Symptoms of Culture

Rating:
Summary: PC Bigotry at its most arbitrary
Review: I was required to read this book for a graduate course. As a symptom of what is wrong with American (and Western) culture, it does a good job of exemplifying the absurdity and bigotry of the psuedo-intellectual left. If one approaches it as a scholarly appraisal of Western culture, one will be seriously mis-led.

Garber assumes, in the introduction, that Fruedianism is an authoritative hermeneutical tool for literature and culture generally. One would normally expect a scholar to demonstrate why s/he believes in a certain system of ideas. But apparently Garber approaches Frued the same way a fundamentalist approaches the Bible: Freud said it, I believe it, that settles it. That abitrary approach permeates the entire book -- confirming the worst of what one has heard about the debased (and intollerantly leftist) nature of today's English departments. Later she appeals for tolerance for Jews wearing their caps during sporting events and damns evangelical Christians for praying in public after they score touch-downs. Guess what? She's Jewish. Shakespeare, she says, is a "fetish" and "Charlotte's Web" is a work of comparable literary value. And on and on she goes. This book should be preserved if only to demonstrate how intolerant and debased the academic "left" became in the late 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: May or may not be your cup of tea
Review: Marjorie Garber is one of the premiere cultural critics in the U.S., and she knows it. She is pretentious, way too psychoanalytic, doggedly elitist, and oozing with Ivy League entitlement -- has she ever actually encountered, personally, racism, sexism, antisemitism, or homophobia? Nevertheless, she writes with wit and flair, and presents stunning insights into the way cultural references are interconnected. Some of the essays are already dated -- Anita Hill? -- but others, especially the discussion of Jello and Judaism, are more than worth the price of the book. Queer, feminist, racial theorists take note -- this is what you should be producing.

Rating:
Summary: Cultural studies at its best and worst
Review: Marjorie Garber is one of the premiere cultural critics in the U.S., and she knows it. She is pretentious, way too psychoanalytic, doggedly elitist, and oozing with Ivy League entitlement -- has she ever actually encountered, personally, racism, sexism, antisemitism, or homophobia? Nevertheless, she writes with wit and flair, and presents stunning insights into the way cultural references are interconnected. Some of the essays are already dated -- Anita Hill? -- but others, especially the discussion of Jello and Judaism, are more than worth the price of the book. Queer, feminist, racial theorists take note -- this is what you should be producing.