AUDIOVISUAL REVIEWS 207

academic teeth o n cognitive anthropology, ethnoscience, and scholarly rigor. Second, stylistic differences within any given culture create serious arguments with the sampling techniques employed in cantometrics. In the materials under consideration here, however, these scholarly differences become super- fluous.

These are intended to serve as a direct, easy means of training students to hear the various general parameters of music. The tapes may be used a t any level, and the accompanying booklet is full of useful ad- vice t o the person who is using them. In primary or secondary school, they can occu- py a number of weeks’ study; in college, a student can go through the training in three or four hours. To me, the clear progression possible with these tapes is especially valu- able to anthropologists. Many colleagues, for example, have musical material, but hesitate to publish it because of feelings of inade- quacy about using musical terminology. It is for these colleagues and for anthropology students-and ultimately for the increase of available materials on music as culture-that Lomax’s work achieves its highest level of value. Using this book and the tapes, it is quite possible to become conversant with ways of discussing one’s own materials, and to do so painlessly. This reviewer has high hopes that Lomax’s work will generate a new interest in musical materials on the part of many anthropologists who otherwise would never have considered publishing in this area.

While there are the inevitable first-edition problems with mislabeled examples (e.g., with Tape l), the enormous task of keeping materials together has been fairly success- fully achieved. Lomax is t o be congratulated for his fine effort. The final comment should be “Try it-you’ll like it!”

Spots. The Popular Art of American Televi- sion Commercials. 1977. By Bruce Kurtz. 60 minutes, 3/4” videotape cassette. Purchase $250, from Arts Communication. 112-pp. book of the same title, $9.95, also from Arts Communication.

John W. Adams University of South Carolina

Television commercials are among the most carefully formulated messages in our culture. They cost more per second in thought, production time, and money than any other “media-event,” and at their best are perfectly shaped to create a maximum effect within the 30 seconds of allotted time. Visually, they draw on sources from Giotto’s painting to Edgerton’s stroboscopic photography. From the movies, there is a heavy influence of Eisenstein, Ford, and Capra. Yet, like the products they advertise, they are “disposables.” Here is a book on their art, their philosophy, and their making and a videotape of interviews with over 20 examples (for McDonalds, AT&T, Sunkist, American Express, Volvo, INA, etc.) which show sexy food, family drama, crime and terror, and, above all, hyperkinesia and nostalgia: a n epitome of American T.V. Bruce Kurtz, an art critic, writes primarily of esthetics, referring variously to Panofsky, McLuhan, Cocteau, and so on. But he also examines and analyzes spots in detail, en- abling us to obtain a much more precise understanding of what is actually shown in each of them. The book contains a transcript of all the interviews on the tape as well as much additional text. Neither book nor tape substitute for each other; they are comple- ments. Careful study of Spots leads not only into the values exhibited but also into various mythologies of work permeating their manufacture.