Function of Popular Culture

Function of Popular Culture

Although many people believe that popular culture is negatively effecting our and our children's lives, because it is saturated with meaningless information and dumbing us

down to drones which sit in front of televisions or computers, it is actually a very important aspect of our lives which allows our society to function more smoothly and

easily. Before we get into this we should first define popular culture. Popular is defined as “of, pertaining to, or consisting of the common people, or the people as a whole as distinguished from any particular class; constituted or carried on by the people.” Culture is defined as “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.”1 As these definitions confirm popular culture is an all encompassing thing that nobody can get away from, despite how much they may want to, but this may actually prove to be a good thing as it also serves many useful functions for our society. These functions include creating societal norms, separating our identity categories from other people, advancing technology, propelling social change, and despite popular opinion even making everyone smarter.

One of the most important functions of popular culture in today’s society is the creation of societal norms. As we consume images and words that hear through any mode of mass media we process this information and use it as a basis for our lives. This well exemplified in the world of fashion which allows for the production of any type of clothing, so how do we know what to where and when to where it? The fashion industry determines this for us by producing clothes and advertising the type of situations in which you might wear that particular clothing. These norms are also then reinforced by television shows and movie on which we see actors wearing this clothing in the appropriate settings. The production of norms by popular culture is vast and applies to almost everything as magazines, movies, television shows, concerts, and the internet constantly show us images of “normal” people. This could not be more evident than in the shows which children as raised watching. Many times these shows are made to show children what is normal in everyday society, and it is often done through fictional characters such as Barney or the characters from Sesame Street.

Another function of popular culture in today’s society is that it allows us to “separate our identity categories from others.”2 What this means is that allows us to more easily associate with people that are more like us by observing what they wear, the type of music they listen to, what movies they like, their favorite television shows, books, politics, or anything, because the list goes on as just about everything falls under popular culture. We do this type of thing everyday and it is often done completely subconsciously, as we make judgments about people based upon their appearance or what they value. This allows for people to quickly associate with other people that are much like them when they are put into situations where they aren’t familiar with the people already. Another thing that plays a large role is not only what people like, but also what they dislike. It is thought that “distaste is a key element of social stratification”2 which can often play as an important role as what people like.

The third important value of popular culture is that it is a driving force in the advancement of technology in our world. Popular culture teaches to consume all the time because we are constantly bombarded with advertisements on television, in magazines, billboards, and even when we see people walking around with new technology. Our capitalist systems focus is on consumption and consequently it is one of the main focuses of popular culture and because people are more than happy to consume as much as they it constantly drives industries to be creating new and hip ideas for the consumers. This is apparent in the production of ipods, because apple seems to release a new version every few months now, and people continue to buy them at a rapid pace which places a demand for more. This demand then allows the company to think of new outside the box ideas such as the Iphone which was recently released and had a lot of buzz around it. Another extremely important example of this is the production of