not take the next step: they don't articulate what they're fighting for. One can sort of infer what this program might look like, but it would be nice if along with all the sometimes suffocating (but always entertaining) critique, some fresh air and hope could be let in.
July 22, 2016
Contains some five star essays, specifically ones by Frank, but overall a bit dated. Some laugh out loud bits of wit in the Mencken mode. One suspects that business has already internalized many of the critiques put forth here, something Frank would likely concede. Even if it is not current, the book serves as an interesting artifact of early-mid nineties push-back on big business and anxieties of the coming domination of technology.
March 25, 2009
You can never go wrong with the lovely Thomas Frank or anything written for the Baffler, the alternative randomly-published journal out of Chicago. Actually I'm not sure it's being published any longer. Frank has gone on to write famous books and has a column in the Wall Street Journal. This book is subtitled "The Business of Culture in the New Gilded Age."
October 31, 2012
Well written, with some eloquent anti-capitalist froth at the mouth spleen venting, but it loses track and focus many times. Made me appreciate formal non-fiction journalism more once they aimed the focus of their tirade at Henry Rollins, simply for being in a Gap ad. That was one of the few villains they seemed to come up with. Too much misdirected anger.
October 17, 2020
Well thought out essays concerning capital's subsumption of culture into a resource for extraction. Parts of the book, especially Frank's essays, read as prescient bordering on prophetic considering the time the book was written. Even the more dated sections still have worthwhile things to say.
October 9, 2013
Despite the obvious timeless truth of the basic thesis, this book comes off surprisingly dated. Its failure to address the many (positive and negative) changes wrought by the Internet feels like a glaring omission, albeit an understandable one given that the book was published in '97. The chapters that do address the Internet are, in retrospect, hilariously overly simplistic - and far too technological determinist for my liking. Likewise, this book plays up the role of big media and franchise restaurants in a way that is still relevant, but the critique would benefit from acknowledgement of more recent changes.
March 18, 2023
This book was great, filled with a bunch of scathing, anti-capitalistic rants and essays.
The essays are all from the early-mid 90s, but despite being 30+ years old, they're all still fairly relevant, either in "shit hasn't changed and has only gotten worse" way, or in a "look at us predicting the future of the internet" kind of way.
It was entertaining and vitriolic, and exactly what I hoped it would be.
The essays are all from the early-mid 90s, but despite being 30+ years old, they're all still fairly relevant, either in "shit hasn't changed and has only gotten worse" way, or in a "look at us predicting the future of the internet" kind of way.
It was entertaining and vitriolic, and exactly what I hoped it would be.
January 2, 2008
A selection of self-proclaimed 'salvos' from the Baffler, a literary and cultural review from Chicago, 'Commodify Your Dissent' is designed to unravel the packaging of culture into reproducible products as well as explore the cause and effects of such commodification on history, geography and culture.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part (The Rebel Consumer) expounds on the co-optation of counter-culture by an industry looking to profit from the very people that did not fit the mold a few years back. The second part (The Culture of Business) explores the downfall of Organization Man and the rise of a new leader in business who is more attuned to chaos and the free-spirit of the beatniks, changing the culture within business to look more like the counter culture it is targeting, without making any substantial improvement in the lives of the workers. The third part (The Culturetrust Generation) examines and debunks the process of packaging culture (music, literature and movies) with an underlying tone that the best never get through and true creativity and originality is always lost. The last part (Wealth Against Commonwealth Revisited) seems a bit disconnected to the rest as it deals with issues of geography and economy, where you live and what that has to do with how you live and a scathing analysis of what the 'lottery' means to different classes by Kim Phillips.
This is an important read, but do not expect to be galvanized into action. Its closing essay, entitled 'Dark Age', sketches a bleak view of the present and the de-historicized future. It reveals the new liberal bourgeois as exactly what it is: consumers of new liberal bourgeois products. True dissent has been lost under used cups of Starbucks and any new off-shoots can soon be branded as SonyDissent: coming to a protest near you!
