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Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (University of Chicago Press, 1997) Reissued by University of Chicago Press in paperback in 1998 Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool posits that the countercultural shift of the 1960's was less revolution and more execution of a series of advertising campaigns that captivated a public who fancied itself more subversive than it actually was. By accepting assignations like "The Pepsi Generation" and believing Men's Wear magazine when it trumpeted that the "new rule" in fashion was "no rule" (when, in fact, the rule was to observe the cues the magazine piped to the fashion conscious audience), Frank argues that the bulk of Americans didn't overthrow paradigms so much as they settled into the mock-innovative grooves laid down by the 1960's advertising industry. As Frank writes, "It was this sudden mass defection of Americans from square to hip that distinguished the culture of the 1960's." According to Frank, business interests ground any kernel of a revolutionary spirit in the early '60's into a powder, so as to sprinkle their products with a patina of insurrection and subverted paradigms. Some of Frank's examples ring true. He rightly juxtaposes 50's conservatism (evidenced by the suit and tie-clad spokesmen who hocked products known for their trustworthiness) and 60's characters that flouted those '50's values even as they similarly and more insidiously entreated consumers to buy (see: Frito Bandito, the band of surfers shilling Foster Grant sunglasses, and the "rebel" figure that emerged once hippies lost their negative association in the collective mind of the American people). Where Frank loses points is in his one-sided examination of the decade. Granted, he does focus on the side of the '60's that has gone least examined - the consumer behavior throughout an era known mainly for how it liberalized America's social attitude. His focus upon the minutiae of '60's advertising is useful, but it lacks the perspective that accounts from those who actually did pursue social change would have brought the book. The Conquest of Cool began as a doctoral dissertation Frank wrote at the University of Chicago, and it reads as such. The writing is dry, and suffers from a preponderance of examples and a paucity of humor. Reception of the book was favorable upon its publication. The New York Times Book Review called Frank "the most provocative young cultural critic of the moment, and certainly the most malcontent." Frank, a founding editor of hipster critique magazine The Baffler lends the '60's the same attention in the book that his magazine serves to the '90's-spawned "Generation X": a dose of bitter medicine suggesting that we are only as cool as corporate interests let us think we are, via their ceaseless packaging and accompanying dilution of anything edgy and novel the culture yields. MORE: NYT Book Review The Baffler |
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