Popular culture (commonly known as pop culture) is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society.

Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and dumbed-down in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result, it comes under heavy criticism from various non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, and corrupted.

The term "popular culture" was coined in the 19th century or earlier to refer to the education and general "culturedness" of the lower classes, as was delivered in an address at the Birmingham Town Hall, England. The term began to assume the meaning of a culture of the lower classes separate from (and sometimes opposed) to "true education" towards the end of the century, a usage that became established by the interbellum period. The current meaning of the term, culture for mass consumption, especially originating in the United States, is established by the end of World War II. The abbreviated form "pop culture" dates to the 1960s.

Definitions

There are multiple competing definitions of popular culture. John Storey, in ''Cultural Theory and Popular Culture'', discusses six definitions. The quantitative definition of culture has the problem that much "high culture" (e.g. television dramatizations of Jane Austen) is widely favoured. "Pop culture" is also defined as the culture that is "left over" when we have decided what high culture is. However, many works straddle or cross the boundaries, e.g. Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Storey draws attention to the forces and relations which sustain this difference such as the educational system.

A third definition equates pop culture with Mass Culture. This is seen as a commercial culture, mass produced for mass consumption. From a Western European perspective, this may be compared to American culture. Alternatively, "pop culture" can be defined as an "authentic" culture of the people, but this can be problematic because there are many ways of defining the "people". Storey argues that there is a political dimension to popular culture; neo-Gramscian hegemony theory "... sees popular culture as a site of struggle between the 'resistance' of subordinate groups in society and the forces of 'incorporation' operating in the interests of dominant groups in society." A postmodernist approach to popular culture would "no longer recognize the distinction between high and popular culture".

Storey emphasizes that popular culture emerges from the urbanization of the industrial revolution, which identifies the term with the usual definitions of 'mass culture'. Studies of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber or Bristol, for example) locate much of the characteristic vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance popular culture, while contemporary practitioners like Dario Fo and John McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk traditions (the commedia dell'arte for example).

Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually interdependent perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public.

Institutional propagation

The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing elements that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not. Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods.

Hannah Arendt's 1961 essay "The Crisis in Culture" suggested that a "market-driven media would lead to the displacement of culture by the dictates of entertainment." Susan Sontag argues that in our culture, the most "...intelligible, persuasive values are [increasingly] drawn from the entertainment industries", which is "undermining of standards of seriousness." As a result, "tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel" topics are becoming the norm. Some critics argue that popular culture is “dumbing down”: "newspapers that once ran foreign news now feature celebrity gossip, pictures of scantily dressed young ladies... television has replaced high-quality drama with gardening, cookery, and other “lifestyle” programmes [and] reality TV and asinine soaps," to the point that people are constantly immersed in trivia about celebrity culture.

In Rosenberg and White's book ''Mass Culture'', MacDonald argues that "Popular culture is a debased, trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple spontaneous pleasures... The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products." Van den Haag argues that "all mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other, from the reality and from themselves."

Critics have lamented the "replacement of high art and authentic folk culture by tasteless industrialised artefacts produced on a mass scale in order to satisfy the lowest common denominator." This "mass culture emerged after the Second World War and have led to the concentration of mass-culture power in ever larger global media conglomerates." The popular press decreased the amount of news or information and replaced it with entertainment or titillation that reinforces "fears, prejudice, scapegoating processes, paranoia, and aggression."

Critics of television and film have argued that the quality of TV output has been diluted as stations pursue ratings by focusing on the "glitzy, the superficial, and the popular". In film, "Hollywood culture and values" are increasingly dominating film production in other countries. Hollywood films have changed from creating formulaic films which emphasize "shock-value and superficial thrill[s]" and the use of special effects, with themes that focus on the "basic instincts of aggression, revenge, violence, [and] greed." The plots "often seem simplistic, a standardized template taken from the shelf, and dialogue is minimal." The "characters are shallow and unconvincing, the dialogue is also simple, unreal, and badly constructed."

Folklore

Adaptations based on traditional folklore provide a source of popular culture. This early layer of cultural mainstream still persists today, in a form separate from mass-produced popular culture, propagating by word of mouth rather than via mass media, e.g. in the form of jokes or urban legend. With the widespread use of the Internet from the 1990s, the distinction between mass media and word-of-mouth has become blurred.

Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.

Self-reference

Owing to the pervasive and increasingly interconnected nature of popular culture, especially its intermingling of complementary distribution sources, some cultural anthropologists, literary, and cultural critics have identified a large amount of intertextuality in popular culture's portrayals of itself. One commentator has suggested this self-referentiality reflects the advancing encroachment of popular culture into every realm of collective experience. "Instead of referring to the real world, much media output devotes itself to referring to other images, other narratives; self-referentiality is all-embracing, although it is rarely taken account of." Furthermore, the commentary on the intertextuality and its self referential nature has itself become the subject of self referential and recursive commentary.

Many cultural critics have dismissed this as merely a symptom or side-effect of mass consumerism; however, alternate explanations and critique have also been offered. One critic asserts that it reflects a fundamental paradox: the increase in technological and cultural sophistication, combined with an increase in superficiality and dehumanization.

Long-running television series ''The Simpsons'' routinely alludes to mainstream media properties, as well as the commercial content of the show itself. In the episode "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", Bart complains about the crass commercialism of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while watching television. When he turns his head away from the television, the screen shows an oversized inflatable balloon of Bart Simpson floating past.

According to television studies scholars specializing in quality television, such as Kristin Thompson, self-referentiality in mainstream American television (especially comedy) reflects and exemplifies the type of progression characterized previously. Thompson argues shows such as ''The Simpsons'' use a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show." Extreme examples approach a kind of thematic infinite regress wherein distinctions between art and life, commerce and critique, ridicule and homage become intractably blurred.

See also

Cultural icon

Fads

High culture

Low culture

MTV Generation

Pop art

Pop icon

Popular culture studies

Trash culture

Notes

References

Ashby, LeRoy. "The Rising of Popular Culture: A Historiographical Sketch," ''OAH Magazine of History,'' 24 (April 2010), 11–14.

Ashby, LeRoy. ''With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830'' (2006)

Bakhtin, M. M. and Michael Holquist, Vadim Liapunov, Kenneth Brostrom. (1981) ''The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays'' (University of Texas Press Slavic Series). Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press.

Browne, Ray B. and Pat Browne, eds. ''The Guide to U.S. Popular Culture'' (2001), 1010 pages; essays by experts on many topics

Burke, Peter. "Popular Culture Reconsidered," ''Storia della Storiografia'' 1990, Issue 17, pp 40–49

Freitag, Sandria B. "Popular Culture in the Rewriting of History: An Essay in Comparative History and Historiography," ''Peasant Studies,'' 1989, Vol. 16 Issue 3, pp 169–198,

Gerson, Stéphane. "'A World of Their Own': Searching for Popular Culture in the French Countryside," ''French Politics, Culture and Society,'' Summer 2009, Vol. 27 Issue 2, pp 94–110

Griffin, Emma. "Popular Culture in Industrializing England," ''Historical Journal,'' Sept 2002, Vol. 45 Issue 3, pp 619–35

Hassabian, Anahid (1999). "Popular", ''Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture'', eds.: Horner, Bruce and Swiss, Thomas. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-21263-9.

Seabrook, John. ''NoBrow : the culture of marketing the marketing of culture'', New York: A.A. Knopf, 2000. ISBN 0-375-40504-6

Storey, John (2006). ''Cultural theory and popular culture''. Pearson Education. ISBN 978-0-13-197068-7

Category:Media studies Category:Youth

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