Popular Culture Projects - Essay Example

Often it is found that the new innovation faced stiff resistance from what already was there, which can be named as traditional culture. But when the new culture infiltrates into the deeper layer of the society through various means it become the mass culture. It breaks all the societal taboos and mores framed earlier. One can say it is a cultural invasion. The whole world is witnessing now such a cultural invasion in the name of popular culture of the nineteenth and twentieth century. So many theories corroborate to the evolution of this popular culture which has deep impact on the every facet of human life.

The new innovations due to large scale industrialization add to so called pop culture. Every moment the tradition in the society faces a competition with the modernity. But it is the people who decide what to prevail. Gone are those days when a few intellectual mass monopolized the culture and imposed that on the society to act accordingly. In this pop culture era elitist view of the society take a backseat seeing the political culture changing its shape. Popular culture has been defined differently by different scholars.

Raymond William(1983, p.237) argues that "the word 'popular' has at least four current meanings. First it can simply refer to those objects and practices that are well liked by a lot of people or it can refer to objects and practices deemed inferior and unworthy the term can also refer to work deliberately setting out to win favor with the people. Finally the term can refer to the objects and practices actually made by the people for themselves (cited by Harrington & Bielby, p.2)Alan Swingewood (1977, p.5-8) points out that the aristocratic theory of mass society is to be linked to the moral crisis caused by the weakening of traditional centers of authority such as family and religion.

He also points out there is no question of domination here anymore. This view establishes the fact that popular culture has become the need of the people now (cited in Wikipedia, 2006) In modern urban mass society several factors contributed towards the evolution of popular culture such as 1. The development of industrial mass production, 2.the introduction of new technologies of sound and image broadcasting and recording, 3. the growth of mass production industries such as film, broadcast radio, television, book publishing industries as well as print and electronic news media (Wikipedia, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.

phptitle=Popular_culture&oldid=72053444)The distinction between the highbrow and lowbrow culture became very faint with the advent of this popular culture. "Soon the term 'middlebrow' was introduced to qualify this phenomenon and to dismiss it as threatening the authenticity of both high and popular culture"(Wikipedia, 2006) With the pop music, video, adventure sports, evolve some persons who make some lasting and indelible impressions in the minds of public and are termed as celebrities. According to David Marshall, Canadian media theorists and author of the book Clebrity and Power , celebrities were an invention that heralded the democratic ear of fame business.

The term celebrity has its roots in latin word