Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism Book

From his perch somewhere in Brooklyn, New York, essayist Daniel Harris launches a loquacious jeremiad against the way in which consumerism and its ideologies have insinuated themselves into our sense of self. Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic is a critical examination of the everyday things that surround us--from washing machines to vitamin supplements, reproduction antiques to supermodels. Taking aim at cuteness, quaintness, coolness, the romantic, zaniness, the futuristic, deliciousness, the natural, glamorousness, and cleanness, he seeks to expose just how tangled is the web we have woven, his goal being to show "how the aesthetics of consumerism are the lies we tell ourselves to preserve our individuality." Buying a four-by-four does not make us roughriders or adventurers, despite the names such vehicles bear. We know this as we drive our Wrangler or Jeep through the smooth streets of suburbia, yet the off-road ads still appeal. The perversity is the way in which attempts at iconoclasm are themselves domesticated into corporate opportunity: dirty denim, pick-up trucks as general vehicles, "wackiness." Harris is not a man to mince his words. The reader sits almost breathless in the face of his vituperation. For example, discussing teenagers and coolness, he writes: "The romantic movement's cult of the child has created a foul-mouthed enfant terrible who has turned the playground into a necropolis, where prematurely aged Byronic figures stagger from the merry-go-round to the seesaw to the jungle gym, striking poses of misery and ennui, convinced that their solemnity lends them an air of sophistication and maturity." The critique is scathing and often penetrating. Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic is a bracing read and a call to consciousness. Even the least sophisticated consumers know they are manipulated. Even the most sophisticated, Harris argues, do not really acknowledge how much they, too, are willing dupes.--J. Riches Read More

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  • Product Description

    A psychic voyage into the aesthetic unconscious of the consumer, examining the broad principles that govern the appearance of popular culture, from cuteness to quaintness, coolness to cleanness, the natural to the futuristic

    Why has the ring of the telephone become a beep? What ever happened to the bumpers and fenders of cars? Why do food commercials never mention hunger?

    In this encyclopedia of low-brow aesthetics, Daniel Harris concentrates on the nuances of non-art, the uses of the useless, the politics of product design and advertising. We learn how advertisers exaggerate our sensual responses to eating, how close-up nature photography exaggerates the accessibility of the natural world, and how the mutated physiology of dolls invites our pity and affection.

    In studying its aesthetics, we find consumerism instills disappointment rather than gratification, convincing us that our lives are deficient and wanting. If we are what we buy, then we must buy in order to be.

  • 0465028489
  • 9780465028481
  • Daniel Harris
  • 13 June 2000
  • Basic Books
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 228
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