The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

In his book-length essay The Conquest of Cool, Thomas Frank explores the ways in which Madison Avenue co-opted the language of youthful '60s rebellion. It is "the story," Frank writes, "of the bohemian cultural style's trajectory from adversarial to hegemonic; the story of hip's mutation from native language of the alienated to that of advertising." This appropriation had wide-ranging consequences that deeply transformed our culture--consequences that linger in the form of '90s "hip consumerism." (Think of Nike using the song "Revolution" to sell sneakers, or Coca-Cola using replicas of Ken Kesey's bus to peddle Fruitopia.)

This is no simplistic analysis of how the counterculture "sold out" to big business. Instead, Frank shows how the counterculture and business culture influenced one another. In fact, he writes, the counterculture's critique of mass society mimicked earlier developments in business itself, when a new generation of executives attacked the stultified, hierarchical nature of corporate life. Counterculture and business culture evolved together over time--until the present day, when they have become essentially the same thing. According to Frank, the '60s live on in the near-archetypal dichotomy of "hip" and "square," now part of advertising vernacular, signifying a choice between consumer styles. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

An evocative symbol of the 1960s was its youth counterculture. This study reveals that the youthful revolutionaries were augmented by such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business. The ad industry celebrated irrepressible youth and promoted defiance and revolt. In the 1950s, Madison Avenue deluged the country with images of junior executives, happy housewives and idealized families in tail-finned American cars. But the author of this study seeks to show how, during the "creative revolution" of the 60s, the ad industry turned savagely on the very icons it had created, using brands as signifiers of rule-breaking, defiance, difference and revolt. Even the menswear industry, formerly makers of staid, unchanging garments, ridiculed its own traditions as remnants of intolerable conformity, and discovered youth insurgency as an ideal symbol for its colourful new fashions. Thus emerged the strategy of co-opting dissident style which is so commonplace in modern hip, commercial culture. This text aims to add detail to a period in the 60s which has hitherto remained unresearched.

Read an excerpt online.

THE CONQUEST OF COOL is a new take on the Sixties, a re-juggling of the icons, an overturning of the shibboleths. Tom Frank takes a sharp look at the business culture of the 1960s and its relation to the counterculture of the Sixties. Todd Gitlin called the book "a forceful and convincing demonstration of the cunning of commercialism. Advertisers knew what was hip before hippie entrepreneurs, and this story, told here with verve and lucidity, is well worth the attention of all serious readers."

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY gave the book a starred review: "bristlingly intelligent . . . adroitly illuminates the intricacies behind the familiar stories of the '60s . . . frequently brilliant."

You may read an excerpt from Chapter One at
<http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/259919.html>

Tom Frank is founder/editor of the Chicago-based journal of literature and cultural criticism, THE BAFFLER. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .