rolanni | Musings on Answers...

Some chewy answers on the "What is popular culture" question.

jerrykaufman brings up the issue of accessibility, and suggests that "popular culture" comprises the most easily accessible works of art, literature, music...

kaygo makes the point that culture doesn't happen by itself, and that popular culture has an economic component -- if the production of a particular artform is not economically rewarding for somebody, it goes away.

malkingrey observes that in a university setting, those who study and/or produce ...classic culture? -- those works which require some specialized knowledge to enjoy and are therefore less immediately accessible to a casual auditor -- are more respected, and more often rewarded economically, than those who study and/or produce popular culture.

mickiescaper mentions the ephemeral quality of "popular culture," which would also seem to tie in with the economics.

My understanding of popular culture (and why I'm increasingly puzzled by those articles which point at it as the reason for the decline of "moral values" in the US), falls somewhere between

kaygo's and

jerrykaufman's. Popular culture, to me, is the lowest common denominator; that experience which is relevant/meaningful to the greatest number of people. 'Way over there on the left, that's classic culture, and 'way over there on the right, that's the experimental stuff, neither of which is easily accessible to a casual auditor, or, in its extreme cases, to more than a few specialists/innovators. Popular culture is that area that contains such things as Star Wars and Thomas Kinkade.

Trouble is, "popular culture" is a moving target, since it depends on the perceptions and the industry of human beings. Weird things tend to leak in from over there on the experimental side, which is good, because it keeps the popular culture pool from getting stagnant. If the new form speaks to enough of us, the creators are rewarded economically and the form enters the "popular culture." If the form fails the accessibility test, the creators lose their shirts; the form fades and is forgotten.

What I think I'm understanding from the folks who want to blame "popular culture" for a perceived "moral decline" is that they're using the phrase "popular culture" to mean "things that I and/or those who partake of my family and/or micro-culture find offensive." I don't wish to be unfair, or to dismiss the apparent distress felt by these folks without consideration, so if someone can demonstrate where this reading is faulty, I'd be glad of it. But it does seem to me, that, no, culture doesn't happen by itself in the dead of night while there's no one around to stop it. It's not dropped by the crateload onto unsuspecting small towns by aliens. It's created and rewarded by us, over a length of time, and that the culture we share is the culture we have because we -- the majority we -- want it.