English Club Chatter

So many questions. I've given this about a minute of thought, so I believe that qualifies me to register in at the moment. It seems to me the most interesting aspects of pop culture for study would be in a historical/sociological/psychological vein. How has/does pop culture reflect or create aspects of a society's culture? Where does marketing/capitalism fit in? How has pop culture changed over time and how has it helped shape society?
As far as an English Department issue, I'm not sure where to fit pop culture, though it seems the kind of thing that might traditionally be dumped there or assumed by them for whatever kinds of survival/justificational reasons. Certainly film studies confronts that aspect of pop culture, but not necessarily as a study of pop culture in and of itself. Do we necessarily broaden the English Department to include those things which are not necessarily of literary or linguistic value, which seems to me the more traditional aspects of many English departments? Even then there remains the questions of justification and of how best to study Danielle Steele. Any English professor understands the merits of using pop culturey things to help students make connections with and comparisons to the more "serious" literature being studied.
Ninth graders I've taught seem to get Romeo and Juliet best when watching Leonardo and company romp their way through Baz Lurman's lens. They have no problem telling me where the film is different than the play as read. Is this pop culture?
Relevancy seems to be an issue, but, like I said, I've only given this a moment of thought.

The study of pop culture is significant because it is the forum that influences, initiates, and enables the publication of written work.
Before the Internet, publication needed to be marketable and profitable for a publisher. That profitability depends on the popular culture that recieves and purchases the writer's work. In other words, published materials were essentially comodified in a public market that is empowered by the time's popular culture.
On the other hand, works like Melville's Moby Dick were for the most part rejected by the masses at the time of its publication but were remarkably accepted and studied two or three generations later. Therefore it might be right to assume that pop culture is the audience of word-art consumers that makes a text popular/relevant/important/marketable. However, this example can also indicate that the popular culture at a writer's time of authorship may not value the work at all. What appears to be a failure in the moment may be a failure for just a moment in time. What fails to be marketable for one popular culture might be extremely marketable in another.
This leads to the distinction between "classic" literature (literature that is subject to scholarly study in the classroom) and popular literature (literature that is popular to a specific culture). For example, I can't envision even one of Tom Clancy's best selling books as the subject of study in a college classroom unless it is a study of how a lack of wordsmithing, style, and good grammar, can be easily overlooked by a popular culture that reads a book like a progression of poorly described hollywood film scenes. (In my opinion, reading Clancy takes a bit more than the suspension of unbelief - and I bow to Clancy fans - read on and enjoy). So, commodification may allow marginally skilled authors to publish but may not be the mark of "good" work. he railroad novels of the nineteenth century are another example. So then, what is "good?" Is good determined by art "experts," or is it determined by a largely uneducated set of consumers who are limited in time and the ability to appreciate the nuances of the work? I am not sure, because I am not ready to reify the notion of "high art" or the "classical canon." I've read "good" poems by students at Mansfield that were worthy of publication; but they will perhaps never find the venue available to them because of a marketplace that invariably commodifies their work and their name on the basis of the moment's popular consumer culture.

Before our painfully restrictive "free market" society, artists often worked at the mercy of benefactors. The artist merely needed to "sell" their abilities to the right person and their career would be supported. This precludes a dependence on the reception of the popular culture and sort of creates a culture of high art - or at least art supported by a "large capital" culture.
The Internet creates a space that allows publication to happen at a low expense - yet the incredible number of available "reads," and the limited community communication of internet users, places an artists work in a nearly inaccessible space - a diamond burried in the sand of a beach - and still enforces the power of professional publication because popular culture assumes that a professionaly published work is more worthy of honor - at least the honor of sale and purchase.

We probably can't separate the dependence of art on capital. We can't separate capital from some kind of capital holding culture of patrons or purchasers. And consequently these parties and groups are powerful influences of the proliferation of the arts. To study popular culture is to study the audience of a work of art - and apart from the modernist movement- artistic production has always aknowledged an audience of some kind - even if the audience is conceived as god or the author.

Therefore, to study popular culture is to study an audience and its complete influence and interaction with a work of art. Very valuable and very enlightening. We can only hope that the popular culture members would engage in a study of themselves and wisely distribute their power. The National Endowment for the Arts is an insufficient way to redistribute that power.

The question of unpopular pop culture might be answered by lessening the word culture----cult.

The idea of popular culture is quite facinating. Pop music now seems to be geared toward people in their teens or younger, as are many films. Popular books, with a few notable exceptions, however, don't really seem to follow this. I honestly don't know who is reading all those best selling authors, but I'm wondering if there will be enough people interested in reading that sort of stuff in the future or reading much of anything for that matter. Well, anything longer than a newspaper article or an email.

I think Jim really nailed the unpopular popular culture topic with "cult" Underground pop culture is everywhere, just search the net for any cartoon or sci fi show of the last 30 years that might not have gotten great attention when first produced.

