Research Paper Prompt and submission – 1500 or more words – MLA format

Disclaimer: This is a machine generated PDF of selected content from our products. This functionality is provided solely for your
convenience and is in no way intended to replace original scanned PDF. Neither Cengage Learning nor its licensors make any
representations or warranties with respect to the machine generated PDF. The PDF is automatically generated “AS IS” and “AS
AVAILABLE” and are not retained in our systems. CENGAGE LEARNING AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY
AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES FOR AVAILABILITY,
ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. Your use of the machine generated PDF is subject to all use restrictions contained in The Cengage Learning
Subscription and License Agreement and/or the Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints Terms and Conditions and by using the
machine generated PDF functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against Cengage Learning or its licensors for your use of
the machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom.

Popular Culture
Date: 2020
From: Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection
Publisher: Gale, a Cengage Company
Document Type: Topic overview
Length: 2,398 words
Content Level: (Level 5)
Lexile Measure: 1340L

Full Text:
Popular culture, or mass culture, is a term for which the definition is subject to much debate. It is generally defined as culture
produced for and consumed by a broad range of people. It is often contrasted with high art or elite culture, which is culture that
contains elements considered to be sophisticated or difficult or has serious aesthetic qualities intended for an educated minority.
Popular culture often incorporates and reflects the desires, obsessions, and fears of the mainstream members of a population in a
given place and time. This is perhaps most directly demonstrated in the popular arts and entertainment of a culture but is also
exhibited in trends in fashion, consumer goods, and slang. It includes the books, music, television shows, movies, video games, and
social media movements that capture the attention of a large segment of society. The way entertainment media is presented or
consumed can even also become an important aspect of popular culture.

Pop culture reflects the tastes and interests of specific people at a specific time, and the pop culture of one era can become the high
culture of another. Among modern music critics, for instance, the compositions of pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886) are considered
high art classical music. In his own day, however, he was a wildly popular performer. The plays of sixteenth-century author William
Shakespeare (1564–1616), now viewed as some of the highest quality literary works in the English language, were once considered
popular cultural entertainments that even the lowest class of citizens could enjoy. Nineteenth-century writer Charles Dickens
(1812–1870), often recognized as one of the greatest novelists of all time, was very much a writer of popular fiction during the
nineteenth century.

Main Ideas
Popular culture is culture produced for and consumed by the general public, while high art or elite culture is considered more
refined and sophisticated.
Industrialization, advances in communications technology, and urbanization help make culture more widely available to the
masses.
Popular culture often involves repetition and mass production. This allows producers to sell multiple copies or versions of a
product over time to large groups of people.
High art and popular culture often borrow from and interact with one another.
Critics of popular culture say that it is intellectually shallow and leads people to accept the status quo. Proponents of popular
culture praise it for its democratic values and accessibility.
Some people argue that the best culture is the most popular. Others say that commercial success can undermine the artistic
quality of a cultural product.
Fans identify with the pop culture they love. They create clubs and art around their fandom.
Fans and anti-fans can engage in harassment and mob attacks in defense of or against aspects of popular culture. Fans are
also sometimes unwilling to accept criticism of the art or artists they love.

Producing for Mass Cultural Consumption

Prior to the modern era, cultural traditions would mostly be shared and passed down person to person in what is often referred to as
folk culture. Over time, advances in technology made it easier to transmit and share cultural ideas and art among broader groups of
people. The printing press, invented in the 1400s, made it possible for middle-class and poorer people to afford books for the first
time.

As the Industrial Revolution began in Western Europe in the late 1700s, people began to move to cities in large numbers, creating a
growing, bustling audience for mass-produced information and entertainment. Newspapers, journals, broadsheet ballads, and
serialized novels by popular authors like Dickens were all available to an increasingly literate public. Popular songs were

disseminated first through sheet music, then through recordings on cylinder, and in the twentieth century, on records, cassettes, and
digital files. Popular dramas were watched at theaters and then transmitted via film, television, and online videos.

Advances in mass communication technology have deeply influenced how popular culture is created and disseminated. Traditional
media have been superseded by the lightning speed communication made possible by electronic devices. While cultural movements
once lasted decades, computers and smartphones enable popular culture in the twenty-first century seemingly to shift on a weekly or
even daily basis. Online content creators can become international sensations overnight. Fashion trends are discovered, mass
produced, then discarded for the next craze in a matter of weeks.

