Word: popularization
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Frank Sinatra: The Capitol Years (Capitol); The Reprise Collection (Reprise). Does popular singing get any better than what is represented in these two editions? The first (three CDs, 75 songs) spans 1953-62; the second (four CDs, 81 songs...
...Least Popular Industry, Lifetime Achievement Category Big Oil struck a gusher of bad publicity again. Little more than a year after the Exxon Valdez disaster, the industry got blamed by just about everybody for rising gas and fuel prices in the wake of the Persian Gulf crisis. Oilmen denied any profiteering, but several firms posted huge increases in earnings...
...whose books always sell well in France. "I don't necessarily mean to be derogatory. The Europeans have always been fascinated by wanting to know what's going on with this big, ogreish subcontinent across the Atlantic, this potentially dangerous, constantly mysterious country called the U.S. of A." American popular culture fills a vacuum, vulgar or not. "French television is a wasteland; ours is a madhouse. But at least it's vital," says Styron. "Dallas and Knots Landing and the American game shows are filling a need in France...
Susan Sontag, whose 1964 essay Notes on "Camp" broke new ground in interpreting American popular culture, expresses doubt that the vitality of European culture will be extinguished by America's onslaught. "The cultural infrastructure is still there," she says, noting that great bookstores , continue to proliferate in Europe. Rather than regarding Americans as cultural imperialists, she observes wryly, "many Europeans have an almost colonialist attitude toward us. We provide them with wonderful distractions, the feeling of diversion. Perhaps Europeans will eventually view us as a wonderfully advanced Third World country with a lot of rhythm -- a kind of pleasure country...
...power, and yet for the next 300 years, Greek culture, the culture of Athens, became the culture of the world." Much as the Greek language was the lingua franca of the world, Veliz sees the American version of English in the same role. "The reason Greek culture was so popular is very simple: the people liked it. People liked to dress like the Greeks, to build their buildings like the Greeks. They liked to practice sports like the Greeks; they liked to live like the Greeks. Yet there were no Greek armies forcing them to do it. They simply wanted...