Almost any medium of popular culture today can be explored, analyzed, or otherwise evaluated in a literary manner. Comics, cartoons, movies, video games, and music all have to be written at some point. And while not all pop culture is valuable, some of it is great exactly for it's social, political, and cultural statements. For example, the Simpsons can often be counted on to critique all aspects of culture, politics, religion, and even pop culture including itself (Bart trying to gain back popularity in an episode 5 years ago by telling everyone to "do the Bartman" and getting the response that that was "so 1992").
Another example is the South Park episode that commented on the Terry Schiavo fiasco. In that episode, Kenny was in a vegeatative state and hooked up to life support. A national debate raged on whether he should be kept alive artificially or allowed to die. Images of him were all over the news, and his last wishes were specualted up on. At the end of the show, two of the kids found his last wishes in writing and they were read on national TV. The jist of it was "please if I'm ever in a vegetative state and hooked up to life support, whatever you do, don't show me on national television in that condition." Tell me that conversation couldn't last a class period or two.
Or there is the wonderful commentary provided through the pop culture of video games. Grand Theft Auto while quite probably the most potentially offensive video game ever is full of satire, intelligent humor, and political commentaries. An exerpt from one of the talk shows you can listen to on the radio while driving around and running over random citizens:

WCTR News 1

Announcer: "Next up on WCTR, the news. We try to make it interesting, and not
depressing."
Leanne: "This is Leanne Forge*, WCTR News. Foreigners are coming. Who are they,
and why should we care? The FDA warns shampoo is killing your unborn
child. Plus, protest continue outside the Zebra Bar Candy Company.
Now, for traffic and transit with Richard Burns."
Richard: "That's right Leanne, I'm Richard Burns. The aftermath of the
devastating earthquake continues. Travel is still severely restricted
statewide. Officials say there are still no reported casualties,
which is truly unfortunate, as it makes for incredibly boring news.
The federal government is still refusing aid to help rebuild bridges,
and everyone is blaming each other. The governor is threatening to
bomb Australia, despite scientific proof it wasn't their fault.
Richard Burns, WCTR!"

http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/grand_theft_auto_sa_wctr.txt

And there is the site if you want to read more. This game was released in 2004, yet some of that news seems to be taking on more recent events (and never mind that the game is set in 1992 in the fictionalized city of Los Santos and riots break out following the acquittal of a crooked cop).

My point is that pop culture very much reflects our real lives and if we don't look at it closely or examine it closely we may miss out on ideas or commentaries about our reality that we will never get from the news media (liberal or otherwise) or from such throwaway entertainment like pop novels or "reality" shows. Also, if we don't demand change from it, we end up with terrible recycling of pop culture with no substance (The Dukes of Hazzard movie, and Miami Vice is on the way).

Just a question, because I don't know the answer. Were Moby Dick and some of the other works mentioned that were not popular in their own time ever pop culture? Yes Moby Dick has been accepted and studied by subsequent generations, but was there ever a time that it was a must read by the masses or has it mostly been something read in academia?
Also, doesn't the mass consumption of Chricton, Steele, etc. allow for the publication of quality works that cry out to be published, even though there will likely be a lesser return financially?

Moby Dick was never popular, I think (it still isn't, is it?). Dickens certainly was. He was read widely, up and down the social spectrum. The same is probably true of other works we now think of as "classics": Shakespeare, Bunyan (Pilgrim's Progress), Milton (Paradise Lost). People really did read these authors! Tennyson was an extremely popular poet, when poetry was actually somewhat popular. I suppose one question I'm intrigued by is whether "popular" means "liked/read by a lot of people" or "liked/read by (a) ordinary folks (b) non-academics" or even "not subject to the same kinds of appreciation as non-popular culture."

Interesting questions. The word "popular" seems to me to mean different things in different uses. The popular kids wear the popular trends (and/or help make the trends popular), but, after a certain age they don't necessarily listen to pop music. I don't have a clue as to what they read. Popular adults (celebrities) also seem to affect the trends in fashion--image,some create the pop music, but I still don't know what they're reading.
So, again, who is reading all those bestsellers out there? The unpopular populace? Why do people watch/read writers like Dr. Phil? Why would anyone want to read a book about the inside of Scot Peterson's head by an author who never even talked to Peterson? Why does it seem that just because something is in the news, it is considered by too many to be the truth, especially if someone wrote a book about it? Oh yeah, well I read that the Ramseys were trying to kill their son, but accidentally killed their daughter instead. Will this seductive, dangerous game of (mis)information ever slow down? Is it top driven by the media or bottom driven by the consumer? How will we ever know, aside from what the media tells us?
Do the consumers create popular culture or is it thrust upon us?

dicotomy
sarah stevens

you got supply
and demand
enough for one right hand
to keep up with what
and it's all short tight
revealing the imperfections
relative beauty suffices
if it's just a matter of lust
that five minute ego stroke
credit card romance
(don't say it please)
the saving grace of the day
nighttime tucked away
resting up for another bout of trying