Very Interesting Articles on Popular Culture

[FOREVER LEFT]

These articles blew my mind!!!!!

Criticisms of popular culture

Popular culture has attracted much criticism. Some attribute this criticism to the sheer breadth of its availability, others posit that the very notion of "pop culture" is merely an arbitrary construct used to perpetuate elitism.[1]

Some charge that popular culture tends to endorse a limited understanding and experience of life through common, unsophisticated feelings and attitudes and its emphasis on the banal, the superficial, the capricious and the disposable. Critics may also claim that popular culture stems more from sensationalism and narcissistic wish-fulfillment fantasies than from soberly considered reality and mature personal and spiritual development. Cultural items that require extensive experience, education, training, taste, insight or reflection for their fuller appreciation seldom become items of popular culture.

Corporations and advertisers are commonly accused of engaging in campaigns (as by attempting to generate pseudo-popular discussion, controversy, or memes), to generate increased purchasing of their products and services. Some Marxists claim that popular culture — and its implied insistence on a necessary causal relationship between consumption and self-actualization — perpetuates pernicious, deep-seated social and economic divisions which alienate the working class from the ruling professional and leisure classes and result in general discontent and a diminished quality and enjoyment of life for all (compare situationism).

Due to the nature of popular culture, it is also criticized as being overtly commercial. This criticism arises from how elements get introduced as being popular; a system of commercially-driven media outlets contribute to a centralized item that develops a following.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_culture


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_culture

[Raúl Duke]

In what way did it blow your mind? (seriously, like to know your experience)

IMO, the problem with pop culture is that it's acustomed/expropriated/appropriated by capitalists and re-presented (or resold) to us back in a "safe to the social order" consumer friendly format. Pop culture isn't really a "distraction, spectacle"; its just that its been transformed that way by the elite so it can be used as a distraction or spectacle.

Pop culture in itself is good because it comes from the masses ("popular culture")
Many pop culture critics are cirticizing the consumerist social order friendlyness of most pop culture elements. Some know that the reason it became like that is because of appropiation by the elite so to maintain cultural hegemony (<- a term, look it up in wiki or elsewhere).

Many revolutionary elements can be present in pop cultural subcultures; like in hip-hop, punk, maybe grunge, etc. Yet they were expropriated and resold to us, with varying degrees of success (for example, ever heard of Post Punk,Post Grunge; search these terms in wiki. Also even modern hip hop today) Sometimes when they appropriate these subcultures the original one is destroyed, marginalized, etc (sometimes it stays the same, etc)

High Culture represent the values of the bourgeosie or the elite of its time period. Sometimes you might say this is a good high culture work or literature, etc; but most of it is elitist crap. However, its been thought that certain elements could be preserved from high culture and fuse with Pop Culture by some communists; example being Leon Trotsky (which is mention in your article).

In a classless society I expect there to be no classes among culture as well.

[Whitten]

Is popular culture proletarian culture, and high culture a Bourgeois culture which should be opposed? Its possible, but then is not popular culture just a reaction to the subservent status of the proletariat? The Bourgeois control any significant mnonetary expense on popular culture, anything which is produced from such can only be a tool of the Boruegois. There&#39;s no a reason a revolutionary society should maintain the cultures limited to them by their previous oppressors, or which was created purly as a reaction to that oppression. Who knows, maybe the a revolutionary society is one in which High culture becomes the norm for all people (not necessarily the same "high culture" as exists now)?