Full Description
This book spans three centuries of popular entertainment and everyday culture, showcasing both mainstream and submerged channels and voices to examine how once reviled business values gained supremacy and poisoned the American spirit.
The office in popular culture is often depicted as a topsy-turvy parallel universe where psychological disorders are legitimized as "managerial styles" and comically depraved bosses torment those who do the actual work. During the 1950s, the Beats chose denim and the open road over gray flannel suits and office jobs, but today their grandchildren—Generation Y—aggressively covet desk jobs.
"Greed Is Good" and Other Fables: Office Life in Popular Culture examines how office life is both extolled and lampooned in popular culture. The book tracks how business values ascended to cultural dominance in the United States today, revealing our incessant struggle between financial and spiritual goals in the pursuit of "freedom" and the fulfillment of the American dream. By drawing upon sources as varied as books, newspapers, magazines, television shows, movies, blogs, message boards, documentaries, public speeches, corporate training films, and employee newsletters, the author provides compelling insights into the range of competing values and ideals interwoven throughout office life.
Contents
Chapter 1. The Great American Dilemma: Conformity or Rebellion?
Chapter 2. My Approach and Some Reflections on Pop Culture and Such
Chapter 3. Early Mass Culture: Print from the Victorian Era to the Roaring Twenties
Chapter 4. Sponsored Films: Quaintness with a Radical Bite
Chapter 5. The Organization Man and His Kin: Preachers and Salesmen
Chapter 6. The Office in Drama and Comedy during the 1950s and 1960s
Chapter 7. Greed Is Good: The 1980s to Present-Day America
Chapter 8. Scaling the Pyramid: Common Types and Office Games
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
