Welcome to my blog! First post, pretty exciting. Over the next 11 weeks, I will attempt to have 11 different posts about Communication and Popular Culture, how they tie together, and a discussion of what was learned in Dr. Strangelove's 'popular' CMN 2180 class.
Dr. Strangelove defines Popular Culture as that what the masses look at which is immoral and distasteful.
Culture is a better means of understanding, and the popular aspects plays to the contemporary aspect of understanding the shared values and meanings in a modern society.
People used to think that popular culture was a waste of time. A good deal of people used to believe that anything contemporary was not 'high culture' and therefore was distasteful or immoral. If you were to type "High Culture" into google image search, the first things you see are violinists, famous works of art, ballerinas, pianists and other ideal images of a 'hoighty toighty' life-stlye. These lifestyles are generally people of a wealthy background brought up by aristocrats, or aristocrats themselves.
Popular culture is a way of fighting back from the normative culture - a response (or even rebuttal) to the highly aristocratic society. Typing "popular culture" into google image search, you see images of current TV shows, music artists, and magazines along with some famous "pop art" - such as the Andy Warhol/Marilyn Monroe painting.
Images like this help us understand what popular culture is. Personally, I prefer a mixture of pop culture and of high culture in my life. Some people only prefer one or the other, but to live a full lifestyle, each person should be able to appreciate each type of artistic culture. For example, I'm fully aware of famous composers and their musical works, I used to be a dancer (tap jazz and ballet), and I frequent the theatre (if I'm not in a play/musical I'm watching one). At the same time, I also love modern art, enjoy popular TV shows and listen to a lot of popular music.
Discussed in class was the point made by John Fiske: “Popular culture can be progressive” (1980’s). I agree with this point entirely - there are good aspects to popular culture (admittedly as well as bad ones), and quite often the good aspects of popular culture. Examples of "bad" aspects would be the negative image associated with a lot of popular stars in todays society, but a "good" example could be the fact that exposure to the arts - modern and other types - help shape the mind of the human being for the better.
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