The book is divided into four parts. The first part (The Rebel Consumer) expounds on the co-optation of counter-culture by an industry looking to profit from the very people that did not fit the mold a few years back. The second part (The Culture of Business) explores the downfall of Organization Man and the rise of a new leader in business who is more attuned to chaos and the free-spirit of the beatniks, changing the culture within business to look more like the counter culture it is targeting, without making any substantial improvement in the lives of the workers. The third part (The Culturetrust Generation) examines and debunks the process of packaging culture (music, literature and movies) with an underlying tone that the best never get through and true creativity and originality is always lost. The last part (Wealth Against Commonwealth Revisited) seems a bit disconnected to the rest as it deals with issues of geography and economy, where you live and what that has to do with how you live and a scathing analysis of what the 'lottery' means to different classes by Kim Phillips.
This is an important read, but do not expect to be galvanized into action. Its closing essay, entitled 'Dark Age', sketches a bleak view of the present and the de-historicized future. It reveals the new liberal bourgeois as exactly what it is: consumers of new liberal bourgeois products. True dissent has been lost under used cups of Starbucks and any new off-shoots can soon be branded as SonyDissent: coming to a protest near you!
October 23, 2007
I almost went to work at the bike center at the Experimental Station in Chicago where The Baffler lives or lived. I have hazy notions of a lucid-severe midwestern past maybe ten years back. All Skin Graft Records, Shellac, and The Baffler. This book provides a window to knowing what I'm talking about. The writers even drop band names as references to all things pure and worthwhile--a weakness but also a pleasure.
The article on the lottery was the most enlightening. The extended Tarantino hating was perhaps the least. Lively use of language throughout and for the most part it retains meaning despite its feats of clever phrasing.
Ta-da!
I want to read the more recent issues to know what the magazine is all about with Frank off and away and the consumer society a little older and a little less important.
I got it at The Book Trader on 2nd St., but was surprised to see two copies on the shelf in the "Penn Bookstore" B&N. So it's not a dusty relic?
The article on the lottery was the most enlightening. The extended Tarantino hating was perhaps the least. Lively use of language throughout and for the most part it retains meaning despite its feats of clever phrasing.
Ta-da!
I want to read the more recent issues to know what the magazine is all about with Frank off and away and the consumer society a little older and a little less important.
I got it at The Book Trader on 2nd St., but was surprised to see two copies on the shelf in the "Penn Bookstore" B&N. So it's not a dusty relic?
October 10, 2010
Having absorbed most of the arguments within during my zine-reading days in the '90s (Steve Albini doesn't think bands should sign with major labels? REALLY?), CYD was hardly revelatory, but it was a fun dose of nostalgia for an era when selling out was an unforgivable crime. Also included is the infamous, completely fabricated grunge slang glossary provided to the New York Times by a Caroline Records employee. If you're a fellow sentimental lamestain who finds yourself bound and hagged, this is an effective reminder of the days when corporate co-optation of youth culture seemed like a major cause for outrage. Sigh...
January 7, 2018
More a prophecy than an actual collection of essays, this book forever changed my life. Read it at least to allow Steve Albini to explain how the indie-rock bands of the 90s got fleeced by their labels. Essential for anyone who wants to understand anything about the relationship between economics and culture in the United States. The Bible is a better book, but just barely.
April 10, 2008
While furthering my tendency toward being a curmudgeon, this book also contains some razor-sharp writing and wit about all sorts of topics I thought I'd never be interested in. The cheezy graphics heighten the irony.
February 14, 2012
The fact that I agree with what they have to say does not make the shrill, annoying tone of their writing easier to digest. They have little to add to the discussion other than carping, certainly not a book's worth of material.
July 3, 2007
good. but yes, i get it. will probably pick up periodically. bedside reading for my (politically) angsty moments.
April 25, 2017
Depressing but so true.
January 5, 2022
Really good collection. What struck me most reading this (where, I am pretty sure, all of the essays were written before 2000) was how modern/prescient it felt, and the extent to which many contributors ID stuff in a way that feels it could be written today, particularly about tech work and business culture. I like this better than another Baffler collection I read last year (Boob Jubilee) and most of my praise stands: while some essays are definitely better than others here, the vast majority are insightful, well-researched and historically grounded deep dives that manage to be funny, enjoyable, and quite compelling. There are a *ton* of paragraphs/sentences I highlighted in here particularly because some of the prose is so satisfyingly evocative/lucid and flows incredibly nicely—these are great essays.
