| Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (people's)
culture that prevails in a modern society. The content of popular culture is determined in large part by industries that disseminate cultural
material, for example the film, television, and publishing industries, as well as the news media. But popular culture cannot be described as just the aggregate product of
those industries; instead, it is the result of a continuing interaction between those industries and the people of the society
who consume their products. Bennett (1980, p.153-218) distinguishes between 'primary' and 'secondary' popular culture, the first
being mass product and the second being local re-production.
Definition
Popular culture is constantly changing and is specific to 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 is only partially aware; 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; it is only occasionally that they are
esoteric, as for instance in freemasonry. 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.
A widely held opinion about popular culture is that it tends to be superficial. Cultural items that require extensive
experience, training, or reflection to be appreciated seldom become items of popular culture.
Sources
Popular culture has multiple origins. A principal source is the set of industries that make a profit by inventing and
promulgating cultural material. These include the popular music industry,
film, television, radio, video game
publishers, and book publishing.
A second and very different source of popular culture is the folkloric element.
In preindustrial times, the only culture was folk culture, and popular culture did not exist. This earlier layer of culture still
persists today, for example in the form of jokes or slang, which spread through the population by word of mouth much as they always have. The rise of the Internet has provided a new channel of folkloric transmission, and thus has given renewed
strength to this element of popular culture.
The folkloric element of popular culture is heavily engaged with the commercial element; indeed popular culture might be
defined as the kind of folkloric culture that arises under heavy commercial influence. To the repeated chagrin of the purveyors
of commercial culture, the public has its own tastes, and it cannot always be predicted which cultural items sold to it will be
successful and thus form the next ingredient of popular culture. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial
culture (e.g. "My favorite character is Homer Simpson") are spread by
word of mouth, and are modified in the process just as all folklore is.
A different source of popular culture is the set of professional communities that provide the public with facts about the
world, frequently accompanied by interpretation. This includes the news media,
as well as the scientific and scholarly communities. The work of scientists and scholars is mined by the news media and
promulgated to the general public, often emphasizing "factoids" that have the power to amaze, or other items with an inherent
appeal. To give an example, giant pandas are prominent items of popular
culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical
importance, are not.
Both scholarly facts and news stories are modified through folkloric transmission, sometimes to the point of being transformed
to outright falsehoods, known as urban myths (example: "the Eskimos have 50
different words for snow"). Doubtless many urban myths have no factual origin at all, and were simply made up for fun.
Feedback loops
The creative workers in commercial music, film, and television, for example script writers, are of course themselves members
of the culture at large; in fact, usually they are highly attuned members. As a result, there often arises a kind of feedback
loop, as the folkloric side of the popular culture serves as an input to the commercial side.
To give an example: stereotypes about African Americans, which
are widespread in American popular culture, form an important (and in the view of many, regrettable) influence on movies with
African-American characters. These movies then propagate the stereotypes further, perhaps in exaggerated form.
A more harmless example is given above: it seems likely that the script writers for The Simpsons learned about Kraftwerk folklorically, by word of mouth from their friends and acquaintances. They then
propagated the fame of this group to millions of others by mentioning it in a Simpsons script.
Study
Although popular culture is not especially prestigious, it nevertheless gives rise to interesting and important questions, for
example, how it spreads or what traits are needed for a particular items to become a part of popular culture. For this reason,
popular culture is studied by scholars, who invoke the usual apparatus of the scholarly association (e.g. the Popular Culture Association (http://www.h-net.org/~pcaaca/pca/pcahistory.htm)) and the scholarly journal (e.g. the
Journal of Popular Culture (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-3840&site=1)). For a survey on
different positions scholars have traditionally taken to popular culture, see popular culture studies.
External links
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