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Popular culture, sometimes called pop culture, consists of widespread cultural elements in any given society. Such elements are perpetuated through that society's vernacular language or an established lingua franca. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural 'moments' that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, consumption, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. (Compare meme.) Popular culture often contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist "high culture."[1]
Pop culture finds its expression in the mass circulation of items from areas such as fashion, music, sport and film. The world of pop culture has had a particular influence on art from the early 1960s on, through Pop Art. According to popeducation.org, when modern pop culure began during the early 1950's, it was harder for adults to particpate. Today, most adults, their kids and grandchildren "participate" in pop culture directly or indirectly.
Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually-interdependent perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public.
The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing "factoids" that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not.
Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods. At this point, they become known as urban legends. Other urban myths may have no factual basis at all, having simply originated as jokes.
Folklore provides a second and very different source of popular culture.[2] In pre-industrial times, mass culture equaled folk culture. This earlier layer of culture still persists today, sometimes in the form of jokes or slang, which spread through the population by word of mouth and via the Internet. By providing a new channel for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of popular culture.
Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture (for example: "My favorite character is SpongeBob SquarePants") spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.
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] Many people are frustrated with popular culture and feel distanced from those that choose to "keep up with it" as a result.
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).
Popular culture is also criticized as being overtly commercial by nature. This criticism emphasizes popularity as a commercially-driven outcome; driven by media outlets who wish solely to maximize the long-term profitability of proprietary assets and develop a following.
Owing to the pervasive and increasingly interconnected nature of popular culture, especially its intermingling of complementary distribution sources, some cultural anthropologists have identified the use of "popular culture within popular culture" as a distinct phenomenon. Literary and cultural critics have identified this as following the well-recognized but variegated concept of intertextuality.
One commentator has suggested this "self-referentiality" reflects the advancing encroachment of popular culture into every realm of collective experience. "Instead of referring to the real world, much media output devotes itself to referrring to other images, other narratives; self-referentiality is all-embracing, although it is rarely taken account of."[3]
Many cultural critics have dismissed this as merely a symptom or side-effect of mass consumerism, however alternate explanations and critique have also been offered. One critic asserts that it reflects a fundamental paradox: the increase in technological and cultural sophistication, combined with an increase in superficiality and dehumanization.[4]
According to some critics, self-referentiality in mainstream American television, especially comedy, both reflects and exemplifies the type of progression characterized previously. Extreme examples literally approach a kind of thematic infinite regress wherein the distinctions between art and life, commerce and critique, ridicule and homage become intractably blurred.[5]
Examples include:
The phrase Pop' culture may also refer semi-humorously or euphemistically to physical punishment. Pop can express onomatopoeically a swat or lick given with an implement, as in the title of this newspaper article on CorPun.