What is "popular culture"? Well to me nothing about it is popular nor is it my culture. Actually it sickens me to read or hear about it at all. I assume the right answer is.....Popular culture is to say its the view of the people at any given time in our history. I really hope thats not the case. Lets take a look at what I find when I type in "popular culture 2011" into google. Ok I went to the first website that I got its located at the following adress http://www.elle.com. First I got a add for Burberry the clothing line......I had to Skip that ad and move on to the home page. Now what am I looking at? Oh its a shirt-less Captain America photo! Thats perfect! I couldn't have planned this better! Lets see what the first article listed is! Yes! Its about Sarah Palin's poetry! Even better! What would I have done without this information.....Please. Someone get me out of here! My definition of popular culture is its what people "think" other more important people are doing and they want to know what they are missing. Its high school all over again and guess what? If you were smart, when you got out of high school you realized all the things you worried about in those great 4 years of your life didn't matter. And now since you dont have anyone close enough to ogle over you read magazines that were influenced by Big Box stores and they tell you what products the stars are using and how its making their life better and it can make your life better too! Bah humbug. Popular culture should be something you want to be, and we should be glad thats what our generation will be remembered for. If aliens landed right now and decided if we are to live or to die by what they found in our popular culture.....I would say hey guys, I'm not with them!
Sadly popular culture is important to our careers and to our companies of the future and now. We have to make Facebook pages for our companies to interact with one and other, we have to tweet about our great new products and we have to mold our companies around what is....well Popular. A savvy company has a full time person on staff called a social media specialist.....At least its creating jobs! Anyhow its very important to the company to understand the time its in and to grasp all it can out of the free social media and the cultue thats around it. Thats actually what I do for my company, I just hate doing it!
I thought about my artifact I would post in this to show what I think about popular culture and decided to display my Captain America I talked about earlier in this post. I am going to choose this because I could show something that you would hope displays our "culture" of this era......But who would I be kidding, I asked google to show me what they thought.....and google is all knowing! So here he is....I present Captain Popular culture. Coming to a theater near you.
Image Source : http://www.elle.com/Pop-Culture/Movies-TV-Music-Books/Men-of-Steel
Matt -
ReplyDeleteSeriously, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Captain America's bare chest. If that is popular culture I am all in.
Sarah Palin's poetry on the other hand...
On a more serious note, I think that what is missing from your argument is a discussion of "high" culture. Popular culture is usually defined in opposition to high culture. So, for instance, Justin Bieber's music is pop(ular culture) while Ludwig von Beethoven's work is high culture. They even mock this dichotomy in Epic Rap Battles of History: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcTLJ692F70). Side note: you should also check out the Palin vs Lady Gaga one. However, Beethoven and Bieber both make music. On whose authority is one high culture and the other, well, popular?
Or, to touch on something that might interest you more, is photography an art, and therefore a piece of high culture, or is it popular culture? For a long time it wasn't though of as high art. There are still more paintings in art museums than there are photos. And don't get me started on how those in power view film. Have you ever seen a film in an art museum? I've been in a lot of museums and I can count the number of films I've seen in them on one hand. We, the filmmakers of the world, are the Biebers of art.
To wrap this exhaustive comment up - who's to say that a photo of Captain America's chest isn't high culture? It's not like there aren't plenty of nude and semi-nude photos in art history (like some of Robert Mapplethorpe's work... some of which takes nudity to a whole new level: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/images/2009/02/18/michael_roth1983_2.jpg). So I think that in order to define popular you need to also define what is high culture.
Look forward to reading more.
- Ruth