Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler
by Matt Weiland, Thomas Frank
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 152)
Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
economists, sociologists, counter-culturalists
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 th...more
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 th...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
rock sociologists, Believer subscribers, recent history fans, aesthetic commandos
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 hat...more
The article on the lottery was the most enlightening. The extended Tarantino hat...more
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bookshelves:
have-read
Read in October, 2007
I truly 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 t...more
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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?
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recommends it for:
aging hipsters
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.
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Strongly-brewed witty satire that connects to a real philosophical push to debunk the manufacturing of cool within our US society. Material to ruminate on
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bookshelves:
fuckingliberals,
shelved
recommends it for:
college students, high school students, avril lavign and anyone else who's ever shopped at hot topic
good. but yes, i get it. will probably pick up periodically. bedside reading for my (politically) angsty moments.
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I really understand the pointlessness and lameness of the pursuit of the next "hip" thing having read this.
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Read in December, 1999
Witty essays pulled from the Baffler literary journal of cultural criticism, on a variety of topics.
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