Cool rules: anatomy of an attitude
Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2000001: 7021ISBN: 1861890710Subject(s): Subcultures | CultureOnline resources: Click here to access onlineItem type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 306.1 POU (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 046423 |
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Cool Rules introduces the reader to a new cultural category. While the authors do not claim to have discovered Cool, they believe they are the first to attempt a serious, systematic analysis of Cool's history, psychology, and importance.
The contemporary Cool attitude is barely 50 years old, but its roots are older than that. Cool Rules traces Cool's ancient origins in European, Asian, and African cultures, its prominence in the African-American jazz scene of the 1940s, and its pivotal position within the radical subcultures of the 1950s and '60s. Pountain and Robins examine various art movements, music, cinema, and literature, moving from the dandies and flâneurs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through to the expropriation of a whole cultural and psychological tradition by the media in the 1980s and '90s. What began as a rebellious posture adopted by minorities mutated to become mainstream itself. Cool is now primarily about consumption, as cynical advertisers have seized on it to create a constantly updated bricolage of styles and entertainments designed to affect the way people think about themselves and their society.
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Introduction (p. 7)
- 1 What is Cool? (p. 15)
- 2 Out of Africa (p. 34)
- 3 A Whiter Shade of Cool (p. 52)
- 4 That's Cool Too ... (p. 71)
- 5 Cool Cracks Up (p. 94)
- 6 The Look of Cool (p. 114)
- 7 Cool Relations (p. 132)
- 8 Cool Psyche (p. 146)
- 9 Cool Rules (p. 160)
- References (p. 183)
- Acknowledgements (p. 188)
- Photographic Acknowledgements (p. 189)
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
What do Humphrey Bogart with a cigarette, Bertholt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich's cheekbones, Billie Holiday, James Dean, Lenny Bruce's irony, Eldridge Cleaver, Chrissie Hinde, heroin and gangsta rap all have in common? They are, for lack of a more precise word, cool. Taking their cue from Susan Sontag's germinal 1964 essay "Notes on Camp," Pountain and Robins attempt to delineate that ambiguous and elusive entity, a cultural sensibility. Declining to investigate the "ontological status" of cool ("is it a philosophy, a sensibility, a religion, an ideology... an attitude, a zeitgeist?"), they claim that we all know cool "when we see it." Their working definition is that "cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals to express defiance to authority"Äand while this might seem obvious, the pleasure of their brief, elucidating study is in the delicious details. Casting their net widely, to include films like Trainspotting, Hollywood icons, obscure books (e.g., an Italian Renaissance etiquette guide), British punk bands, Dadaists, pornography, the American Beats and gay sensibilityÄthey chart how rebellions against standards of sexuality, gender, race, class, artificiality and "decency" lead to coolness. The most adventurous and insightful aspect of their investigation emerges when they trace a concept of "cool" back to the ancient Yoruba and other West African cultures. This is a cool book on cool. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedKirkus Book Review
A breezy account of "the concept of Cool" attempting to use it "to explain the evolution of popular culture over the last 50 years." Former magazine editor Pountain and freelance journalist Robins believe that Cool (capitalized throughout) has emerged as "a cultural category in its own right" and is now "the dominant mindset of advanced consumer capitalism." They rely on the work of historian Robert Farris Thompson in a perfunctory effort to trace the phenomenon "right back to the ancient civilizations of West Africa," but their real interest is popular culture in the late 20th century. (Attempts to link Cool with the placid attitudes of toreadors, Samurai, and Renaissance Italian aristocrats are even more tenuous, and the discussion of Cool in 18th- and 19th-century Britain occupies a single paragraph.) Cool is "an emotional style that belongs to the modern age," the authors argue, a stance that would be more convincing if their definition of Cool were not continually shifting: it is at various points "a permanent state of private rebellion," an attitude "profoundly hedonistic" (with underlying violence), "an effortlessness of technique [in athletics], concealing a fierce . . . competitiveness," etc. Seeking firmer intellectual grounding, Pountain and Robins sometimes quote Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, and other heavier-weights. But they are most comfortable in the world of the popular, and their comments about Cool in clothing, art, music, and movies are most convincing (notably in a brisk analysis of the failure of Levi Strauss to keep pace with blue-jean fashions), although it is most unCool to misquote Dirty Harry, whose celebrated request, "Go ahead, make my day," they unintentionally alter. The authors are better at raising questions than answering them, so the locution "still awaits a truly adequate analysis" appears in various guises throughout. They seem, as well, to have a Starr-struck interest in President Clinton's sex life; references to the Monica Lewinsky affair appear regularly. A chart illustrating Cool's thousand-year evolution is more risible than instructive. Much that is Coolish, some merely foolish. (50 b&w illustrations) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.