Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing--The Marketing of Culture

by John Seabrook

Book Overview

From John Seabrook, one of our most incisive and amusing cultural critics, comes Nobrow , a fascinatingly original look at the radical convergence of marketing and culture. In the old days, highbrow... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375405046
• ISBN13: 9780375405044
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Better than it seemed

I bought this book expecting it to be witty, which it was, but I also expected it to be like other books on Pop Culture - to at the same time mourn the death of high culture, while name-dropping and making sure that the text contained enough pop-cult references to stay hip.Seabrook is smarter than this, and the theme of his book - the collapsing of systems of taste - is very much the story of his writing the book. It seems impossible to write about pop culture without showing off, without dropping names, without, as Seabrook says, "Stealing their buzz." And while he's as guilty of this as anyone, he is at least aware of the problem. The punchline is, I think he manages to express what it is about popular culture that is so seductive to those writing about it.

A personal view of the state of "culture"

A very enjoyable read; Seabrook is a fine writer. He covers his cultural background with self-deprecating style. He interviews George Lucas, David Geffen and others.I had expected more of a business book--How to Market Culture or Lack Thereof--and this is not that. I'm from Silicon Valley--we don't relate to Seabrook's Manhattan town house experience with the New Yorker magazine. But his opinions and experiences make for a cultural vacation of sorts. He writes well, and he must be on to something--looking around at the turn of the century I had almost neglected to ask, "Why did we build all those opera houses and art museums, anyway?" Something about "culture" has profundly shifted and fairly recently--Seabrook is an entertaining detective with a somewhat inconclusive report.

Nails our new culture, for better or worse

We all sense a radical change going on in the culture, I think, and it leaves most of us uneasy and confused. Old ways of judging and thinking about art, class and culture seem obsolete. But what, if anything, is replacing the old ways? Should we lament the passing of the venerable but elitist "high-brow, low-brow" distinctions? Or should we feel liberated? Is the ascendency of marketing and buzz leading us to cultural doom? Or are we somehow muddling forward to a new and ultimately richer, more democratic form of culture? To his credit, Seabrook doesn't deliver pat answers to questions like these. Who can know at this stage? What he does, brilliantly, is to parse the questions and dissect the culture in completely fresh and illuminating ways. The hardest thing to pull off in the midst of swirling change and chaos is to impose a bit of order, to see a few things clearly. This is hard work and Seabrook has done it well - and not just idly from his armchair but by venturing forth into the new world and embracing it and providing us with irreverent portraits of perplexing new avatars like David Geffen, George Lucas and the haunchos at MTV. The book is also very funny, as it ought to be given the material. There's a lot of Seabrook in the book, which is good because he's as honest and blunt about himself and his high-brow background and his New Yorker peers (especially Tina Brown) as he is about everything else. Like our new culture, the book swirls with energy and challenging ideas. You can't read it and view the world the same way afterwards. Bravo!

Essential reading

The smartest, most sensitive guide to the culture of Buzz ever written. Buzz being media noise Ñ the excitement of marketing bees dancing the rest of us to nectar. Nectar being todayÕs New Shiny Thing. TodayÕs New Shiny Thing being the chemical essence of honey. Unscrew the head of the plastic honey bear and pour fashion, power, money, sex and celebrity into the marrow of American culture. This is the sweet part.The bitter part is the emptiness of it all. NobrowÕs a poignant elegy for old Highbrow/Lowbrow cultural values and distinctions that werenÕt worth preserving anyway. ItÕs a captivating cry from a discerning heart. But even better, Seabrook intelligently surveys the ever-evolving gridwork, rules and motivations of Nobrow culture. He diagrams the blender mechanics of Nobrow that can spin every product and institution into a cultural vortice of success or failure. NobrowÕs both surreal ballad and dirge, played with the sharp sense and dumbstruck nausea you can only get from a sane writer. It poignantly renders the weird dislocation and low-grade depression of waking every day to a world where Brands are the verity and Hits the intimacy. Where Nobrow rules like Cyclops with a myopic agenda of fast-forward 24/7 entertainment.There is an understated quality to his vignettes. His commentary on our shifting cultural values is often uncommonly brilliant. ItÕs refreshing to discover a writer who steers clear of over-amped irony and hyperbole. John Seabrook is one of our few trustworthy Virgils in this cultural hell that is hyped as heaven. The fact that he guides us with his own dumb amazement only makes him more trustworthy. The fact that he is not left speechless like the rest of us, but can articulate it, is extraordinary.NobrowÕs essential reading about the all-pervasive marketing beehive and its Buzz.

everything for sale

In much the same way that Henry Adams skewered the cultural pretensions and greed of America's robber barons at the end of the nineteenth century, Seabrook portrays the status-hungry vapidness of today's fin de siecle media barons. His portraits of George Lucas and David Geffen, alone in their California fantasylands, are creepy, funny, and ultimately damning. Nobrow's surreal opening scene--a walk through Time's Square on Clinton's inaugeration day--perfectly encapsulates Seabrook's larger themes. We now live in a culture where everyone and everything are for sale. This book is superb.