popular culture/introduction

Critics often associate popular culture with low art because the general public seems to prefer Austin Powers to Artaud and pulp fiction to the classics. The term "popular culture" in fact suggests a contrast with an "unpopular culture," implying that most people actually dislike what is not popular because it is high art. From these assumptions, one can argue that choosing to study popular culture involves a choice to abandon something that is more refined and therefore more worthy of critical attention. In this view, the study of popular culture becomes evidence of the dumbing down of America. Conversely, one can argue that such a claim simply reflects an elitist stance and that embracing popular culture as a topic of scholarship provides evidence of a welcomed move away from elitism. As we choose to study critically aspects of popular culture, we will confront these issues throughout the quarter.

This course examines how popular culture, "the cultures of everyday life" (Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader xi) "offers a common ground" , "is an arena of consent and resistance" (xi) and possibly is "the most visible and pervasive level in a given society" (Petracca and Sorapure, Common Culture, p. 3). In the process of myth reading and choosing and decoding the signs of everyday life, course participants will observe, research, and write about cultural phenomena and gain experience with methodologies, such as semiotics, that are employed in cultural studies. In addition, hegemonic theory, "the concept" used "to explain and explore relations of power articulated in terms of class" will be expanded to "include, for example, gender, race, meaning, and pleasure" (xiv). Ultimately, the course emphasizes the idea that artifacts of popular culture are in fact "texts" that we should analyze in order to determine their creators' intentions. The end goal is to gain control of, rather than be controlled by, the texts of popular culture.