The only reason I hesitate here/remove a star is because I generally feel something is missing from some of this style in terms of articulating an alternative—essentially all of these pieces are (once again, phenomenal) takedowns (literally called 'salvos' in the publication!) that aren't particularly generative / often feel designed mostly to amuse and throw stones in a way that leaves something to be desired—almost the same feeling of a celebrity takedown / harsh critical panning where it feels somewhat mean/gratuitous by the end, especially when they are directed at individuals. Some of my less favorite pieces also had sort of cringey (and quite vague) calls to action (very like 'we are Gen Z' vibes except 'we are Gen X' LOL) which bugged me a bit but this wasn't a huge distractor.
Tons of favorites in here, particularly: "The Killer App: Wired Magazine, Voice of the Corporate Revolution," "Back in Black: Here Come the Beatniks!" "Burn Down the House of Commons in Your Brand New Shoes," "The Problem with Music" (a veritable Baffler classic apparently, I had heard of/read this before reading!), "Revolt of the Nice: Edge City, Capital of the Twenty-First Century," and "The Gaudy and the Damned."
read bc it was on Mark Greif (founding editor of n+1!)'s syllabus for a class he taught at Brown in 2008 I very badly wish I could've taken called 'Dangerous Minds: Intellectuals and the Little Magazine, 1934-2008' and because I liked another Baffler collection I read last year (Boob Jubilee). have been slowly working through this for the last few months because it's a ton of pretty short pieces, good read
The only reason I hesitate here/remove a star is because I generally feel something is missing from some of this style in terms of articulating an alternative—essentially all of these pieces are (once again, phenomenal) takedowns (literally called 'salvos' in the publication!) that aren't particularly generative / often feel designed mostly to amuse and throw stones in a way that leaves something to be desired—almost the same feeling of a celebrity takedown / harsh critical panning where it feels somewhat mean/gratuitous by the end, especially when they are directed at individuals. Some of my less favorite pieces also had sort of cringey (and quite vague) calls to action (very like 'we are Gen Z' vibes except 'we are Gen X' LOL) which bugged me a bit but this wasn't a huge distractor.
Tons of favorites in here, particularly: "The Killer App: Wired Magazine, Voice of the Corporate Revolution," "Back in Black: Here Come the Beatniks!" "Burn Down the House of Commons in Your Brand New Shoes," "The Problem with Music" (a veritable Baffler classic apparently, I had heard of/read this before reading!), "Revolt of the Nice: Edge City, Capital of the Twenty-First Century," and "The Gaudy and the Damned."
read bc it was on Mark Greif (founding editor of n+1!)'s syllabus for a class he taught at Brown in 2008 I very badly wish I could've taken called 'Dangerous Minds: Intellectuals and the Little Magazine, 1934-2008' and because I liked another Baffler collection I read last year (Boob Jubilee). have been slowly working through this for the last few months because it's a ton of pretty short pieces, good read
April 9, 2025
This book from 1997 is a collection of short essays in an often humorous (almost satirical) but serious and critical tone. One article is titled "Burn down the house of commons in your brand new shoes"
The first few chapters are about the recuperation of "rebellion" and "revolution" within corporate culture, advertising, consumer culture, and the effects on ideology generally stemming from these popular culture artefacts.
The 90s cultural references are clearly outdated, but easily substituted: advertisers haven't gotten any better.
The author provides a short history of how advertisers until the 50s would exploit notions of fitting in to the community (a collective, perhaps assimilationist viewpoint). The 60s saw massive counter cultural movements that were subsumed into popular culture by aesthetic only. Advertisers acknowledged this and changed course to reflect a new self image of standing out as an individual. This continues through the decades.
By the 1990s, the transformation was complete. The very idea of non-conformity became a commodity. Car commercials, for example, began to represent non-conformist individualism as a lifestyle choice, selling not only the product but an identity. As a more contemporary example, the use of iconic cultural artifacts such as Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way”, widely licensed notably in Toyota’s “Go Your Own Way” Aygo campaign and in Isuzu D‑MAX/MU‑X commercials in Australia, is emblematic: it ties the product to a sense of personal rebellion that has itself been refined and stylized for mass appeal.