One goal of commercial mass culture producers is to create a public interested in purchasing that mass culture. If something sells,
cultural producers try to create more of it. For example, serial television shows or movies use long storylines extended over multiple
episodes to keep buyers coming back to see how the next installment turns out. Pop culture is also characterized by fads or crazes,
in which some narrative, trope, or object becomes extremely popular and is feverishly reproduced. In the late 1800s and early 1900s,
for example, theatrical productions of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1811–1896) anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin achieved
substantial popularity.

Though popular culture is for everyone, not all people have the same access to it or benefit from it to the same degree. For example,
in the United States during the 1950s, singer and pianist Little Richard (1932–) created a highly energetic style of rock and roll that
involved nonsensical lyrics, yelps, and yodels influenced by gospel singers. Because of prejudice against black people, radio stations
were unwilling to play Little Richard’s music. White singer Pat Boone (1934–), however, became very successful recording less
controversial versions of Little Richard’s hits.

Popular culture can draw on high art for ideas and material. In turn, high art has been influenced by popular culture in numerous
ways, and the boundaries between the two can blur. Artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was part of the Pop Art movement of the 1950s
and 1960s that celebrated the commonplace in fine art. Warhol incorporated representations of well-known objects from popular
culture—Coca-Cola bottles, Campbell’s soup cans, detergent boxes—and pictures of popular celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe
(1926–1962) into his work to comment on consumerism and fame. Warhol was inspired by the mass-reproduced photographic
images in popular magazines to mass-produce his own art using screen printing techniques. His images of movie stars like Monroe,
turned the mass-production of her image into high art while transforming his own work into popular art. Jazz trumpeter and composer
Miles Davis (1926–1991) spent his career moving back and forth between high art and mass art, drawing on classical and
experimental music traditions as well as on the music of contemporary composers and popular music genres like funk and rock. In
2009 Jane Austen’s (1775–1817) 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice was turned by Seth Grahame-Smith into the novel Pride and
Prejudice and Zombies which was adapted into the 2016 movie Pride + Prejudice + Zombies.

Debating the Value of Popular Culture

Since its inception, popular culture has been the subject of moral panics, as critics worry that new popular mediums will corrupt the
masses and lower the standards of taste and intellect established by high art. In the late 1700s, for example, religious authorities
feared that novels corrupted the intelligence and morals of women, leaving them unable to discern between reality and fiction while
spurring them to passion and sexual display. Similarly, in the internet era, experts and other commenters have warned that clicking
around on the web negatively affected the willingness and ability of users to enjoy novels and other forms of literature.

Pop culture is also criticized for its blandness and predictability, as may be the case with movies with similar plots and pop songs that
sound the same. German Marxist intellectuals Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) argued that pop
culture formed a single system of propaganda that led people to accept capitalism as natural, inevitable, and unchangeable. In their
view, pop culture led people to be submissive and apolitical.

Other critics have defended pop culture and argued that it can have beneficial effects. In her 1817 novel Northanger Abbey, Jane
Austen praised the new pop culture medium of novels as “work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which …
the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” German theorist Walter Benjamin
(1892–1940) praised pop culture’s democratizing influence and the way it gave large numbers of people access to art and ideas. He
admired Hollywood films that could be understood immediately by viewers without the need for a critic to interpret them. Benjamin
also argued for the value of pop culture repetition. In his famous 1936 essay, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” he
suggests that the social value of a photographic reproduction of a painting was higher than the value of the original painting.
Benjamin contends that the reproduction could be viewed or shared and discussed at any time or place, while the original could only
be viewed in a museum.

In addition to the debate about whether to value pop culture as a whole, critics, experts, and the public often debate which particular
genres and works of pop culture to value and why. For example, James Surowiecki (1967–) argues in his 2004 book, The Wisdom of
Crowds, that in many fields, including pop culture, large groups of people often arrive at superior choices. In other words, the movies
or music that are most popular and make the most money are often the best. In contrast, filmmaker Martin Scorsese (1942–) argued
in 2019 that the market dominance of superhero and other franchise films such as Disney’s Marvel movies has made finding an
audience more difficult for more personal, inventive, and creative movies. In one view, popular success is a sign of artistic success. In
the other, too much commercial success damages art.

