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Popular Communication: TheInternational Journal of Mediaand CulturePublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hppc20

Book Review of "High-Pop:Making Culture Into PopularEntertainment," edited by JimCollinsThomas W. Brignall IIIPublished online: 19 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Thomas W. Brignall III (2003) Book Review of "High-Pop: MakingCulture Into Popular Entertainment," edited by Jim Collins, Popular Communication:The International Journal of Media and Culture, 1:2, 131-133, DOI: 10.1207/S15405710PC0102_4

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15405710PC0102_4

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BOOK REVIEW

High-Pop: Making Culture Into Popular Entertainment. Edited by Jim Col-lins. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2002, ISBN 0–63–122211–1, 300 pages, $62.95(cloth), $26.95 (paper).

Thomas W. Brignall IIITennessee Technological University

This book is an attempt to analyze the popularization of good taste and the emer-gence of high-pop consumer products. According to Jim Collins, the book’s editor,a new stage is developing in the relation between high art and popular culture thathas not had enough scholarly discussion. He asserts that one of the most troublingblind spots in cultural studies has been the implicit assumption that legitimate cul-ture was being tended to by the rest of the academy because the masses have notembraced high culture. Cultural studies programs obsess with marginality as theonly legitimate subject matter for cultural studies. This leaves a vast realm of cul-tural production untouched and produces only a distorted, self-deluding perspec-tive while silencing or marginalizing voices. Collins suggests that elements of highculture have become popular culture embraced by the masses, and the essays inthis book discuss this social movement.

High-Pop contains nine chapters and an introduction. Each chapter presentsvarious aspects of a particular high-pop cultural movement. The essays in thiscollection investigate specific high-pop phenomena in film, television, literature,opera, fashion, interior design, and museum exhibition. A few examples give theprospective reader an idea of what to expect. In the first chapter, John Storey ar-gues that opera is returning to its original popularity and becoming an art formfor all social classes in society. He points out that opera only became an elitistform of entertainment at the end of the 19th century. For Storey, opera did notbecome unpopular. Rather, opera was made unpopular because elite socialgroups actively appropriated it from the popular audiences. Storey cites the riseof mass release books written for novices to understand opera, new opera CDcollections, and the way some opera stars are being marketed like pop stars. Theauthor then discusses the resistance in the press to opera becoming a popularculture phenomenon, maintaining that many elite journalists believe high artcannot be understood by the masses.

POPULAR COMMUNICATION, 1(2), 131–133Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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Toby Miller, in his chapter, contends that gourmet cooking is becoming ahigh-pop cultural phenomenon among the masses because of the evolution of tele-vision cooking shows. Arguing against Bourdieu’s idea that taste is the forcedchoice of destiny, Miller writes that television brings democratization as well ascommodification to the cooking world. In his view, television has played a role inpopularizing sophisticated international cuisine among the masses. Miller usescase studies of Julia Child, the US Food Network, and the UK Carlton Food Net-work to suggest the impact of television on mass attitudes about gourmet food. Hecontends that food television normalizes the exotic for suburbia and exoticizes thenormal for a hip elite, middle-class home workers, and late-night revelers. As a re-sult of a globalizing, multicultural stance, these channels expose viewers to exoticfoods from around the world, Miller argues.

Carol Duncan’s contribution to the book examines art museums, assertingthat they are no longer just sanctuaries for the silent contemplation of art objects.In part due to a growing dependence on corporate sponsorship, art institutes lookmore like part of the business world than separate from it. Because art museumsare expected to observe the boundary between high and popular culture, many ofthe museums are displaying items that do not generally appeal to the masses.Duncan posits that the elite built art museums in the United States partly as abuffer between themselves and the newcomers, and partly in the hope that thesecultural institutions would unite the disparate class and ethnic elements of thecities into one community with a single culture. She even quoted a New YorkTimes article of the era saying that Fifth Avenue stores were the best museums inthe world, because of the large crowds inspecting the window displays and theartistic quality of the displays.

The other chapters present similar treatments of high culture transcending topop culture. John Frow discusses high art t-shirts, imbuing products with culturalcharacteristics and brand ideologies. Kim Middleton Meyer explores multiculturalanxiety and the new orientalism in pop culture, class bias reinforcement in mu-seum attendance is examined by Alan Wallach, and Tim Corrigan writes about the1990s film studio movement to adopt classic literary authors and texts for films. Inhis own contribution, the editor suggests that mass production has allowed the per-ception of high-style furniture, design, and good taste to be consumable by every-one via stores like Crate and Barrel and Pier One. Celia Lury concludes the bookby stating the development of stylistic autonomy is a goal of many goods produc-ers. This helps to insure information, operationality, and technique rather than edu-cation, reflexivity, and taste mediate consumer’s relations with objective culture.

I agree with Collins that there is not enough work in cultural studies about howsocial groups distinguish between high culture and popular culture. This book hassome interesting chapters that provide insightful historical accounts of the devel-opment of high culture and the transformation of it into mass consumed culture.This book also fits nicely in the body of literature dealing with mass consumption

132 BOOK REVIEW

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and conspicuous consumption. This would be a good resource for examples ofhow a culture can evolve and transform perceived value of a commodity.

Although the volume claims to be a critical analysis of high-pop culture, thereare times when arguments are not totally convincing. Much of the evidence offeredin this volume is in the form of a singular incident or personal experience. Fairlybroad claims about trends or arguments about audience impact or social effect tendto be advanced without a critical mass of data or extensive citations of previous re-search to back them up. For instance, in chapter 3 the author argues that food tele-vision normalizes the exotic for suburbia and exoticizes the normal for certainclusters of viewers. Similarly, chapter 4 posits that because of the rapid change indemographics, U.S. citizens feel a certain urgency to know about Asian cultures.Although provocative, such statements about directions in public opinion or tex-tual impact call for additional investigation. Such is also true of the book’s mostcentral argument. Historically, there have been social movements where high cul-ture is embraced by mass culture. To suggest that high culture is being welcomedby the masses more than any other time in history may have merit, but it is a boldstatement in need of a bit more supportive data. Of course, not every body of litera-ture needs social–scientific methodology or “hard” statistics to present valid infor-mation, and many of the arguments in the book may be intended to spark future re-search that further documents these trends. The continued multimethodologicalinvestigation of such phenomena is critical as we in popular communication stud-ies continue to elevate our own cultural capital.

Thomas W. Brignall III teachers courses on sociological theory, pop culture, race and ethnicity,and mass communications industries for the Department of Sociology and Philosophy at Ten-nessee Technological University.

BOOK REVIEW 133

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