Lessons Learned from Popular Culture

Tim Delaney, Tim Madigan

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781438461472
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

As the "culture of the people, " popular culture provides a sense of identity that binds individuals to the greater society and unites the masses on ideals of acceptable forms of behavior. Lessons Learned from Popular Culture offers an informative and entertaining look at the social relevance of popular culture. Focusing on a wide range of topics, including film, television, social media, music, radio, cartoons and comics, books, fashion, celebrities, sports, and virtual reality, Tim Delaney and Tim Madigan demonstrate how popular culture, in contrast to folk or high culture, gives individuals an opportunity to impact, modify, or even change prevailing sentiments and norms of behavior. For each topic, they include six engaging and accessible stories that conclude with short life lessons. Whether you're a fan of The Big Bang Theory or Seinfeld, the Beatles or Beyoncé, Charlie Brown or Superman, there's something for everyone.

1

An Introduction to Popular Culture

The term popular culture holds different meanings depending on who is defining it. It is a generic, or conceptual, term that can be defined in a variety of (sometimes conflicting) ways depending on the context of use. Popular culture is generally recognized as the vernacular or people’s culture that dominates any society at a given point in time. As Brummett (1991) explains, popular culture involves the aspects of social life that are most actively involved in by the public. As the “culture of the people,” popular culture is determined by the daily interactions between people and their everyday activities. Styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals, and the foods that people eat are all examples of the various influences on popular culture. Popular culture is also influenced by such social forces as the mass media and the many forms of entertainment, such as sports, music, film, and television. Popular culture serves an inclusionary role in society as it unites the masses on ideals of acceptable forms of behavior.

There is no universally accepted definition of popular culture. However, there are a number of generally agreed-upon elements that comprise popular culture. For example, popular culture encompasses the most immediate and contemporary elements in our lives. These elements are often subject to rapid change, especially in a highly technological world in which people are brought closer and closer by the omnipresent mass media. Certain standards and commonly held beliefs are reflected in pop culture. Because of its commonality, pop culture both reflects and influences people’s everyday life (Petracca and Sorapure 1998). Furthermore, certain brands of products (e.g., the Apple logo, the Nike “swoosh,” or the McDonald’s “golden arches”) can attain iconic status with the populace. However, iconic brands, like other aspects of popular culture, may rise and fall (Holt 2004). With these fundamental aspects in mind, popular culture may be defined as the items (products) and forms of expression and identity that are frequently encountered or widely accepted, commonly liked or approved, and that are characteristic of a particular society at a given time. Ray Browne, founder of the Popular Culture Association, offers a similar definition: “Popular culture consists of the aspects of attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, customs, and tastes that define the people of any society. Popular culture is, in the historic use of term, the culture of the people” (Browne 2005:24).

Popular culture is a vehicle that allows large heterogeneous masses of people to identify collectively with others. Along with forging a sense of identity that binds individuals to the greater society, consuming the various popular items of culture often enhances an individual’s level of prestige as well. Further, popular culture, unlike folk or high culture, provides individuals with a chance to impact, modify, or even change the prevailing sentiments and norms of behavior.

Popular culture is usually defined in such a way as to distinguish it from folk or high culture. In some ways, folk culture is similar to popular culture because of the mass participation involved with both. Folk culture, however, represents the “traditional” way of doing things; consequently, it is much more static than popular culture and is not as amendable to change. Folk culture represents a simpler lifestyle that is generally conservative, largely self-sufficient, cohesive, and often characteristic of rural life. Individualism is generally discouraged. Group members are expected to conform to traditional modes of behavior adopted by the greater community. Folk culture is local in orientation and noncommercial. Because of this, popular culture often represents an intrusion and challenge to the tradition of folk culture. Conversely, folk culture rarely intrudes upon popular culture. There are times when certain elements of folk culture (e.g., Turkish rugs, Mexican blankets, and Irish fairy tales) find their way into the world of popular culture. Generally, when the folk culture items that were appropriated by the popular culture become marketed, the original folk culture item(s) gradually disappears from its original form. In short, folk culture is looking for stability for its societal members, whereas the popular culture is generally looking for something new, or fresh. That is why popular culture often has an air of being ephemeral or fleeting, and why references to recent popular works often date quickly, while references to folk cultures are usually immediately understood. Popular culture is a dynamic, unstable field. Once-beloved cultural icons can become tomorrow’s forgotten figures.

In the words of the Irish wit Oscar Wilde (a high culture figure much referred to in popular culture), “[I]t is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.”

