America's premiere scholars of popular culture present a hilarious tribute to the all-time highs of lowbrow taste. The Sterns offer the definitive sourcebook of the world's favorite cultural extremes and faux pas. 350 photos, 50 in full-color.
The subtitle of this heavenly concoction is: A celebration of American pop culture at its most joyfully outrageous.
This is not so much a book as an aspirin to banish gloom. Of course, America marches on and this book needs a major update to include such modern phenomena as Celebrity Rehab and Autobiographies by People who Aren't 25 Yet - still, it's a wonderful panorama of some truly ghastly shit. For instance
Aerosol cheese Boudoir photography (That special present for that special someone) Breasts, enormous (Can't mock Americans for that, we have this fetish over here too, but I liked that there was a page called "Breasts, enormous") Death cars Fingernail extremism ( I see that creeping in here - now there are entire salons springing up just for nails with slogans like "rake his back and make him howl with these razorsharp bejewelled babies" - no, I made that up. But nearly) Liberace (So many facelifts he couldn't shut his mouth) Meat snack foods
"Modern Americans buy meat snack food in shrink-fit plastic packages at the convenience store. They call the snacks Slim Jim, Chubby Sausage, the Big Jerk — manufacturers' words for sorbitol, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, monosodium glutamate, corn syrup, and lactic acid starter culture combined with chunked, ground, and formed beef and mechanically deboned poultry. The term "meat snack," like "cheese food" and "creme filling," is food-industry poetry, used to evoke thoughts of meat (or cheese or cream) about products that contain little or none of the substance in question."
- this quote should be written into the Constitution or something like that. Genius!
Mood rings Perky nuns Pet clothing Reclining chairs Waltzing waters Tammy Faye Bakker (Didja ever see a documentary called "The Eyes of Tammy Faye Bakker"? It's a bug-eyed must-see. The stuff that poor woman went through.) Baton twirling Children's names (Which have got immeasurably worse since this book came out - my daughter went to school with Bracken, Angel and DeQuayne) Cool Whip Dinosaur Parks Lawn ornaments Panty-hose Crafts Shag Rugs Sno-Globes (yes!) Unicorns and rainbows Velvet paintings White lipstick
Strange book. Vacillates between undisguised classism and racism (see: Low Riders, Mobile Homes) and loving, poetic devotion to The Rise of the Common Man (see: Jello, Cool Whip). I don't know what to make of it all. Beautiful presentation though.
This one took me a few months to fully get through... because it was so intriguing, I could never full put it down or stop reading it. It lists a ton of things society finds in "bad taste" from people (Dolly Parton) to fads (Disco) to things (TV Dinners) to all types of things.... Most pages have more than one photo of each thing as well, only a small handful don't have pictures to go along with said, listed item.
Warning, it's a NSFW book as it includes nudity in its pages in some photos.
Pretty full list that doesn't miss or forget about anything. I definitely thought most of the things in this book were things of "bad taste".
A re-read, I got the Encyclopedia of Bad Taste as a library discard a few years ago.
As you'd probably guess from the title, this book has short articles (1-3 pages) about kitsch, tackiness and faux pas. Art, cuisine, music, fashion & celebrities are all represented. There could be more pictures for my taste, but the articles are relatively well-written and concise. Written in 1990, it focuses on 1950's- 1980's, with a strong emphasis (IMHO) on the 60's & 70's.
You may not agree with their evaluation of everything in here, but it's a fun read. It's an oversized book & therefore somewhat cumbersome to read.
I discovered this book when I lived in Switzerland--yes, it was one of the very few books at our public library about American life. And it contains a hilarious caricature of the worst of American excesses. I was annoyed, and amused, that this is the image of our country that makes it out of the borders [and, quite frankly, I have to admit that it mirrors the image that many Europeans have of americans:] Big: big cars, big breasts, big paintings on black velvet.
My friend gave this to me as a present one year. I gave her the only compliment that I thought was vaguely worthy of the book: it's in my bathroom library. This is a hilarious book that has topics from Jayne Mansfield and paint by numbers to Liberace and sweatsuits. It also works well as a bathroom book because all of the entries are pretty short. Liberace took a little while; his whole lifestyle was elaborate. If you can find a copy of this book, buy it. It will be well worth your money.
The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste by Jane & Michael Stern (Harper Collins 1990)(306.4). Man-oh-man, whoever provided the ratings shown on Goodreads for this book were either reading something else or were members of the authors' press team. This book is poorly done, not funny, and dated. I'd recommend this to no one. My rating: 3/10, finished 1/21/14.
I never laugh out loud, except when reading from the Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, AKA the Book of Tacky. Truly wonderful, and the best present I ever got.
Given that is book was written in the late 80s/early 90s, and mostly celebrates kitsch from the 1940s-70s, I read it feeling nostalgia for the nostalgia of an earlier time. The 80s-90s po-mo kitsch blender was actually pretty great, when the mid-century material culture was still the fat of the land, and before ebay scoured the thrift stores clean.
Not sure how this ended up on my radar, and I don't even remember putting it on hold at the library, but one day it was ready for me to pick up.
It sat in my living room, thumbed through by roommates and ignored by me until after it was overdue. So, I flipped through it, reading at least the title of each entry. What an interesting collection (and A LOT of photos of topless women...)
It was more information about each thing than I wanted to ingest, but interesting to flip through.
This is more a gag then anything in my opinion, about American excess. It feels a tad tongue and cheek, otherwise, it'd be a bit classicist and racist.