Ebook593 pages8 hours
Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
By Eva Illouz
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this ebook
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage.
Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all.
Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens?
Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all.
Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens?
Author
Eva Illouz
Eva Illouz teaches sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the Academic Director of the Program of Cultural Studies as well as a member of The Center for the Study of Rationality
Read more from Eva Illouz
Hard-Core Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, Best-Sellers, and Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Related ebooks
The Way We Live Now Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Beth Book Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kid Lit: An Introduction to Literary Criticism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMansfield Park Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Patriarch Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dynamic Form: How Intermediality Made Modernism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Odd Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCarmen Martín Gaite: Poetics, Visual Elements and Space Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFailures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Howard Jacobson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEthan Frome: with an introduction by Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Novelist's Lexicon: Writers on the Words That Define Their Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communism of Love: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExistentialism and Romantic Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Politics and Poetics of Cinematic Realism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove and revolution: A politics for the deep commons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReconstructing Public Philosophy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPink Triangles: Radical Perspectives on Gay Liberation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk & Fairy Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Passionate Revolutions: The Media and the Rise and Fall of the Marcos Regime Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the "Bildungsroman" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConsuming Passions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Civic Friendship: Including Women in the State Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Capitalism on Campus: Sex Work, Academic Freedom and the Market Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCultivating political and public identity: Why plumage matters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRum Histories: Drinking in Atlantic Literature and Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings'Antony and Cleopatra' in Context: The Politics of Passion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Social Science For You
Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Men Explain Things to Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Close Encounters with Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Condition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Rating: 3.857143 out of 5 stars
4/5
7 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Consuming the Romantic Utopia - Eva Illouz
Kd book_preview_excerpt.html }rYRf +*)˪)Q)H*R RU?fvcXUr'%7 c])@}u?~/wz6u1lBqnfUe˟~ge?tm/~C>˟/W](fɯ=aʺ
]C%-UUCYW#.⪮~o.o]~QBW^PWkd6o@L"{,_YjXgu,Yx}ϋq\',ワGWͳRV]Uq^W_<7uePwxw#iQ综]^"e+quvbjMW2vݕЅf!f>ƯMٗ}z٧˳''eؕ=:y/g/OvOd<꼸:A_|/d!|ӯ.^.>x_|E\]3}Or\mdO~cb6$<]vڎ[YǪ[0{IS7de Ͳ얅Yqna_6/g qkKW7ﮊ8{_Tϊۮ%lp(\Woy%,ϛo@?/jonni{v̟/̜'̨w