Neocon, a word about your "framework,' and of popular culture's place in it.
I am glad you reposted your "framework" to Edwarda, because that gives me the chance to make a comment, which I passed up doing the first time round.
I think there are two (at least) aspects of the rise of popular culture, or perhaps it would be better to say, of the rise of literacy and the mass media.
One you overlook altogether (oddly, because it has been extremely positive): and that is the role the mass media have played in popularizing "high culture" (which includes scientific knowledge).
I can't help but be reminded of the "Workingmen's Circles" that were established in England in the last century, to promote literacy. The dream of their idealistic founders was that workingmen would all be reading Shakespeare...True, workingmen's descendants today are reading scandal sheets instead, a sad falling-off from the founders' dream; but many are going to free Shakespeare in the Park performancdes, picking up "Hamlet" and "Henry V" in the video stores,etc. Many, many major world classics are available in the cheapest Pocketbook paper editions; cable television and PBS offer all sorts of excellent nature programs, historical documentaries, opera performances, etc., etc. Now, the Internet is kicking in as well...
High culture has been "brought to the masses." It is no longer correct to call it "elite culture." I think that this phenomenon, linked to the rise of mass literacy, is a major development of this century.
I am much more ambivalent about "popular culture" understood as a phenomenon distinct from "high" culture. Here, too, I would distinguish at least two kinds: the "real" and the "commercial" (so as not to say "fake"). For example, folk music ("real" folk music, not pretend Bob Dylan stuff) is true "popular" culture, in that it quite literally grows out of the people; it is a product of, part and parcel of, the people. "Pokemon" trading cards, on the other hand, are a purely commercial phenomenon, aimed at exploiting young children (and their grandparents, harrumph!).
The grossest, most commercial varieties of popular culture tend to be what gets spread around the world. And the "prestige' of "made in America" is such that it often marginalizes, displaces (or even erases for good) very interesting and very ancient popular cultures, the disappearance of which everyone will regret, no doubt, when it is too late.
Incidentally, I would not equate "Americanism" with the "culture of modernity." That's a bit strong, for my taste.
Joan |
