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Epic Fails
The Edsel, the Mullet, and Other Icons of Unpopular Culture
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- 44,99 €
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- 44,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Many of the most successful innovations—from the light bulb to the Internet—have often resulted from ingenuity, ambition, and dedication. Such achievements have changed lives for the better. Yet for every new development that the public embraces, there is a dark side of progress: cultural byproducts that litter the road to obscurity. Just because something is a failure, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that it shouldn’t matter.
In Epic Fails: The Edsel, the Mullet, and Other Icons of Unpopular Culture, Salvador Jiménez Murguía examines some of the most iconic missteps of the past several decades. In order to shed light on the inherent, often comic strain in American life between fame and infamy, the author surveys some of the best—or rather, worst—of what man has to offer. From fashion flops like the mullet and Zubaz pants to marketing mistakes like Bud Dry, New Coke, and Crystal Pepsi, this text captures the unintentionally entertaining milieu of failure. Placing these gaffes in cultural context, Murguía considers how each of these products crashed and burned, while trying to arrive at an answer to the ultimate question: “What were they thinking?”
Whether these attempts were doomed from the start, failed because of consumer indifference, or were simply the victims of poor timing, this book returns them, however briefly, to the spotlight. A fascinating look at man-made disasters, Epic Fails isan entertaining treatise about the forgotten—and infamous—endeavors of American creativity, or lack thereof.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sociologist Murguia (editor of The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films) surveys a wide range of "the most iconic failures in American popular culture" in this colorful look at the way various inventions suffered from cultural and economic variables. The book contains 18 chronological chapters from the Edsel in the 1950s to Google Wave in the early 2000s. Murguia illustrates that, for example, the failure of Ford's Edsel car was not due to a faulty product but instead was the result of a complex combination of changes in Ford's corporate structure, poor marketing, and the lack of a dedicated spokesperson. In another fascinating chapter on McDonald's introducing the McAfrika hamburger in Norway in 2002, he explains how the franchise attempted to broaden the brand through regional associations; however, the sandwich became associated with cultural appropriation and not cultural inclusion. And in a chapter on Sony's Betamax, Murguia smartly summarizes how it lost out to the VHS video format, suggesting that pornography might have played into the tape's downfall because Sony didn't allow licensing for explicit sexual material. Murguia's slim book is unfailingly entertaining and enlightening.