Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36878 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 322 pages

Amazon.com
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.

Wired, Brad Wieners
...provides an invaluable argument for anyone who has ever scoffed at hand-me-down counterculture from the '60s... a spirited and exhaustive analysis of that era's advertising...

Customer Reviews

triumphant materialism
America does have a lot of culture though whatever culture you may find, it in all probability isn't *counter* to the culture of business. And take a second glance if your being told otherwise. We are a business run society -- You can't emphasis that enough. If you want to be hip with what's going on, study the business world and advertising. The cool crowd claiming disinterest in consumption or even opposition to capitalism and all it represents just leads the rest on the way to the mall with their credit cards in hand, regardless of how unintentional they may be. Cultural politics has gotten us nowhere really.

Anyway, I heartedly agree with those that say Thomas Frank is one of the greatest writers around and this book is essential reading for...well, I'd say YOU probably. Are you interested in our history as Americans? Do you enjoy reading fascinating books that challenge stale, conventional narratives of our shared social history? Are you interested in that era forever known as the 60s? You want to learn about culture and consumerism?

How do you co-opt a revolution you invented?
Being familiar with Thomas Frank's cultural criticism of the 1990s (see his brilliant _One Market Under God_, along with the two _Baffler_ anthologies), when I saw the title of this volume I immediately assumed it was yet another expose of how the culture industry co-opts the trends and fashions of genuinely cool youth. I was completely wrong -- what Frank has done is far more fascinating.

In this volume, Frank goes back to the "template" of all modern stories of revolution, the 1960s, and takes a look at things from the point of view of the corporate executives. What he finds is shocking: executives weren't trying to co-opt the counterculture language of revolution, they were actually there first! They genuinely believed in shaking things up and continued to promote these ideas even when the public wasn't into them.

Growing out of his dissertation, the book is a little more dry than some of Frank's other work, but his brilliant prose shines through the academic form. Through meticulous historical research, excerpts from period documents and books, and interview with the players involved, Frank reconstructs the story of the generation, telling the tales of ad executives who quit The Organization to pursue their creative whims and the fashion planners desperate to kill the gray flannel suit. The result is a book that changes the way you think about the generation.

Be Wise, Be Meaty, Be Frank
For those who occasionally wonder 'what are they thinking?' when confronted with the effulvia of advertising, Thomas Frank provides a cogent and often hilarious explanation that is spot on from beginning to end. It is hard to imagine a better reference for those hoping to understand the 'mind' of the businessman, whose thankless task is to penetrate the cacaphnous clutter of the affluent society (even as its affluence groans under the incubus of credit card debt and shrinks in the vise of job loss). Of course the ingenius solution is to associate the supernumerary product with the alienation of the customer, and thus is born the 'we're hip and we're on your side' approach that has been bombarding viewers every four minutes for the last thirty-five years, and whose prototypical consequence is a herd of middle class vagabond children gaily emblazoned with Coca Cola logos.

For those with a lingering romantic idea of human potential, the concept of rebellion through consumption may seem every bit as transparent as a USP, but the truth about advertising seems to be identical with the truth about television and is embodied in the Seinfeld Principle: if you run it long enough people will buy into it.

Meanwhile, those of us who are alienated (or baffled) by the inanities of our age have Thomas Frank for solice. Apparently still in his thirties, Frank has written three of the most entertaining and insightful books of the last twenty years, and while the other two (One Market Under God and What's The Matter With Kansas) have made him personna non grata among toadying intellectuals, even they have been unable to find fault with this one, which a person can safely read in public without coming in for special scrutiny as a potential security risk.