Why read The Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Media and Culture?

Book cover of The Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Media and Culture: Something Old, Something New

Book description

This book interrogates the hyper-visibility and stubborn endurance of the wedding spectacle across media and culture in the current climate.

The wide-ranging chapters consider why the symbolic power of weddings is intensifying at a time when marriage as an institution appears to be in decline - and they offer new…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Media and Culture as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Diane Negra

Author

While there are other books on the “matrimonial industrial complex,” this one provides a really in-depth analysis of the cultural fascination with weddings, and I found it an absolutely engrossing account of phenomena ranging from royal weddings to “purity porn.”

What comes across here is the scale of the idealized wedding as a consumerist ritual and form of deep aspirational investment. One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the book is the notion that the cultural norms around weddings and marriage have slipped out of alignment so that there is a growing gap between the celebration of getting married and…

From Diane's list on romance, intimacy and media culture.