Reviews

Life: The Movie - How Entertainment Conquered Reality by Neal Gabler

bakudreamer's review against another edition

Just read a little of

rachelini's review against another edition

2.0

At some point after I started using Goodreads, I transferred all my holds and lists of books to read to the site. Some of those books had been on a list since, oh I don't know, 1998, like this one. I think I have to look a little more closely at those books before I get them from the library - 17 years really changes a book on current entertainment culture.

So, it was somewhat of an interesting read when viewed as a snapshot of a particular point in time, but it's so weird reading about life as a movie and not having reality TV be a part of the conversation.

sebuktegin's review against another edition

A throughout interesting read, one of the kinds of books that makes you look at the world and all the familiar things in a new light. It contains everything from the class origins and differences between art and entertainment and how entertainment subsumed art, how almost everything has fallen into the mould of entertainment, be it the news, sports, lives of "celebrities" and even our own lives. It goes deeply into the interesting case of the "celebrity", a person who, according to Boorstein, is "famous for being famous". A really hitting quote was "Earlier movies were measured up against life, how accurately they portrayed life, now our lives are supposed to meet the expectations set by movies". It was quite amusing the way some things were put, like how people go to the Hard Rock cafe to buy souveniers, but if they don't eat there, then what are the souveniers supposed to make them remember? The act of buying souveniers? This was exemplified on a larger scale by what were termed as "pseudo events", events created especially for media coverage. Many ideas in the book were inspired from The Image by Boorstein and that's what I am going to read next.