Popular culture

Definition

According to author John Storey, there are various definitions of popular culture. The quantitative definition of culture has the problem that too much "high culture" (e.g., television dramatizations of Jane Austen) is also "popular". "Pop culture" is also defined as the culture that is "leftover" when we have decided what high culture is. However, many works straddle the boundaries, e.g., William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and George Orwell.

A third definition equates pop culture with "mass culture" and ideas. This is seen as a commercial culture, mass-produced for mass consumption by mass media. From a Western European perspective, this may be compared to American culture. Alternatively, "pop culture" can be defined as an "authentic" culture of the people, but this can be problematic as there are many ways of defining the "people". Storey argued that there is a political dimension to popular culture; neo-Gramscian hegemony theory "sees popular culture as a site of struggle between the 'resistance' of subordinate groups in society and the forces of 'incorporation' operating in the interests of dominant groups in society". A postmodernist approach to popular culture would "no longer recognize the distinction between high and popular culture".

Storey claims that popular culture emerged from the urbanization of the Industrial Revolution. Studies of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber, or Bristol, for example) locate much of the characteristic vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance popular culture, while contemporary practitioners like Dario Fo and John McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk traditions (the commedia dell'arte for example).

Popular culture is constantly evolving and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually interdependent perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public. Important contemporary contributions to understanding what popular culture means have been given by the German researcher Ronald Daus, who studies the impact of extra-European cultures in North America, Asia, and especially in Latin America.

Levels

Within the realm of popular culture, there exists an organizational culture. From its beginning, popular culture has revolved around classes in society and the push-back between them. Within popular culture, there are two levels that have emerged, high and low. High culture can be described as art and works considered of superior value, historically, aesthetically and socially. Low culture is regarded by some as that of the lower classes, historically.

Folklore

Adaptations based on traditional folklore provide a source of popular culture. This early layer of cultural mainstream still persists today, in a form separate from mass-produced popular culture, propagating by word of mouth rather than via mass media, e.g. in the form of jokes or urban legends. With the widespread use of the Internet from the 1990s, the distinction between mass media and word-of-mouth has become blurred.

Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, communities amongst the public have their own tastes and they may not always embrace every cultural or subcultural item sold. Moreover, certain beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture may spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process and in the same manner that folklore evolves.

Criticism

Western popular culture stands persistently accused of functioning as a vast engine of commercialism. This system, critics argue, is designed to privilege products selected and mass-marketed by capitalists. Such criticisms find articulation in the works of Marxist theorists—including luminaries like Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, bell hooks, Antonio Gramsci, Guy Debord, Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton—as well as postmodern philosophers such as Jean-François Lyotard (who dissected the commercialization of information under capitalism).

Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School, particularly Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, delivered critiques through their concept of the "culture industry," explored in their seminal Dialectic of Enlightenment. Drawing from Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, and others, they argued that capitalist popular culture is far from an authentic expression of the people. Instead, it constitutes a system churning out homogenous, standardized products, manufactured to serve the interests of elite domination. Consumer desire for Hollywood films, pop melodies, and disposable bestsellers is not organic, but shaped by the capitalist behemoths—Hollywood studios, record labels, publishing giants—and the elite gatekeepers who dictate which commodities saturate our media, from television screens to print journalism. As Adorno noted, "The industry bows to the vote it has itself rigged". This elite dictates commodification based on narrow ideological values, habituating audiences to formulaic conventions that, Adorno contended, stifle genuine intellectual engagement. His work influenced cultural studies, philosophy, and the New Left.

Contemporary critique

The digital age, as music critic Alex Ross observed in New Yorker (2014), has only magnified Adorno's relevance. The success of phenomena like the Harry Potter franchise, as critiqued by Jack Zipes, exemplifies this mass commercialization and corporate hegemony. Zipes contends that culture industry commodities achieve "popularity" precisely through their homogeneity and adherence to formula. The media, he argues, actively molds children's tastes. Postmodern sociologist Jean Baudrillard presented a stark view of the consumer's role. He argued that individuals are relentlessly conditioned to pursue the maximization of pleasure as a social duty – a failure to participate risks rendering one asocial. His core critique held that products of capitalist culture, especially those marketed as rebellious, can only offer an illusion of defiance. True rebellion is impossible because the system producing these commodities remains firmly controlled by the powerful.

Scholarship robustly demonstrates how Western entertainment industries fortify transnational capitalism and cement Western cultural dominance. Consequently, commercial entertainment is less an authentic local expression and more a culture amplified by transnational media conglomerates, leading to an homogenization of cultural identities, eroding diverse traditions in favor of marketable forms. These conglomerates—vast media empires controlling music labels, film studios, streaming platforms, and news outlets—are often answerable primarily to shareholders demanding ever-increasing returns. This shareholder primacy incentivizes cost-cutting and profit maximization at the expense of ethical considerations, including fair artist compensation beyond the top tier, safe working conditions, and sustainable sourcing. The advertising revenue that underpins "free" platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Spotify, crucial for promoting stars, is generated through sophisticated surveillance and data extraction, commodifying user attention and privacy on an unprecedented scale.