The book lead me to reflect on my own possible vulnerabilities to advertising while I could enjoy questioning the depth of so-called rebellious identities of CEO "disrupters" that I see on LinkedIn all the time.
I think it's interesting to consider the influence of how such corporate-peddled advertising can be cumulative in ideology: "I didn't buy the car, but I bought the idea."
The first few chapters are about the recuperation of "rebellion" and "revolution" within corporate culture, advertising, consumer culture, and the effects on ideology generally stemming from these popular culture artefacts.
The 90s cultural references are clearly outdated, but easily substituted: advertisers haven't gotten any better.
The author provides a short history of how advertisers until the 50s would exploit notions of fitting in to the community (a collective, perhaps assimilationist viewpoint). The 60s saw massive counter cultural movements that were subsumed into popular culture by aesthetic only. Advertisers acknowledged this and changed course to reflect a new self image of standing out as an individual. This continues through the decades.
By the 1990s, the transformation was complete. The very idea of non-conformity became a commodity. Car commercials, for example, began to represent non-conformist individualism as a lifestyle choice, selling not only the product but an identity. As a more contemporary example, the use of iconic cultural artifacts such as Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way”, widely licensed notably in Toyota’s “Go Your Own Way” Aygo campaign and in Isuzu D‑MAX/MU‑X commercials in Australia, is emblematic: it ties the product to a sense of personal rebellion that has itself been refined and stylized for mass appeal.
The book lead me to reflect on my own possible vulnerabilities to advertising while I could enjoy questioning the depth of so-called rebellious identities of CEO "disrupters" that I see on LinkedIn all the time.
I think it's interesting to consider the influence of how such corporate-peddled advertising can be cumulative in ideology: "I didn't buy the car, but I bought the idea."
June 6, 2023
brilliant — exactly the stylish, rigorous, anticonsumerist, deeply progressive manifesto I've been craving. Shockingly relevant to life in 2023, too. The problem of people purchasing consumer goods that make them feel like they are leading meaningfully alternative, rebellious, morally upright lives, rather than taking political action grounded in historical research, is as alive as ever. The fact that we live in the grip of giant corporations steering our self-conception has only gotten worse and more insidious, and Frank et al.'s clear-eyed evisceration of every realm of politics and culture where we continue to delude ourselves that we are intelligent or ethical consumers is breathtakingly insightful, refreshing whether the writers are addressing the regressivity of the lottery or the elitism of Donna Tartt. Written in a tone of deep exasperation, funny and sharp and "aggressively erudite," according to one review cited in the front matter as "praise for Commodify Your Dissent," which I'm not sure was praise in the original piece but which certainly resonates with me. A tad repetitive, especially at the beginning, because these essays are compiled from several issues of the Baffler published over multiple years, but the coherence of the authors' shared vision — for a culture not beholden to the belief that buying things can make you interesting — is invigorating.
July 20, 2023
We're fucked... and some astute writers and thinkers were aware of our fuckedness 30 years ago.
From the final essay:
"In the third millenium, there is to be no myth but the business myth, no individuality but the thirty or so professionally-accepted psychographic market niches, no diversity but the heteroglossia of the sitcom, no rebellion but the pre-programmed search for new kicks."
Written at the dawn (well, to most folks anyhow) of the Internet age (the mid-90s), the essays in this book prefigure the current culture war, the absolute devotion to amorality practiced by business (especially the culture business), and the impossibility of even private thought that somehow deviates from the all encompassing totality of only-what-the-market-offers (which we are dutifully taught to want). For anyone curious how we got here, to this moment, to Trumpism and a complete lack of a frame of reference for the purposes of considering the "normality" of anything, this book is helpful.
It's worth the price of admission just for the Steve Abini piece ("The Problem with Music"). In 1993, a full seven years before the music industry would peak and then decline steeply in a post-Napster environment, Albini, using very unremarkable math, shows how a band that moves 250,000 albums for a major label averages less personal financial gain than they would "working at 7-11".
