What is Popular Culture?
Popular culture may be defined as the culture of the masses. This refers to a shared set of customary practices, beliefs, social forms and material traits of the racial, religious or social groups, which have gained popular acceptance. In other words, popular culture is commonly practiced or approved by social groups of succeeding generations. In popular culture, the culture and knowledge is passed on through folklores, mass media, magazines, television, radio, internet, etc.
Popular culture has been defined differently in different contexts by various scholars. Some scholars equate the “popular culture”, with “Pop culture”, and “Mass Culture”. In this context, this concept relates to the culture-patterns of human activity and symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance – which are popular or common. This is often defined or determined by the mass media. Popular culture is also suggested to be the widespread cultural elements in any given society that are perpetuated through the vernacular language or lingua franca of that society. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires that make up the everyday life of the masses. This prevailing vernacular culture in any given society may include any number of practices related to the activities such as cooking, clothing, consumption, mass media and the many facets of the entertainment like the sports, music, fashion, photography, literature, etc. Thus, the pop culture or the mass culture is seen as a commercial culture, which is produced for mass consumption.
In yet another perspective, John Storey distinguishes “popular” culture from the “high” culture. According to him, the popular culture or the “pop culture” can also be defined as the culture that is “left over” when we have decided what “high culture” is. This is to say that the popular culture is contrary to the more exclusive and even elitist “high culture”, that is, the culture of the ruling social group or sometimes the intellectual class. In other words, the popular culture is the opposite of the high cultural art forms such as the opera, historic art, classical music, traditional theatre or literature, etc. It includes many forms of cultural communication including newspapers, television, advertising, comics, pop music, radio, cheap novels, movies, jazz, etc.
The earliest use of the word “popular” in English was during the 15th century in law and politics, meaning “low”, “base”, “vulgar”, and “of the common people”. These meanings were carried till the late 18th century by when it began to mean “widespread” and gained in positive connotation. The world of pop culture cast a particular influence on art from the early 1960s onwards, through Pop Art. When the modern pop culture began during the early 1950s, it made it harder for adults to participate. Today, most adults, their children and succeeding generations participate in pop culture directly or indirectly.