When we speak of popular culture we immediately face the question: What is popular culture? The answer is far from simple, but we can at least begin by saying that popular culture is mainstream culture; it includes the arts, artifacts, entertainments, fads, beliefs, and values shared by most of the populace. In America popular arts and entertainments surround us, dominate our attention, and shape our sensibilities. Both collectively, as a people, and individually, depending on our personal tastes and inclinations, we spend an enormous amount of time watching television, listening to the radio, reading the comics (and other things) in the daily newspapers, going to films (or, nowadays, renting them and playing them on our VCRs), buying and wearing fashions, and reading popular literature. We use the mass media for many things; to entertain and amuse ourselves and our children, to enhance our self-esteem and self-perceptions, to find out what is going on in the world, to avoid feeling alone, and to help fill (and kill) time.
There is good reason to believe that we are being affected in profound ways by our popular culture. Some media analysts agree that we learn a great deal from it without being aware that we learn a great deal from it without being aware of the fact. We identify with popular heroes and heroines and try to imitate them in various ways. We also gain notions about what is important and unimportant in life, learn how to solve problems, find out how to relate to others (including sexuality), and come to make assumptions about other ethnic and racial groups. In addition, we may be misinformed by the mass media: Some people - Asians, African-Americans, and older people - are under-represented in the media, and all people tend to be portrayed in highly stereotyped ways. The mass media socialize us, they show us rules to play, they help shape our values, and they dominate our politics. Popular cultures is an important influence in our society - touching our everyday lives, it usurps the role once played by peers, parents, professors, politicians, and priests. Since 1950, our social, mental, communal, and political landscapes have been changed in ways scarcely imaginable before the advent of television: Because of television almost everything is different.
It should be pointed out, however, that - except for those in advertising - the people who create the media are not (usually, anyway) trying to socialize us and shape our behavior. They are just trying to create things that will be popular and have wide appeal. But they cannot avoid putting their values and beliefs into their works, even though they may be unaware that they are doing so. Some critics, however, are concerned that popular culture and the media are too closely allied with commerce and advertising.
What all this suggests is that we should attend much more carefully than we usually do to the mass media and popular culture, that we ought to investigate their impact on us, or loved ones, and our society. For instance, as the dominant medium of popular culture, is TV reflecting reality or actually shaping attitudes with what it shows? What are the advertising principles that fuel our consumer society and how are ads used to change attitudes and behaviors? Is there a relationship between the search for "self" and fashion? What are the cultural forces that shaped rock and roll music, the social relations and social environments of the people who make it, buy it, and identify with it? Is there a relationship between popular culture and escapism? In short, how does popular cultures effect the way we see ourselves and the
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