From the final essay:
"In the third millenium, there is to be no myth but the business myth, no individuality but the thirty or so professionally-accepted psychographic market niches, no diversity but the heteroglossia of the sitcom, no rebellion but the pre-programmed search for new kicks."
Written at the dawn (well, to most folks anyhow) of the Internet age (the mid-90s), the essays in this book prefigure the current culture war, the absolute devotion to amorality practiced by business (especially the culture business), and the impossibility of even private thought that somehow deviates from the all encompassing totality of only-what-the-market-offers (which we are dutifully taught to want). For anyone curious how we got here, to this moment, to Trumpism and a complete lack of a frame of reference for the purposes of considering the "normality" of anything, this book is helpful.
It's worth the price of admission just for the Steve Abini piece ("The Problem with Music"). In 1993, a full seven years before the music industry would peak and then decline steeply in a post-Napster environment, Albini, using very unremarkable math, shows how a band that moves 250,000 albums for a major label averages less personal financial gain than they would "working at 7-11".
May 15, 2018
A series of parodical polemics that crucifies the beat generation ethos against the bodies of disrupt!-evangelizing tech CEOs of today. Funny, acidic and shockingly fresh--written some 20 years ago. As a modern analog, it feels like a lot of the same character and spirit that reflects some of what makes Silicon Valley so despairingly funny: “That frenzied sensibility of pure experience, life on the edge, immediate gratification, and total freedom from moral restraint, which the Beats first propounded back in those heady days when suddenly everyone could have their own TV and powerful V-8, has stuck with us through all the intervening years and become something of a permanent American style
...
Corporate America is not an oppressor but a sponsor of fun, provider of lifestyle accoutrements, facilitator of carnival, our slang-speaking partner in the quest for that ever-more apocalyptic orgasm. The countercultural idea has become capitalist orthodoxy, its hunger for transgression upon transgression now perfectly suited to an economic-cultural regime that runs on ever-faster cyclings of the new; its taste for self-fulfillment and its intolerance for the confines of tradition now permitting vast latitude in consuming practices and lifestyle experimentation.”
...
Corporate America is not an oppressor but a sponsor of fun, provider of lifestyle accoutrements, facilitator of carnival, our slang-speaking partner in the quest for that ever-more apocalyptic orgasm. The countercultural idea has become capitalist orthodoxy, its hunger for transgression upon transgression now perfectly suited to an economic-cultural regime that runs on ever-faster cyclings of the new; its taste for self-fulfillment and its intolerance for the confines of tradition now permitting vast latitude in consuming practices and lifestyle experimentation.”
December 5, 2024
Some indispensable essays I’m sure I’ll revisit (Frank’s 2+ page takedown of Henry Rollins is a corker - sadly it comes early in the collection and delivers a particularly delicious acidity that never really resurfaces again), some tweener pieces that are generally thought provoking and/or fun, and unfortunately a good amount that hasn’t aged well at all. A satirical business review/earnings report for an imagined Deviants Incorporated is of the sort of high Gen X smarm that surely felt passe before the ink had a chance to dry… and would you guess that Steve Albini thinks signing with a big record label is a BAD idea??? It’s a wildly uneven collection, one I didn’t enjoy quite as much as I thought I would, but you can’t be too harsh on it - the 90s were just a wild time, man.
February 8, 2022
The most gen X thing I've ever read. Very much of the mid 90s, fixated on neo-liberalism and how their scene was being devoured by business, but totally misses all issues of race, sexuality and (mostly) class and has nothing to say about the environment. Some essays came across as pure snobbery, but others still work.
March 4, 2017
A series of essays that look under the hood of today's pop and business culture. I think the essay "dark ages" is particularly poignant now.
July 9, 2009
Very enjoyable and useful, though flawed. The essays in Commodify Your Dissent cover a lot of ground, but their central claim is that chaotic individual self-expression, far from challenging authority as its champions pretend, is in fact enslaving the American individual to corporate authority. The pursuit of endless sensations and fashions has placed unquestioned power in the hands of oligarchs, who no longer have to respond to criticism in the public sphere; actually, the corporations now own the public sphere.
