The story of how our bottomless appetite for novelty, gossip, and melodrama has turned everything—news, politics, religion, high culture—into one vast public entertainment. Neal Gabler calls them "lifies," those blockbusters written in the medium of life that dominate the media and the national conversation for weeks, months, even years: the death of Princess Diana, the trial of O.J. Simpson, Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton. Real Life as Entertainment is hardly a new phenomenon, but the movies, and now the new information technologies, have so accelerated it that it is now the reigning popular art form. How this came to pass, and just what it means for our culture and our personal lives, is the subject of this witty, concerned, and sometimes eye-opening book. "A thoughtful, in places chilling, account of the way entertainment values have hollowed out American life." --The New York Times Book Review
ASIN: 0375706534
VSKU: PKV.0375706534.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Gabler, Neal
Binding: Paperback
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: A well-loved companion. Corners and cover might show a little wear, and you could find some notes or highlights. The dust jacket might be MIA, it might have been a library book and extras aren't guaranteed—but the story's all there!