ABSTRACT
Readings in Popular Culture: Trivial Pursuits? is a collection of readings of, among other things, T-shirts, bodybuilding, crime fiction, football, cricket, television and war toys. It is advertised, immodestly, as the ‘first book since Roland Barthes’ Mythologies to take a comprehensive look at popular culture’ (I’d argue with every one of these claims, including the one that has Mythologies as itself ‘comprehensive’). It is also a book which takes its readership (presumably undergraduate students) seriously in that there is a genuine attempt to make accessible, and thus popularize, cultural studies’ modes of textual analysis. While there are certainly plenty of arguments about the politics of such popularizing work, there are also plenty of arguments which support cultural studies’ acceptance of a pedagogic responsibility to a wider audience than its specialized institutions. And, of course, one hardly needs any longer to state one’s comfort with the idea that the analysis of the practices and material structures of everyday life (the ‘trivial pursuits’ of the book’s subtitle) is worthwhile. Nevertheless, this book is ultimately a very depressing, and often irritating, read.
