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Author Kracauer, Siegfried, 1889-1966.

Title The mass ornament : Weimar essays / Siegfried Kracauer ; translated, edited, and with an introduction by Thomas Y. Levin
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1995

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  081 Kra/Mow  AVAILABLE
Description xi, 403 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Summary With these essays, written in the 1920s and early 1930s and edited by the author in 1963, Kracauer was among the first to demonstrate that studying the everyday world of the masses can bring great rewards. The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary writings continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile. In his introduction, Thomas Levin situates Kracauer in a turbulent age, illuminates the intellectual context of his work - including his friendships with Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and other Weimar intellectuals - and provides the philosophical foundation necessary for understanding his ideas
This book is a celebration of the masses - their tastes, amusements, and everyday lives. Taking up the master themes of modernity, such as isolation and alienation, mass culture and urban experience, and the relation between the group and the individual, Kracauer explores a kaleidoscope of topics: shopping arcades, the cinema, bestsellers and their readers, photography, dance, hotel lobbies, Kafka, the Bible, and boredom. For Kracauer, the most revelatory facets of modern metropolitan life lie on the surface, in the ephemeral and the marginal. Of special fascination to him is the leisure culture associated with the United States (where he eventually settled after fleeing Germany), which he carefully dissects by means of his sensitive, critical, and lyrical sensibility
Analysis English prose Essays
United States
English prose Essays
United States
Notes Originally published as: Das Ornament der Masse: Essays, by Suhrkamp Verlag, c1963
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 391-395) and index
Notes Translation of: Das Ornament der Masse
Subject Culture.
English essays -- 20th century.
Leisure -- United States.
Leisure.
Popular culture -- Germany -- 20th century.
Popular culture -- Germany.
Popular culture.
SUBJECT Germany -- Civilization -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008105201
Germany -- Intellectual life -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85054610
Author Levin, Thomas Y.
LC no. 94047397
ISBN 0674551621 (acid-free paper)
067455163X (paperback: acid-free paper)
Other Titles Ornament der Masse. English
OTHER TI Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt (Frankfurt am Main, Germany : Daily) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85287647