Pop Culture
What is Popular Culture?
A popular culture definition can be a subject of a never-ending public and academic discourse.
Regarded as the accumulation of different cultural products that are consumed by the majority of a society’s population, popular culture is characterized by mass accessibility and appeal.
Pop culture includes the many beliefs and practices that make up society — from the food we eat to the causes we support (or protest) to the way the we style our hair.
Folk & High Culture
Popular culture is usually distinguished from folk and high culture.
In some ways, folk culture is similar to pop culture because of the mass participation involved. Folk culture, however, represents the traditional way of doing things. Consequently, it is not as amendable to change and is much more static than popular culture.
A key characteristic of popular culture is its accessibility to the masses. It is, after all, the culture of the people. High culture, on the other hand, is not mass produced, nor meant for mass consumption. It belongs to the social elite; the fine arts, opera, theatre, and high intellectualism are associated with the upper socioeconomic classes. Items of high culture often require extensive experience, training, or reflection to be appreciated. Such items seldom cross over to the pop culture domain.
Formation of Popular Culture
Through most of human history, the masses were influenced by imperative forms of rules and traditions dictated by local folk culture.
Most people were spread throughout small cities and rural areas – conditions that were not conducive to a ‘popular’ culture. With the beginning of the Industrial era (late eighteenth century), the rural masses began to migrate to cities, leading to the urbanization of most Western societies.
Urbanization is a key ingredient in the formation of popular culture.
People who once lived in homogeneous small villages or farms found themselves in crowded cities marked by great cultural diversity. These diverse people would come to see themselves as a ‘collectivity’ as a result of common, or popular, forms of expression. Thus, many scholars trace the beginning of the popular culture phenomenon to the rise of the middle class brought on by the Industrial Revolution.
Industrialization also brought with it mass production; developments in transportation; advancements in building technology; increased literacy; improvements in education; and the emergence of efficient forms of commercial printing, representing the first step in the formation of a mass media (eg the penny press, magazines, and pamphlets). All of these factors contributed to the blossoming of popular culture.
By the start of the twentieth century, the print industry mass-produced illustrated newspapers and periodicals, as well as serialized novels and detective stories. Newspapers served as the best source of information for a public with a growing interest in social and economic affairs. The ideas expressed in print provided a starting point for popular discourse on all sorts of topics. Fueled by further technological growth, popular culture was greatly impacted by the emerging forms of mass media throughout the twentieth century. Films, broadcast radio and television all had a profound influence on culture.
Sources of Popular Culture
A primary source is the mass media, especially popular music, film, television, radio, video games, books and the internet. In addition, advances in communication allows for the greater transmission of ideas by word of mouth, especially via smartphones.
A seemingly contradictory source of popular culture is individualism. Urban culture has not only provided a common ground for the masses, it has inspired ideals of individualistic aspirations. In the United States, a society formed on the premise of individual rights, there are theoretically no limitations to what an individual might accomplish. An individual may choose to participate in all that is ‘popular’ for popularity’s sake; or they may choose a course of action off the beaten track. At times, these ‘pathfinders’ affect popular culture by their individuality. Of course, once a unique style becomes adopted by others, it ceases to remain unique. It becomes, popular.
“As graphic designers, we play a vital role in society and our culture through the visual experiences and languages we create. Our impact is even more dramatic when you consider the digital world we live, a world that conditions every generation to think, communicate and interact more visually.
As a graphic designer or someone who respects good design, remember the work we create as graphic designers has the power to influence people, profoundly shape culture and create a dramatic ripple effect in the world that can be around for generations.
Yes, the power is in your hands.”-Greg Ricciardi
Popular Culture Today
“The making of pop culture used to feel very far away, but with the shift from top-down distribution of messaging and content to a reality where many people can communicate together, influence culture, and deeply connect over shared interests there are remarkable implications for marketers and content creators.”
— Dario Spina, CMO of Viacom Velocity.
Proximity is the new watchword in pop culture and marketing. Today, millennials ― and everyone else ― live with only one degree of separation from everything. We are closer than ever to the things and people around us - closer to our favorite celebrities, closer to our governments, closer to our communities, closer to each other.
This new Culture of Proximity will have a far-reaching impact in marketing and branding. The study says that 61 percent of Millennials say they can influence popular culture and they have some ownership in the things they are fans of. What will this mean for brands who aren’t ‘listening’?
WATCH the 2015 Delta Safety Video that is Rooted in Pop Culture
The Effect of Memes on Popular Culture
“In a way, pop culture is the ‘glue’ that holds us all together; the common set of objects, characters, people, and themes that connect us and express what’s within us.”
— Eric Murphy, Founder + CEO, pop2life
There is no doubt that memes have had a significant impact on our culture, our ways of knowing, the emotional self, how we see the world and how we interact with it. It is extremely important for content composers, content consumers to keep in mind the effects of memes and new digital literacies and what effects it will have on the population.
Memes encourage collaborative community while also cultivating a new form of discourse community— they are unlike traditional culture. It allows you to be part of a community and be able to contribute to the community. Many meme composers within the popular culture realm participate with memes on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat just to name a few. These platforms allow a user to interact with their friends and loved ones using memes and incorporating other multimodal features.
The “composer” has the ability to create, remix, repackage, redistribute the content. Being a part of the content generating community allows for individualism and the composer has given a voice.
The community has many affordances and it can add to the digital ecosystem. With all good things comes the bad. Although you can create and redistribute the content you create, once it goes viral that’s it– you’ve have lost “ownership” of it, it becomes a product of the Internet. UNLESS you place a watermark and fill out your information in the metadata.
Check out this video on the History of Memes: 1998-2018 (LANGUAGE WARNING)