Certain institutions are dedicated to recognizing excellence in pop culture. For instance, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland,
Ohio, has selected inductees every year since 1986. The panel of voters includes more than nine hundred rock critics, musicians,
historians, and other scholars. Musicians become eligible for inclusion twenty-five years after their first recording. The use of experts
and the long wait before someone can be inducted are meant to encourage objectivity and excellence. However, critics point out that

selections are heavily tilted toward white male musicians who recorded during the 1960s and 1970s. Other institutions, such as the
Academy Awards, which are industry awards for excellence in film, have been accused of similar biases.

Critical Thinking Questions
What characteristics distinguish high art from popular culture?
What is “cancel culture,” and what effect do you think it will have on future approaches to creating popular culture? Explain
your answer.
In your opinion, should parents allow their children to participate in popular culture fandoms? Why or why not?

Participating in Popular Culture

Advances in communication technology have provided new ways for people to create popular culture. Websites and social media
platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter allow ordinary individuals to attain levels of international celebrity that
were impossible before the internet. Furthermore, popular culture encourages people to respond to art they love or hate or are
invested in. This leads to the creation of fandoms—groups of people who identify themselves by their love of a particular pop culture
genre, work, or artist.

In the twenty-first century, fans may join clubs dedicated to their fandom, or they may create podcasts or write blogs about the movie
stars, books, or music they love. Conventions devoted to particular genres or fandoms can draw people from all over the country or
the world. One of the largest, San Diego Comic-Con, devoted to superhero and science-fiction comics, films, TV shows, and games,
makes more than $15 million a year from attendees. Fans at Comic-Con and other conventions often cosplay, or dress up as favorite
characters.

An early example of fandom centered on Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) in
1887. Passionate Holmes readers wrote their own detective stories featuring the character in an early form of fan fiction. Fans also
reacted with outrage when Doyle killed off his famous detective in a story in 1893. Some wore black armbands and canceled their
subscription to The Strand Magazine in which the story was published. One woman even attacked Doyle on the street with her
handbag. (Doyle brought Holmes back in 1903.) The character was so popular he moved into different mediums beginning with plays
in the 1890s and silent films in the early 1900s. Adaptations of his character into movies continued in radio productions and talking
films in the 1930s and television films and series from the 1940s. His fanbase and popularity have not waned; Holmes has appeared
in the recent BBC television series Sherlock (2010–), starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and a series of films
starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude that began in 2009 is set to continue with a third in 2021. New books based on Holmes
also continue to appear.

The 2010s have also seen a rise in anti-fandom—groups motivated by a dislike of a particular work or artist. The tendency for large
numbers of fans to criticize a single celebrity for political or moral reasons is sometimes referred to as “cancel culture.” For example,
in 2018 the website Babe.net published a piece by a woman who had dated comedian Aziz Ansari (1983–) alleging that he had
pressured her for sex and had behaved badly. Many people online criticized him and called for him to apologize or for employers to
distance themselves from him.

Some critics argue that cancel culture is mob action on the left designed to drive from public platforms artists who have engaged in
supposedly harmful behavior or made unacceptable statements. Some worry about the danger of mob action and suggest that
people like Ansari, who have not been convicted of crimes, are unfairly harmed. Other observers, however, point out that criticizing
powerful and popular artists rarely damages their careers. Ansari received a great deal of press support, for example, and continues
to perform.

Fandom, in fact, often makes people reluctant to criticize or hold accountable popular figures even when they commit serious crimes.
Comedian Bill Cosby (1937–) was accused of sexual harassment and rape by many women. But though the accusations were known
since the early 2000s, he continued to be a nationally beloved figure until comedian Hannibal Burress (1983–) did a stand-up routine
highlighting Cosby’s history of drugging women and sexually assaulting them. Following Burress’s show, more women came forward,
and Cosby was convicted of sexual assault in 2018.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2021 Gale, a Cengage Company
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
“Popular Culture.” Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/PC3010999037/OVIC?u=txshracd2512&sid=OVIC&xid=e77a2b89. Accessed 4 May 2021.
Gale Document Number: GALE|PC3010999037