cultural-capitalists

Emily Gould · 12/17/07 10:00AM

Let's Talk About Love is the latest record to be given the treatment where an eminent critic ruminates at book-length about a seminal album—OK Computer and Highway 61 Revisited and Doolittle were previous picks in Continuum 33 1/3's series. Don't worry, though, this doesn't actually mean that Celine Dion has somehow become ironically hip. Instead, Carl Wilson has ended up writing about taste itself: "Wilson tends to side with the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that taste is never disinterested: It's a form of social currency, or 'cultural capital,' that we use to stockpile prestige." What a cool idea! Of course, the way this idea of taste-democratization gets turned into a New York headline, online at least, is: 'Why Celine Dion Is Better Than You Think.' [NY]