Most of these essays are persuasive, but I think several miss the source of the infestation. They fail to explain how such a surreal contemporary culture can seem so compelling. In other words, they ignore the fact that consumers often do have a vision of the good life that is not limited to sheer sensuality. As a result, it seems to me, these authors underestimate the importance of demonstrating the superiority of their version of the good life. Too often, they are content to ascribe our cultural captivity simply to sinister corporate scheming, against which much righteous spleen should be discharged.
That's good as far as it goes, but Thomas Frank is the only contributor who comes close to explaining the demand side of "popcult" to my satisfaction. (Fortunately, Frank does this in the first essay in the book, which makes the collection far more coherent than it would be otherwise.) The other authors sometimes veer close to the sort of lifestyle liberationism and subcultural self-congratulation that has proven so profitable to their targets. In fact, there's a lot of bluster here. "Salvos" are thrilling, but sometimes a more modest sort of fire is deadlier.
Still, they're on the right track. The passing of twelve years -- in which the dream of a rulerless "blogosphere" promoting independent voices has parted to reveal the prospect of Facebook and MySpace owning our relationships -- has only underscored the importance of the points they raised at the beginning of the Internet Age.
Most of these essays are persuasive, but I think several miss the source of the infestation. They fail to explain how such a surreal contemporary culture can seem so compelling. In other words, they ignore the fact that consumers often do have a vision of the good life that is not limited to sheer sensuality. As a result, it seems to me, these authors underestimate the importance of demonstrating the superiority of their version of the good life. Too often, they are content to ascribe our cultural captivity simply to sinister corporate scheming, against which much righteous spleen should be discharged.
That's good as far as it goes, but Thomas Frank is the only contributor who comes close to explaining the demand side of "popcult" to my satisfaction. (Fortunately, Frank does this in the first essay in the book, which makes the collection far more coherent than it would be otherwise.) The other authors sometimes veer close to the sort of lifestyle liberationism and subcultural self-congratulation that has proven so profitable to their targets. In fact, there's a lot of bluster here. "Salvos" are thrilling, but sometimes a more modest sort of fire is deadlier.
Still, they're on the right track. The passing of twelve years -- in which the dream of a rulerless "blogosphere" promoting independent voices has parted to reveal the prospect of Facebook and MySpace owning our relationships -- has only underscored the importance of the points they raised at the beginning of the Internet Age.
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August 1, 2019During the 90s Thomas Frank's THE BAFFLER was one of few publications to question the onrush of computer technology and the corporate co-optation of cultural rebellion. This book is a selection of some of the best BAFFLER essays, including a withering analysis of the hype surrounding the young novelist Donna Tartt's career, Steve Albini's scathing dissection of the rock-music industry, Gary Groth's well-reasoned attack on Quentin Tarantino, and Kim Phillips' empathetic look at inner-city residents who blow their meager dough on the lottery. Another amusing high point is an account of how a young record-label employee from Seattle fooled the NY TIMES into printing a list of fake "grunge-subculture" lingo. Sometimes the humor gets somewhat strained, as with a prospectus for an imaginary company, and sometimes the writers' judgments are questionable, as with Maura Mahoney's dismissal of Beat literature as worthless. But for the most part, these thought-provoking pieces remain relevant (perhaps unfortunately), and the book as a whole is even more interesting than any of Frank's own books since a variety of different viewpoints are included. (The later BAFFLER collection, BOOB JUBILEE, is more of the same and equally good.)
June 27, 2008
I've always loved The Baffler and this compilation is some of the best. One thing that fascinates me is that when I read this book in public it always provokes questions from strangers and usually leads to interesting discussions. I often read books in public and no other book has this effect on innocent passerby.
Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?
November 21, 2008
very academic but very insightful into how so much of what is created at grassroots level is co-opted into commercial value giving the consumer a perception that they are straying or resisting from the mainstream when really the consumer is has been folded farther into the mainstream and thus continuously dis-empowered.
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January 14, 2018What a great book. It describes how capitalism absorbs and co-opts rebelliousness. Lefty groups selling Che Guevara t-shirts ain't going to bring on the revolution - if anything, they're making it less likely.
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