A key characteristic of popular culture is its accessibility to the masses. It is, after all, the culture of the people. High culture, on the other hand, is not mass produced nor meant for mass consumption. High culture belongs to the socially elite. (Note: This does not mean that social elites do not participate in popular culture or that members of the masses do not participate in high culture.) High culture (e.g., the arts, opera, theatre, and intellectual superiority) is associated with the upper socioeconomic classes. Cultural items of high culture often require extensive experience, training, or reflection to be appreciated. These items seldom cross over to the domain of popular culture. Consequently, popular culture is generally looked upon as being superficial, especially when compared to the sophistication of high culture. And conversely, popular culture often pokes fun at high culture, as can be seen, for instance, in the frequent opera parodies of the Warner Brothers’ Bugs Bunny cartoons or jokes about modern art in episodes of The Simpsons.

There are numerous sources of popular culture. As implied above, a primary source of popular culture is the mass media, especially popular music, film, television, radio, video games, book publications, and the Internet. In addition, advancements in communication systems allow for the rapid transmission of ideas by word of mouth; especially via cell phones. Shows such as American Idol have for years provided viewers with a phone number so that they may vote for their favorite contestant. Newer reality shows have given viewers more options than phone voting for a favorite contestant. As explained by Brian Anthony Hernandez (2011), The Voice has allowed viewers to vote by buying the contestants’ songs on iTunes. Over the years, The X Factor has allowed viewers to vote via phone calls, texts, Twitter direct message–enabled voting, access to the show’s website, and via The Xtra Factor App. Project Runway lets fans use Twitter hashtags to vote for a fan favorite every episode. The combining of sources (such as television and communications) of popular culture represents a novel way of increasing public interest and further fuels the mass production of certain commodities.

Popular culture is also influenced by professional entities that provide the public with information and facts about the world. These sources of pop culture include the news media, scientific and scholarly publications, organizations like the Popular Culture/American Culture Association, and “expert” opinions from people considered an “authority” in their field. For example, a news station reporting on a specific topic (e.g., the effects of playing violent video games on youths) will seek someone who is an “expert” in that field (e.g., a noted philosopher or sociologist that has published in this area) so that they can be interviewed as part of the news broadcast. This production strategy is a useful way of influencing the public and may shape their collective opinions on a particular subject. At the very least, it provides a starting point for public discourse and differing opinions. Generally, news stations allow viewers to call or e-mail their opinions—which may be shared with the public—on the topic at hand.

Examples of popular culture come from a wide array of genres, and each of the chapters from 2 through 12 in this book cover these different topics. Sports, television, and social media, for example, are among the most widely consumed examples of popular culture. Sports are enjoyed by males and females of all ages, races/ethnicities, and regardless of social class. In fact, in 2012, six in ten Americans reported being sports fans; this is a dramatic increase from fifty years earlier, when just 30 percent of Americans considered themselves sports fans (Beneke and Remillard 2014). Sports are popular throughout the world and some sporting events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics, are consumed by a collective world viewing community numbering in the billions. As Delaney and Madigan (2015) explain, sports are pervasive in most societies and represent a major part of many people’s lives. The pervasiveness of sports is evidenced by the large amount of print coverage dedicated to sports, talk radio shows, local and national television coverage, electronic media coverage (e.g., games available online), attendance figures, sports-related movies and videos, and the hundreds of millions of websites found online via a Google search. Showing allegiance to a sports team as a means of self-identification is a common behavior of many people. Further, cheering for a sports team or a favorite athlete is a way that any individual can become a part of popular culture. Feeling elation when one’s team wins, or devastation when it loses—known respectively as “Basking in Reflected Glory” (BIRGing) or “Cutting Off Reflected Failure” (CORFing)—are real emotions felt on a mass level (Delaney and Madigan 2015).

Many people watch numerous hours of television every day. (Note: As we shall see in chapter 3, however, most of the people watching TV are aging and younger adults are not watching nearly as much.) Some people watch so much television that they resemble TV’s Homer Simpson’s “couch potato” persona. With the vast array of television programs available on cable or satellite combined with high density, large screen, viewing capacity, is it any wonder we watch as much television as we do? Television brings us news, weather, sports, and entertainment. It is such a prevalent aspect of contemporary culture that it is difficult to imagine life without it. There are those who believe that television is responsible for the “dumbing down” of society. Critics are especially concerned that children watch too much television and that the couch potato syndrome has contributed to the growing epidemic rate of childhood obesity.

