Author Description

In this brilliant polemic on visual mass culture, Julian Stallabrass argues that culture's status as a commodity is the most important thing about it. He shows how the consistent and unifying capitalist ideology of mass culture leads to an increasingly homogeneous identity among its consumers. Even in radical and marginal activities, like graffiti writing, there can be seen the tyranny of the brand name and the reduction of the individual to a cipher. Starting with an analysis of subjects which concern specific groups - amateur photography, computer games and cyberspace - Stallabrass works out to wider aspects of the culture which affect everybody, including cars, shopping and television. Gargantua raises profound questions about the nature and direction of mass culture. It challenges postmodern theory's attachment to subjectivity, indeterminacy and political indifference. If manufactured subjectivities are always shot through with the objective, then they may not be merely part of the colourful but meaningless postmodern smorgasbord, but an accurate reflection of our current cultural situation, and a map showing paths beyond it.