Question

[rolanni]

What is "popular culture" and how is it different from culture?

Comments

culture

[(Anonymous)]

"popular culture" is put out by the Department of the Interrior: it is neither innocent nor selfless. Culture is found in the equivalent of the Korval Diaries: the main intent being to allow ones progency the ability to cope without societal blinders. At least, that is the effect my family history and education had on me.
Joythree

[gingerwood.livejournal.com]

Popular Culture is the culture of the moment, the latest song, tv show, or fashion. It may or may not even be remembered five years down the line.

Culture endures from generation to generation.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Culture is studied in the English Department, or the Art Department, or the Music Department -- depending upon whether you read it, look at it, or listen to it -- and you can get grants from the government or from charitable organizations to support you while you produce it. Culture gets a great deal of respect.

Popular Culture is studied in the Folklore Department, or the Anthropology and Sociology Departments, or the [Insert Name of Country or Ethnic Group Here] Studies Department, or even in the Popular Culture Department, and if you're producing it you're generally SOL for grant support. Popular culture gets no respect at all; the wealth and fame are supposed to be enough, even if you as an individual producer of it don't have all that much of either.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I've read some of the recent articles in which people complain that "popular culture" is aiding and abetting the erosion of morals in this country.

I'm trying to figure out how popular culture became divorced from the people who use it/live in it/partake of it/do something with it. It didn't develop in a vacuum, and it wouldn't have developed as it has unless someone somewhere was making money from it, which in turn wouldn't happen unless a number of people were participating in it.

A TV pundit responding to a similar concern said, blame the marketplace. Sex sells.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Culture often involves petri dishes and nutrient media. Popular culture is sexually transmitted?

[jerrykaufman.livejournal.com]

"Culture" by itself has several meanings, depending on who's using it, in what context.

One meaning, used by anthropologists (in my reading, at least), is anything that humans create, teach one another, and pass down to later generations: techniques, rituals, beliefs. Pretty broad definition. I don't believe this definition can be opposed to "popular culture."

The more specific definition that could be opposed to "popular" would be, could be, further identified as "high" culture. Here I feel much less sure of myself, but I'll gp out on a limb and say it's the sum of the arts that are created to please an educated audience. The audience would ideally be educated in the history and techniques of the various arts: literature, painting, music etc.

"Popular" would then be intended to please an uneducated audience: simpler designs, more immediately accessible.

Educated audiences will often enjoy the popular arts, but they will approach it with irony or condescension. (They'll call genre fiction or comics "paraliterature," for instance.)Uneducated audiences will simply find high culture boring or puzzling, or they will enjoy the simplest, most obvious parts of the music, art. literature.

I'm not even going to try to define "folk culture."

So I've taken a whack at it. Does that jibe with your understanding?

[(Anonymous)]

Popular culture defines itself by usage of culture outside the realm of culture.
The best example would be an advertisement.