The globally popular The Simpsons show provides us with an interesting perspective on television. While doing time in prison, “Sideshow Bob” became a critic of television. Although he was once a regular on “The Krusty the Clown Show,” Bob has become obsessed by television’s harmful effect on society. In the “Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming” episode (#3F08), Bob argues that everyone’s life would be much richer if TV were done away with. As a result, he devises a scheme to detonate a nuclear bomb unless all television is abolished in Springfield. Unable to locate Bob, who has escaped from prison, Springfield’s city officials meet to discuss Bob’s demands of abolishing television. A panicky Krusty the Clown proclaims, “Would it really be worth living in a world without television? I think the survivors would envy the dead.” Although there are people who agree with Sideshow Bob’s perspective on television, millions of people, who make up part of the popular culture world, would more likely agree with Krusty that living in a world without television is not really living. And while the life lesson here may be similar to that offered by Krusty the Clown—Do we really want to live in a world without television?—we offer this life lesson: It is more difficult to imagine a world without popular culture.

We do know that today millions of people are ignoring television and finding entertainment value in streaming shows on much smaller screens, such as computer, smart phone, and iWatch screens. The introduction of electronic technology, or social media, fuels our thirst for instantaneous information. Social media provides us with live streaming, and live streaming can give us sports information, television programming, and much, much more in the palms of our hands. Social media also gives us social networking sites and devices such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on, so that we can communicate with one another in the cyber world. We will discuss the popularity of social media in chapter 4.

In the following chapters, the authors have divided popular culture into specific categories, or genres, consisting of: movies; television; social media; music; radio; cartoons and comics; books; fads, fashion, technology, and trends; comedians, celebrities, and other ambassadors of popular culture; sports; and virtual reality. The authors will share six “short stories” relevant to each category of popular culture and offer a “lesson learned” at the conclusion of each. The “lesson learned” concept was described in the Preface but it is worth repeating here that it serves as a brief, generally one-sentence “moral of the story” type of explanation for each popular culture story told, thus providing a brief synthesis and evaluation of what we hope the reader learned from the story.

It should also be noted that, as demonstrated with our earlier example of reality TV talent shows that incorporate audience voting via such methods as phoning, texting, tweeting, and using an app, there are many occasions when a story centered on one genre of popular culture overlaps with other venues, creating a true popular culture phenomenon. Thus, we define a popular culture phenomenon as any instance when an aspect of one form of pop culture crosses over to at least six other genres of popular culture. Such is the case with the Sharknado made-for-TV movie franchise. If you’ve never heard of Sharknado you are not a true consumer of popular culture, as this B-style movie propelled the Syfy Channel (former known as the Sci-Fi Channel) to its highest level of movie viewership. The attention this movie franchise garnered from so many other popular culture venues is astounding.

For the unacquainted, the Sharknado movie franchise began in July 2013 with the first movie, simply titled Sharknado. The Sharknado films star Ian Ziering (as Finley “Fin” Shepard) and Tara Reid (as April Wexler, Fin’s ex-wife), both of whom as actors were nearly forgotten by Hollywood. In the first Sharknado movie, an abnormal hurricane sucks up a seemingly infinite number of sharks from the ocean and drops them from the sky over Los Angeles onto the horrified citizens below. With an estimated budget of just $1 million, Sharknado was never expected to draw the attention of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Instead, Syfy hoped to gain some interest and entertain a viewing audience that enjoys campy B movies about sharks and natural disasters. Sharknado garnered 1.4 million viewers in its initial airing (Villarreal 2014).

Surprisingly, however, the absurdity of Sharknado caught the attention of more than just the viewers who turn to Syfy looking for low budget entertainment (one of the authors of this book especially enjoys the Saturday B movie offerings of Syfy); it drew reactions from many people in the media. Howard Stern, for example, discussed the movie on his radio show and seemed to marvel at its silliness. Sharknado was trending on social media. Other popular culture commentators and word of mouth led to the re-airing of Sharknado, which drew an additional half-million viewers (Deadline 2013). Regal Cinemas and NCM Fathom Events decided to show Sh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. An Introduction to Popular Culture
• Chapter 2. Movies and Popular Culture
• Chapter 3. Television and Popular Culture
• Chapter 4. Social Media and Popular Culture
• Chapter 5. Music and Popular Culture
• Chapter 6. Radio and Popular Culture
• Chapter 7. Newspapers, Comics and Cartoons and Popular Culture
• Chapter 8. Books and Popular Culture
• Chapter 9. Fads, Fashion, Technology, and Trends and Popular Culture
• Chapter 10. Celebrities, Comedians, and Other Ambassadors of Popular Culture
• Chapter 11. Sports and Popular Culture
• Chapter 12. Virtual Reality and Popular Culture
• Chapter 13. Parting Thoughts
• References
• Index
• Back Cover