What is Popular Culture? (AKA CMN 2180B - Fall 2019 - Class 1)
Well, it’s September, and that means that classes at the University of Ottawa (and elsewhere) are in full swing! That includes my second-year class, CMN 2180B: Popular Culture and Communication. This week 67 students bravely walked into a classroom to begin their journey into the world of popular culture studies - and I’m honoured to be their guide!
In an attempt to capture my second time teaching this course - and in the interest of creating more blog content (woo for multi-tasking) - I’ve set as a goal to blog my lessons after the fact. To any of the students in my class that may be reading, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t come to class (note the section of our syllabus that mentions that there are points for participation), but these blog posts could be a good way to supplement our in-class discussions (aka help identify what was important).
As with all classes, we ran through the course syllabus, learning objectives, expectations and goals.
In all seriousness, I’m hoping that the students in CMN2180B will learn that popular culture is a legitimate and important field of academic study. To achieve this course objective, we’ll be focusing on
Key terms and theories in popular culture,
Different ways to conduct research in the field,
Different research topics that could be and have been explored, and, perhaps most importantly,
Why we should study popular culture.
The course assignments reflect these objectives. Students will be asked to complete (1) five short writing assignments that will demonstrate their growing knowledge of the field of popular culture, (2 + 3) a group research project proposal (I’ll be doing this too, but more on that later!), and (4) an autoethnographic poster board presentation that demonstrates how popular culture has shaped their identity.
Once we ran through the housekeeping items, we dove right into the wonderful, fantastic world of POPULAR CULTURE. The first step to unpacking “popular culture” is to define what we mean when we’re talking about it. So, recognizing that popular culture is made up of two words - popular and culture - we started by considering the definition of culture.
Culture, as defined by Storey (2013) can be defined as:
A general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development (think great philosophers, great artists, great poets),
A particular way of life, whether of a people, period or group (think literacy, holidays, sports, festivals, religious celebrations), or
The works and practices of intellectual and especially aesthetic activity (think novels, comic books, the ballet, fine art)
For our class, culture refers to all three of things.
We then moved to a consideration of the meaning of “ideology” - yes, I know ideology is in neither the word “popular” or the word “culture” - because ideology (or the presentation of ideas) and popular culture are inextricably linked. Ideology, it’s argued, can influence power relations, social hierarchies and inequalities, and societal norms. By applying the concept of ideology to culture and popular culture studies, it draws attention to the fact that our cultural products and texts have the power to convey meaning. In other words, it demonstrates that cultural products are important and can affect our everyday life.
The next word that we looked at was “popular”. What does it mean for something to be popular and, in particular, how do we know when something is a form of popular culture. Storey (2013) relying heavily on Williams, put forward four different definitions of popular. Something can be popular if (1) it is well-liked by many people, (2) it’s an inferior kind of work, (3) it is work deliberately setting out to win the favour of the people, or (4) if it is actually made by the people for the people.
Since I find examples to be very helpful when thinking about concepts and theories, we used Big Brother to illustrate the different definitions of popular culture:
Definition 1: Popular = Well-liked by many people
Fact: Big Brother 20’s Season Finale was watched by 4.9 million people.
How many people does it take for something to be popular? Does it depend on the number of people in the world? In a country? In a group?
While there is certainly some quantitative aspect to being popular, numbers alone are not enough - and it can be hard to agree on a metric.
Definition 2: Popular = An inferior kind of cultural work
Big Brother is often criticized for being trashy and dumb.
Popular culture is often compared with ‘high culture’ - it’s what’s left after we remove the really good stuff like Shakespeare. This definition has been criticized for, among other things, creating and perpetuating class distinctions and for failing to recognize that these so-called classics are now mass-produced and commercialized AF.
Definition 3: Popular = Work deliberately setting out to win the favour of the people
Popular culture is (also) often referred to as mass culture, a form of culture that is hopelessly commercial, formulaic, and manipulative. This is because it’s mass produced for and mass consumed by an audience composed of a mass of non-discriminating consumers.
Definition 4: Popular = Culture actually made by the people for the people
People wait in line to audition for Big Brother
Here, popular culture is folk culture - a form of culture that rises from the bottom-up instead from the top-down. This form or version of popular is seen to be more authentic and emerges in opposition to existing power relations.
This definition is also criticized for failing to recognize the commercialized nature of folk culture, which is now mass produced and distributed.
Lastly, we saw that popular culture can be a site of hegemonic practices and ideological struggles (thanks for the big words Gramsci).
Houseguests on Big Brother aren’t allowed to sing in the house because of copyright issues.
In this sense, popular culture is a site of struggle between the dominant and subordinate groups in a society using ideology. We see this in Big Brother when the houseguests rebel against Production (the masterminds behind casting, editing, and orchestrating pretty much everything in the Big Brother house).
To wrap up, it’s important to note that popular culture isn’t as easy to define as it seems. What we mean by “popular” and “culture” - and “popular culture” - can be subjective and open to interpretation.
