popular culture - Defining popular culture, Popular culture in the 20th and early-21st centuries

A term which, used in a narrow sense, describes mass cultural phenomena, such as soap operas, spectator sports, and pop music; more broadly, it describes the mentality and way of life of most people as opposed to elites. Popular culture is now the subject of serious study, with museums and university courses devoted to it.

Popular culture, or pop culture, (literally: "the culture of the people") consists of the cultural elements that prevail (at least numerically) in any given society, mainly using the more popular media, in that society's vernacular language and/or an established lingua franca. (Compare meme.) Popular culture often contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist "high culture".

If one regards culture as a way of defining oneself (an extremely individualist approach), a culture needs to attract the interest of people (potential members) and to persuade them to invest a part of themselves in it.

Pop culture finds its expression in the mass circulation of items from areas such as fashion, music, sport and film.

Defining popular culture

Curiously, though almost all of us spend our lives immersed in popular culture, no one seems able to agree on what popular culture consists of. We see advertisements for products and services almost daily — that counts as participation in popular culture.

Historically, commentators on culture defined the term "popular culture" in negative terms as those parts or expressions of culture not accepted into the cultural milieu of the social élite (such as courts, the nobility, patricians or the rich bourgeoisie), nor in an institutionalized context (such as professional theatre, church liturgy, military life). Some distinguish the products of high culture as "art" (i.e., sacred) and popular culture as mere "entertainment" (i.e., "profane").

The dividing line between popular and "higher" culture can often become blurred, as "official" culture may adopt (and often polish) popular elements, giving them wider kudos.

Some forms or culture remain too academic, esoteric or aesthetically "difficult" to gain wide popularity;

Some people make a distinction between popular art forms and entertainment genres (such as detective stories, westerns and situation comedies) and mass media (such as radio, television, film, newspapers and magazines).

Some people talk about mass culture, which suggests an interest in the culture of the ordinary man (as contrasted with the "high culture" of élites). But the title of an important collection of articles on mass culture, published in the mid-1950s, Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, suggests that (in America at least) mass culture equates to the popular arts.

Popular culture has a broader scope than the popular arts. One can perhaps best give an indication of the definition of popular culture by stating what popular culture generally is not. It does not equate to the classic works of literature and philosophy (though curiously enough much popular culture relates directly to the same myths as in Greek tragedy, for instance; and Greek tragedy had its roots in ancient Greek popular culture). Popular culture does not consist of highly sophisticated art which appeals only to a person of highly cultivated and discriminating tastes (though popular culture can demonstrate considerable sophistication).

Popular culture in the 20th and early-21st centuries

In modern urban mass societies, several factors have played a major role in shaping popular culture:

the development of industrial mass production the introduction of new technologies of sound and image broadcasting and recording the growth of mass media industries — the film, broadcast radio and television, and the book-publishing industries, as well as the print and electronic news media

But one cannot describe even contemporary popular culture as just the aggregate product of industrial developments; instead, contemporary Western popular culture results from a continuing interaction between those industries and those who consume their products(Bennett 1980, p.153-218). distinguishes between 'primary' and 'secondary' popular culture, defining primary popular culture as mass product and secondary popular culture as local re-production.

Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, in the sense that a small group of people will have a strong interest in an area of which the mainstream popular culture has only partial awareness; thus, for example, the electro-pop group Kraftwerk has "impinged on mainstream popular culture to the extent that they have been referenced in The Simpsons and Father Ted."

Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public. Some argue that broad-appeal items dominate popular culture because profit-making companies that produce and sell items of popular culture attempt to maximize their profits by emphasizing broadly appealing items (see culture industry).

Since World War II a significant shift in pop culture has taken place: from the production of culture to the consumption of culture.

Popular culture has multiple origins. These industries include those of:

popular music film television radio video games book publishing internet comics

Folklore provides a second and very different source of popular culture. In pre-industrial times, mass culture equaled folk culture. By providing a new channel for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of popular culture.

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.

A different source of popular culture lies in the set of professional communities that provide the public with facts about the world, frequently accompanied by interpretation, usually as vulgarisation, i.e. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture;

Criticisms of popular culture

Given its wide availability, popular culture has attracted much criticism.

Some charge that popular culture tends to endorse a limited understanding and experience of life through common, unsophisticated feelings and attitudes and its emphasis on the banal, the superficial, the capricious and the disposable. Critics may also claim that popular culture stems more from sensationalism and narcissistic wish-fulfillment fantasies than from soberly considered reality and mature personal and spiritual development. Cultural items that require extensive experience, education, training, taste, insight or reflection for their fuller appreciation seldom become items of popular culture. Some Marxists complain that popular culture — and its implied insistence on a necessary causal relationship between consumption and self-actualization — perpetuates pernicious, deep-seated social and economic divisions which alienate the working class from the ruling professional and leisure classes and result in general discontent and a diminished quality and enjoyment of life for all (compare situationism).