Introduction To Popular Culture By: Dafe Eramis-Eslabon, LPT, Maed Soc Si
Introduction To Popular Culture By: Dafe Eramis-Eslabon, LPT, Maed Soc Si
Introduction To Popular Culture By: Dafe Eramis-Eslabon, LPT, Maed Soc Si
Introduction
This module provides a lay out a working definition of popular culture, to outline a
few key concepts that will reappear in later discussion, and to give you a diagram of the
way this book is put together—a “guide to the guide”—that should help make the task of
piecing the bits of popular culture together a productive one. We also offer a rough
guide to the field of cultural studies for readers who want to delve further into the
question of how popular culture has come to be seen as something significant and
tricky enough to require a user’s guide. Just be forewarned: by the end of the book, you
will still be left with extra parts and you will likely end up with a concept of popular
culture that looks different from that of your neighbors.
Learning Objectives
At the end of the module, you should be able to:
1. discuss the concept of popular culture, mass media, traditional folk culture, and
commercial mass culture, and
2. discuss the culture of everyday life.
Learning Resources
Szeman (2013). Popular Culture: A User's Guide (Third Edition). Retrieved from:
https://www.academia.edu/2104502/Popular_Culture_A_Users_Guide_Third_Edition_
Lesson 1
Culture, Mass Media, and Who Defines It?
What Is Culture?
When we ask our students to track the word “culture” as it is used in the media
and other sources, two things tend to emerge: (1) culture (along with variations such as
multiculturalism) gets mentioned a lot, implying that it is a significant concept in our
society, and one that we likely can’t do without; and (2) it appears in many different,
often contradictory, contexts, suggesting that exactly how it signifies is hard to pin
down. When we talk about culture in the sense of building opera houses, the word
obviously means something different than when we talk about Western culture or youth
culture, national culture or business culture. Culture in the first sense—the one that fits
with opera houses, ballet, and Shakespeare, which for convenience we’ll call capital-C
Culture—focuses on what we usually think of as high-end creative production: artistic
pursuits that are enjoyed by an elite minority as opposed to more accessible leisure
activities, such as sports. These kinds of cultural productions are those that have over
time (they are often associated with the past) assumed an especially privileged place in
the collection of ideas and artifacts that comprise a cultural tradition.
Self-Check Questions
Now, it is time for you to answer the self-check questions in your worksheet and
answer the best that you can.
Learning Activity
Now, it is time for you to answer learning activity in your worksheet and answer the
best that you can.
Learning Input 2
Lesson 2
Popular Culture and Who Defines It?
With this in mind, let’s return to the apparently simple usage of “popular” with
which we began this section and think about it in a little more detail. Who are the people
who define the “popularity” of NCIS? Are they the unenlightened masses who lack the
ability to discriminate between schlock and substance? Are they discerning viewers
exercising their consumer choice? Or are they engaged in an act of political activism,
employing the cultural resources of NCIS to construct an agenda for crime prevention
or progressive social change? The slightly ludicrous quality of the last possibility raises
a quite serious question about how we understand the popular: what kind of agency—
that is possibility for self-motivated activity or action—is involved on the part of “the
people” in deter-mining or defining something to be “popular”? This question has
particular significance when we start to talk
about popular culture.
Self-Check Questions
Now, it is time for you to answer the self-check questions in your worksheet and
answer the best that you can.
Learning Activity
Now, it is time for you to answer learning activity in your worksheet and answer the
best that you can.
Quiz
The quiz for this module will be posted and is accessible through Google forms.
Quiz items may vary within 20-30 items.
Learning Input 3
Lesson 3
Traditional Folk Culture and Commercial Mass
Culture
Mass culture on the other hand, is produced for an unknown, disparate audience.
While the transmission of folk culture is generally technologically simple (e.g., face-
toface, oral communication), mass culture depends on electronic (or mechanical) media
to convey its message to the largest possible audience in order to secure maximum
profit, which is its ultimate goal. These terms can serve to make useful distinctions
between kinds of cultural production, highlighting the differences between, say, an Inuit
soapstone carving and an MTV rap video. On even a superficial examination, however,
the differences start to look a little fuzzy. Inuit art has become so popular among
nonInuit people that it has spawned factories in the south where carvers use power
tools to create an identical series of polar bears, for which they are paid by the piece
(George). Rap music, now a multi-billion dollar industry, emerged relatively recently
from the African American streetculture of the South Bronx. In each of these cases, it is
difficult to identify the precise moment when folk culture metamorphosed into mass
culture. The attempt to maintain strict division is not just tricky in a practical sense but
also, arguably, somewhat suspect ideologically.
Learning Activity
Now, it is time for you to answer learning activity in your worksheet and answer the
best that you can.
Lesson Summary
Quiz
The quiz for this module will be posted and is accessible through Google forms.
Quiz items may vary within 20-30 items.
Feedback
The feedback of this module may include the following such the clarification for
the content of lessons, answers in worksheets, or any like.
It may be performed through the use of available technology such as Google
Classroom, Facebook Instant Messenger, online conferencing, text, call, or any mode
which is accessible by all parties.