POPULAR CULTURE

Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Introduction

The term popular culture refers to acceptance of famous trends and ideas which are shared and approved by the majority of the population across different societies and different countries (Beaman, 2003). Popular culture can include phenomena like music, movies, cars, fashion, or technology. A culture become popular when it seems to has the potential of shaping the liking and disliking of majority of people. However, a general perception is there that popular cultures positively affect the society. In this connection, this paper will examine the positive impact that popular culture leave on society, and will discuss few major positive impacts on society. However, before discussing the impact, it is pertinent to adequately examine what is the idea of popular culture.

The Idea of Popular Culture

The concept of the popular and the idea of “mass culture” are inextricably linked. It is widely held that the notion of popular culture within the developed world was fed by the phenomena of “mass” production, “mass” consumption, and “mass” distribution associated with the industrial and technological developments of the late nineteenth century. However, in most historical periods, and in most societies, there have been versions of popular culture (Gans, 1999).

The persistent problems of trying to pin down the idea of culture are frequently dealt with by constructing a spectral approach where at one end lies the notion of “high culture” with its elite, critically acclaimed artistic and literary leanings, while at the other end, and drawing upon anthropological tradition is the notion of “folk culture” focusing upon the practices, institutions, and artifacts of communities or some ethnic grouping. Both ends of the spectrum share the idea of valued histories and traditions and also that of being somehow distant from the ordinary and the practices of the majority in some “special” way. Between these positions lies the discursive category widely referred to as “popular” culture which deals with the immediate, the imminent, and the contemporary, brought together and widely distributed by, and through, the mass media. Instinctively popular culture appears to refer to that which is “of the people”; an implicit acceptance of a kind of “folk” culture and this is an interesting area, because it also encompasses the idea of an “alternative” culture which includes minority groups, perhaps with subversive values (the “indie” music scene is an example of this). So “popular” (sub) cultures can and sometimes do, challenge the “dominant” cultural power groups.

Impacts ...