I’m back (just as I intended, of course). I know this is an awfully ‘contrarian’ thing to admit, but I prefer high culture over popular culture.

Let’s try this again. 

I’m a basic bitch. All I have are popular thoughts. I don’t deserve the purity required to consume high culture.

I’m going back again (I’m not editing any of this).

I guess while I’m here, I should probably define the term ‘popular’ first. Multiple definitions seem to come up. Somewhere it says that popular is ‘well liked by many people’. Elsewhere it refers to ‘inferior kinds of work’. Somewhere else, Storey (2015, pp. 5-12) refers to it as the culture that is ‘left over’…

Do these people think they’re better than the populists? Is this the class struggle Karl Marx wouldn’t shut up about? The messiah that I am is here to give a non-answer to these questions. Instead, I will discuss what makes a medium a piece of popular culture, and I’ll do so respectfully, and you’re going to love it just as much as I will.

For the sake of giving an example, let’s talk about the US version of The Office. I love it. I love the nuanced comedy; I love watching the characters grow. It’s the pure definition of comfort food. It’s also incredibly popular – oh no. 

Moving past that, there are multiple signs that point towards the show’s rightful place in popular culture. For one, there’s nothing subversive about the show. It is designed to recreate the mundane 9-5 life, which would mean it was “made for the people” – an acceptable insult if those people are from Mangerton.

Now it’s time for my favourite phrase: let’s get political. A 2015 article had this to say on the melding of popular culture and politics: “There is little doubt that popular culture displays a high level of complicity in the power positioning of traditional political and economic orders” (1). Writers Duncombe and Bleiker continue here: “The political economy of film is intertwined with the needs and desires of political leaders, and yet it also provides the framework within which these needs and desires emerge” (1).

If we were to follow this logic, then it would be pretty easy to refer to The Office as ‘complicit. While it does satirise the general way in which most companies are run, there’s no statement being made about it. What we get instead is a truck-full of character moments and comedy – which is all anyone should need.

So if I were to definitively define what popular culture is, then all I would have to do is combine everything I’ve dived into today. The Office is, like most comedies, a people-pleaser. It’s made by the people with the intention to represent the people. There’s no subversion; no pressing messages to be found about our political climate (not even for 2005). Humour stands amongst the core cultural touchstones. To put it in simplest of terms, it is popular. In other terms, it is basic.

That is all.

References

1983, 237 in Storey, 2015, pp. 5-12

(1) C. Duncombe & R. Bleiker. 2015, ‘Popular Culture and Political Identity’, E-International Relations, http://www.e-ir.info/2015/05/02/popular-culture-and-political-identity/