What went wrong? The editors who assembled this volume—Naomi Schaefer Riley and Christine Rosen—are smart and savvy, and the list of contributors is promising. Any book that includes pieces by Tony Woodlief, Mark Bauerlein, Caitlin Flanagan, Joe Queenan, Wilfred McClay, Rob Long, and Patrick Allitt, among others, should be very good. Why, then, is Acculturated such a feeble product?
Acculturated: 23 Savvy Writers Find Hidden Virtue in Reality TV, Chic Lit, Video Games, and Other Pillars of Pop Culture
Templeton Foundation Press
212 pages
In part, the problem may lie with the notion of “popular culture” (or “pop culture,” as the editors are soon calling it in their introduction). This turns out to encompass reality TV, Lady Gaga, the way people dress (“Project Runway: The Surprising Virtues of Style”), the way people cook and eat and what their kitchens look like (“Back to Betty Crocker: Why Everyday Cooking Matters”), the project of lifelong learning, as facilitated by The Teaching Company and similar ventures, and much more. Not infrequently, in fact, it morphs into “the culture” (that dreaded phrase), which can be Anything that’s happening, except (for instance) the experience of millions of people who traffic in Shakespeare every year in one form or another. That’s NOT “pop culture,” you see—though courses on the Bard appear routinely in the catalogues of the various teaching companies whose virtues Patrick Allitt rightly celebrates, alongside histories of Western philosophy, introductions to music, explanations of chaos theory, surveys of economics, and much more.
Along with this conceptual muddle comes a certain slackness of thought, a dreary predictability. It’s dispiriting to find a writer as good as Tony Woodlief telling me “How Our Culture’s Heroes and Villains Have Traded Places.” Really? I’d never noticed that. And not even Joe Queenan can do much with the thesis of “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Why Pro Athletes Aren’t Heroes.” Oh, my. Another fondly cherished illusion shattered. (Now back to Twitter to see what Rashard Mendenhall has been up to lately.) And don’t get me started on the incoherent essay by the estimable Chuck Colson that concludes the volume.
One caveat. There are 21 essays in this book. I haven’t done justice to all of them. Judy Bachrach’s “Death Be Not Chic,” for example, which looks at the depiction of death and dying on TV and in the movies, is one of the best pieces here. The most substantive is Bill McClay’s “In Search of the Next Great American Songbook,” which provoked me to strong disagreement at points but which amply rewards sustained attention. And maybe my overall dissatisfaction with the essays has as much to do with me as with any alleged failings of the book itself. Truth be told, I don’t even want to READ about “reality TV,” let alone watch the stuff.
John Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture.
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