Jim Collins No (Popular) Place like home - Article Review

Jim Collins No (Popular) Place like home - Article Review

The past few decades have witnessed a carefully executed infiltration of domestic space by popular western culture and interior design has consequently become a social and cultural phenomenon. In the article “No (Popular) Place Like Home,” Jim Collins dissects the domestic interior in the realm of popular culture in relation to the postmodern media saturated landscape. Collins raises many issues concerning the implications of a media propelled postmodern design sensibility as opposed to more traditional modernist forms of design discourse. As the media dominates our cultural landscape, we are programmed to keep up with the complexities of a changing and inherently eclectic postmodern environment. We are thus bombarded by a plethora of commercial choices that we believe to define our identity, both individually and as members of society. Taste is therefore influenced by carefully constructed channels, intended to direct us from one point of sale to the next.

Facilitated by massive technological advancements of the past few decades, we are exposed to vast quantities of information at an incredibly accelerated pace. The“mass media images which occupy our cultural literacy are part of the terrain, inseparable from our design literacy in electronic cultures” (Collins 190). This is a generation that was “raised on computers and sophisticated childhood consumerism” (Cullens 216); and style, as such “is seldom encountered in a pure state. It comes […] overlaid with associations that mediate our evaluation of it “ (Collins 190).

The fashion industry has existed for decades as a means to communicate identity and personal style “all orchestrated by itinerant stylists who serve as the messengers of what is cool, hip and appropriately ironic” (Goldberger np). In order to ensure that this identity is genuinely stylish however, it must exist in a constant state of transformation (Collins 183). Most often clothing has a relatively short lifespan and is thus shaped by...