Corporate exploitation

The culture industry not only standardizes taste but also rests upon and obscures a foundation of global exploitation, resource plunder, and the relentless pursuit of shareholder value above human dignity and ecological sustainability. While mega-stars achieve immense wealth, the system is structured so that the vast majority of revenue flows upwards: to platform owners, shareholders, and executives. The success of celebrities becomes a powerful marketing tool for the conglomerate itself, boosting its stock price and attracting investment, while obscuring the exploitative labour practices and environmental damage embedded within its global supply chains. The very devices essential for consuming this culture often rely on minerals mined under appalling conditions. Cobalt and tantalum, critical for electronics, are frequently sourced from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo using child labour and artisanal miners facing lethal hazards and exploitation, generating vast profits for multinational conglomerates further up the supply chain.

Feminist critique

The influential feminist scholar bell hooks delivers a searing intersectional critique. She argues that commercial celebrities and their branded commodities cannot authentically symbolize liberation while being structurally dependent on – and actively reinforcing – imperialist capitalism and oppressive beauty standards. Hooks dissects figures like Beyoncé not merely as artists, but as nodes within a vast profit machinery: her global stardom increases the wealth of corporate giants (Pepsi, Adidas), luxury brands (her Ivy Park brand), and the extractive ad-revenue engines of platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Beyoncé's ascent to billionaire status, hooks contends, exemplifies how such success is built upon and fuels the very systems of patriarchal capitalism it might superficially appear to challenge. Her power derives from, and legitimizes, the industries profiting from exploitation.

Media critique

The very structure of mass media facilitates control, as Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argued in their pivotal 1988 work, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. They posit that a powerful elite, driven by its own interests, controls and manipulates mainstream information flow. Mass media, therefore, operates as a sophisticated system of propaganda:

In sum, a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests. This should be observable in dichotomized choices of story and in the volume and quality of coverage... such dichotomization in the mass media is massive and systematic: not only are choices for publicity and suppression comprehensible in terms of system advantage, but the modes of handling favored and inconvenient materials (placement, tone, context, fullness of treatment) differ in ways that serve political ends.

Popular culture has frequently served as a vehicle for imperialist ideologies. John M. MacKenzie highlights how many such products were crafted to glorify the British upper classes and promote imperialist worldviews, rather than reflecting a democratic perspective.

Influences

Pop culture has had a lasting influence to the products being released in their time. Many examples of art, books, films and others, have been inspired by pop culture. These include:

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that first emerged in the 1950s as a reaction and a counter to traditional and high-class art by including common and well-known images and references. Artists known during this movement include Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.

Pop music

Pop music is a wide-ranging genre of music whose characteristics include styles and tones that have a wider and more massive appeal to all kinds of consumers. Oftentimes, many examples of these music contain influences from other pre-existing works. The origins of popular music began in the late 1800s with the inventions of Edison's phonograph and Berliner's gramophone, both of which allowed for music to be available for purchase to the public rather than access to just the elites. Due to the almost nonexistent copyright laws, the early 1900s flourished with composers and publishers aiming to make and sell as much music as they could. The hub for this activity was a small area of New York known as Tin Pan Alley, which quickly became one of the major spots for popular music as the demand grew intensely. Technological advances in the 1940s only furthered the success and popularity of the genre. The reel-to-tape recorder was groundbreaking in terms of innovation and served as the baseline for many more transformations this genre and the music industry as a whole will endure. Along with the continued innovation of popular music, multiple subset genres emerged as the new faces of popular music, all with the foundation of jazz and blues. Some of those genres include Rock and Roll, Punk, and Hip Hop. Due to the increasing mainstream success of popular music, artists of the genre grew in fame and popularity. A few of the major singers and musicians of this genre include Michael Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, Elvis Presley, Beatles, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift. Popular music will continue to be shaped by, and evolve to fit the tastes and preferences of the public.

Pop culture fiction

Pop culture fiction is a genre in books, comics, films, shows, and many other story-telling media that depicts stories that are purposely filled with easter eggs and references to pop culture. The genre often overlaps with satire and parody, but the most-well known are considered to be more serious works of literature. Writers of this genre include Ernest Cline, Bret Easton Ellis, and Bryan Lee O'Malley.

Pop culture studies

Pop culture studies are researches thesis, and other academic works that analyzes various trends of pop and mass culture, pop icons, or the effects and influences of pop culture in society and history. Ray B. Browne is one of the first academicians to conduct courses on the studies about pop culture.