Why Consumer Culture is Turning Us Into the Living Dead

White, Curtis: The Middle Mind – Why Consumer Culture is Turning Us Into the Living Dead (2005, Penguin Books, Kunto: K3)

Creeping into art, literature, politics and the media, sliding into living rooms and coming soon to a cinema near you the Middle Mind has arrived. Join Curtis White on a crusade against tedium as he takes on this bland, no-thinking-required product' that passes for culture in America and that we've signed up and paid for in full too. It's not about high- or low-brow, it's about a mainstream consensus that pleases everyone but moves, challenges or shocks no one: from the Hollywood machine to cultural theory equating Madonna with Milton, from free market ideology to TV arts programmes, New Age self-help and Oprah's Book Club. This is a book for anyone who thinks culture should be a force for change, not just something to acquire and consume; who wants to reclaim the destabilizing power of the imagination and start thinking for themselves.

Hakusanat: kulutusyhteiskunta, kulutuskritiikki, massakulttuuri