Thomas Frank Quotes (18 Quotes)

These days, of course, the focus of talk about popular liberation through products is mostly associated with the Internet. I've been collecting computer ads and ads dealing with Internet industries.

People are born in a certain place, and in a certain society. I don't mean to sound like a determinist, but to think we're entirely free to do whatever we want betrays a certain class perspective. For most people who have to work for a living, and work at jobs under conditions they may not like, it's just not simple when it comes to freedom.

As we all know, Nike is a terrible exploiter of labor in other countries while advertising themselves here as being the bearer of authenticity, with products that will put you back in touch with real life. They even had a series of commercials several years ago about the revolution, which was basketball when played from the heart and not for love of money.

I always want to keep returning, in my writing and in my thinking, to the fundamental core fact of our society's exploitative structure. It doesn't matter how wonderful the stock market is doing, or whether we entered a new realm with the rising tide of capital lifting all boats. For the vast majority of all people, it's not that wonderful.

Some meetings' minutes are missing. There are a number of gaps.

It's curious how this parallels what goes on in academia. In academic fields like cultural studies, there's a lot of emphasis placed on finding and celebrating instances of audience counter-hegemony or audience agency instances of people not acting in the way that TV or the culture industry tells them to - the idea being that people really do have free will.

What becomes fascinating is the way the culture industry doesn't deny it and doesn't try to mitigate it, but tries to sell its products as a way of liberating oneself.

I was in a bad mood when I wrote that.

An appeal to reason in a dark time.

In contemporary American public culture, the legacy of the consumer revolution of the 1960s is unmistakable. Today, there are few things more beloved of our masses than the figure of the cultural rebel, the defiant individualist resisting the mandates of the machine civilization. Whether he is an athlete decked out in a mowhawk and multiple-pierced ears, a policeman who plays by his own rules, an actor on a motorcycle, a soldier of fortune with explosive bow and arrow, or a rock star in leather jacket and sunglasses, the rebel has become the paramount cliche of our popular entertainment, and the pre-eminent symbol of the system he is supposed to be subverting. In advertising especially, he rules supreme.

These sensibilities are old, 19th century, republican ideals. That attitude has pretty much gone away. I've been reading muckraking books from the 1930s, when there was still this intense hatred and fear of monopolies - especially newspaper chains.

I think there's great potential for autonomy, but we have to remember that we live in a world where people may have free will but have not invented their circumstances.

In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm.

I actually don't express contempt for the rank-and-file conservative voters in Kansas. The conservative reviews of the book claim that I do, but by and large I am very respectful of these people. I certainly don't try to make these people sound crazy. In a lot of ways I really respect them.

In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on.

People understand how, with the concentration of ownership, the things that make up their lives are increasingly under the control of fewer and fewer hands. We see a great, popular demonology of corporate villains that especially tends to focus on the leaders of the culture industry, such as Rupert Murdoch, who is a very widely hated figure.

Iraqis are being targeted at an unprecedented rate. Wary of the ability of police and soldiers to provide protection, civilians are attempting to provide their own security, relying on neighbors and family or hiring armed guards.

The public is becoming more engaged with this project as each new phase starts. We hope to address the very real concerns people have.