After reading the Lipsitz essay, “Popular Culture: This Ain’t no Sideshow” I gathered three major ideas. The first being that popular culture is used almost in a way to entertain things one could never do in real life. The example used in the essay was about sexual repression in Victorian America and the liberating role theater played in engaging with the forbidden (9). The second is the idea that politics and popular culture are very linked, and that popular culture is merely the expression of the norms and values of the dominant culture. Seeing as the dominant culture also has a prominent role in politics, both spaces work together to reinforce and reproduce. This leads perfectly into the third idea I gathered being that popular culture is a site of struggle and contention; where if a breakdown in the current stronghold of popular culture can lend an opening to significant change.
The concept of cultural struggle really got me thinking again about our discussion in class on Tuesday about the Obama political cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker.
It is definitely clear that the political cartoon was not that big of a deal and that the media blew it out of proportion. However, the Obama camp was so quick to reject it. Why would they do that if the cover wasn’t a big deal? Was it because they knew when High Culture gets into the hands of the mainstream things will be misunderstood? This leads to a bigger question being: what happens to cultural struggle when “High Culture” and “Popular Culture” mix?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment