Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Culture

Theories of Contemporary Culture

by Meaghan Morris

What good is history to cultural studies? Meaghan Morris looks at struggles over "history" in social settings created by capitalism: in tourist landscapes and in television time. The materials of her analysis are motels, shopping malls, beaches, and local politics. She focuses on history and cultural heritage as issues of controversy for white working-class and poor suburban communities, as well as for urban cultural elites.

Genres: History

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Meaghan Morris is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney and Chair Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to confess to being a bit of a Meaghan Morris fan, and to having read a bunch of these essays in different forms in different places. Morris's work shows us what cultural studies can be when it gets back to engaging with the world it claims to be analysing. Her work explores the banal, the ordinary, the mundane – Brisbane shopping centres, motels, national icons that are so normalised as to be nearly invisible. I keep coming back to these essays – although most are based in Australian questions, all produce answers that go well beyond the narrow antipodean setting. These are extremely good materialist (but not necessarily Marxist, they are not synonyms!) cultural studies.