What is Popular Culture?
What is Culture?

Raymond Williams (1983) Culture refers
to:
◦ “A general process of intellectual, spiritual and
aesthetic development” i.e. Western Culture
◦ “A particular way of life: whether of a people,
period or group” i.e. Passtimes/habits/religious
rituals etc.
◦ “The works and practices of intellectual and
especially artistic activity” i.e. Ballet, movies,
novels. “Signifying Practices”
Culture Cont’d

“Popular culture” focuses on the second
and third definitions.
◦ It relates to “lived practices” of a society or
group
◦ And it relates to the artistic/intellectual
products of that society.
Ideology

5 ways of understanding ideology:
◦ A body of ideas articulated by a group
(professions, political parties)
◦ A means of distorting of social realities
◦ Images of reality as presented in art
◦ Fixing connotations to present as natural and
general what is particular and man-made.
◦ Rituals and actions that connect us to the
social order (Althusser)
Six Definitions of Popular Culture

Any definition of “popular culture”
invokes multiple connotations of
“popular” as well as “culture:
◦
◦
◦
◦
“Well liked by many people”,
“inferior kinds of work”
“made to appeal to people”
“made by the people themselves” (Williams
1983)

Popular culture can refer to any culture
which appeals to a large group of people,
quantifiable through number of sales,
downloads etc.

However any cultural artifact can sell
large numbers. Does this alone
determine it as “popular”? Why or Why
not?

Popular Culture can also refer to what
remains after a society distinguishes what is
“high culture.” Popular Culture is then
categorized as “inferior”

Society sets qualifications for “high culture”
such as “complexity” “realism” etc. P.C. Is
what “fails”.

Pierre Bourdieu: Distinctions of culture
often follow distinctions of class. “Complex”
works require greater investment of time
and money.
“The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal,
servile—in a word, natural—enjoyment,
which constitutes the sacred sphere of
culture, implies an affirmation of the
superiority of those who can be satisfied
with the sublimated, refined, disinterested,
gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever
closed to the profane. That is why art and
cultural consumption are predisposed,
consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a
social function of legitimating social
differences.” Pierre Bourdieu Distinction: A
Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.

Popular Culture is also defined as “mass culture”:
Mass-produced for mass-consumption
◦ Is formulaic and politically manipulative (Die Hard, Avatar)
◦ Is “hopelessly commercial”
◦ Audiences are passive consumers rather than active
readers.
◦ It is imposed by corporations/government
◦ Is American/Americanized
◦ This implies the existence of an “other” culture, a nonalienated, organic culture or “golden age” which P.C. is a
corruption. What is the problem with this view?
◦ Also does this not imply that consumers of P.C. are dupes
of the system who need to be “woken up” by the
intelligentsia/culture makers? (Wake up sheeple!)

Popular Culture can refer to culture
produced by the people. (Urban/Folk
culture)

However, is it always produced this way?
Where do the images and tropes that
make up “folk” culture and “urban”
culture come from?

Popular Culture can refer to the terrain
of struggle between the forces of
“resistance” and “incorporation”

Based on Antonio Gramsci’s theory.
“Hegemony” refers to the way in which
the powerful “lead” by earning consent
rather than “controlling” society through
force alone.
Gramsci

In Gramsci’s view, the dominant classes
develop a hegemonic culture that propagates
its own values as “common sense”.

Intellectuals and artists can act as agents for
the hegemonic culture, or for a culture of
resistance.

Is hegemony still a reality? What is the
hegemonic culture in the west in 2015?

In the Neo-Gramscian definition, Popular Culture
is neither “imposed from above”, nor “emerges
from below” but rather is a “terrain of exchange
and negotiation” between dominant and
subordinate groups.

This explains the fluidity of P.C. How oppositional
cultural elements can be appropriated by
dominant groups, (Record companies making
millions on Anti-corporate bands, Che Guevara Tshirts) And also how elements of high culture
become popularized. (The Nutcracker in ads,
opera movies)

Finally, P.C. is associated with
postmodernism. Postmodern culture no
longer recognizes arbitrary “taste”
divisions.

Why is this a good thing?

Why is this not a good thing?

All concepts of “popular culture” are
haunted by a present/absent “other”.

This “other” determines how P.C. will be
theorized (as failure? as resistance? as
native? as folk?)

There are a multitude of approaches one
can take to P.C. And you have many to
choose from.