Popular Culture: An Introduction

Rating:
Summary: Difficult to read
Review: a

Rating:
Summary: Difficult to read
Review: b

Rating:
Summary: Difficult to read
Review: Caveat emptor: This is not an introduction to popular culture, but an introduction to cultural studies analysis of popular culture.

The field of Cultural Studies enjoys the dubious reputation of having produced the most number of stylistically bad writers; writers who wrap half-baked thoughts in convoluted syntax and bury "radical" ideas under impenetrable jargons.

This book commits those sins at numerous places (though it is arguable whether the difficulty stems not so much from pretentious obfuscation as from genuine complexity.) It reads like a monotonous strings of grand abstractions; suitable for lullaby but probably not for active reading. Some paragraphs are lucid and the ideas interesting, but they are far and few between. (Of course, innovative ideas and original insights reside in clear paragraphs, but the lame and rehashed of those seek refuge in indecipherable long-windedness.)

Had the author decided to hierarchize the organization, avoided condensing so many ideas that are only tangentially related in one paragraph, suppressed the urges for rambling diversions, the book would have been much better.