Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ray B. Browne is professor emeritus of Popular Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University.  Through some sixty books and a variety of initiatives-including the founding of the Journal of Popular Culture, the Popular Culture Association, and the Popular Press itself-he has played an instrumental role in making popular culture a topic of serious inquiry

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Profiles of Popular Culture

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Contents

Preview.....................................................xiMYTHS.......................................................13HEROES AND HEROINES.........................................35ICONS.......................................................54PREOCCUPATION WITH CHILDHOOD................................89STEREOTYPES.................................................102FORMULA.....................................................115RITES AND RITUALS...........................................127HOME AND ENVIRONMENT........................................142YOUTH, AGE, AND CHILDREN....................................149NOSTALGIA...................................................164WHAT TO DO WITH THE OLD PEOPLE?.............................168FADS........................................................172FASHION.....................................................187FOODS.......................................................192PERSONAL APPEARANCE.........................................210CULTURAL EXCHANGE...........................................224AIR TRAVEL..................................................232SIGHTSEEING AND VACATIONING.................................238MUSEUMS.....................................................249POPULAR ART.................................................256CELEBRATIONS................................................273POPULAR LITERATURE..........................................290MUSIC.......................................................340TELEVISION, RADIO, AND NEWSPAPERS...........................357WORLD OF MOVIES.............................................371SURVEY OF YEAR'S POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT......................375ADVERTISING: THE SOFT AND THE HARD SELL.....................389

Chapter One

RAY B. BROWNE AND PAT BROWNE

Though daily existence is made up of specific events and localities, all are tied together somehow in the flow of generalities. Events of one day are part of what happened yesterday and will continue to occur tomorrow in the same or a different location. But in order to make some kind of sense out of these recurrences we need to have generalities that connect them and tell us what they all mean. We constantly search for the keys of connections which fit us into the life cycle and answer the questions common to us all: Why are we here? Where are we headed? What does it all mean? To be sure we all begin on a common footing we need to be sure we understand what popular culture is.

Popular culture is the system of attitudes, behavior patterns, beliefs, customs, and tastes that define the people of any society. It is the entertainment, diversions, icons, rituals, and actions that shape a society's everyday world. It is what we do while we are awake, what we think about and how we approach the thought, and what we dream about while we are asleep. It is the way of life we inherit, practice, change, and then pass on to our descendants.

Popular culture is the current mature extension of folk culture, the culture of the people. With improved means of communication and electronic media in American culture, folk culture expanded into popular culture-the daily way of life as shaped by the popular majority of society. Especially in a democracy like the United States, popular culture has become both the voice of the people and the force that shapes that voice. In 1782, the French commentator J. Hector St. Jean de Crvecoeur asked in his Letters from an American Farmer, "What is an American?" He answered that such a person is the creation of America and is in turn the creator of the country's culture. Indeed, notions of the American Dream have been long grounded in the dream of democracy-that is, government by the people, or the popular rule. Thus, popular culture is tied fundamentally to America and the dreams of its people.

Historically, culture analysts have tried to fine-tune culture into two categories: "elite"-the elements of culture (fine art, literature, classical music, gourmet food and wine, etc.) that supposedly define the best of society-and "popular"-the elements of culture (comic strips, best sellers, pop music, fast foods, etc.) that appeal to society's lowest common denominator. The "educated" person approved of elite culture and scoffed at popular culture. This schism first began to develop in western Europe in the fifteenth century when the privileged classes tried to discover and develop differences in societies based on class, money, privilege, and lifestyles. Like many aspects of European culture, the debate between elite and popular cultures came to the United States. The upper class in America, for example, supported museums and galleries that would exhibit the finer things in life that would "elevate" people. As the twenty-first century emerges, however, the distinctions between popular culture and elitist culture have blurred almost into invisibility. The blues songs (once denigrated as "race music") of Robert Johnson are now revered by musicologists; architectural students study buildings in Las Vegas, Nevada, as examples of what Robert Venturi called the "kitsch of high capitalism"; sportswriter Gay Talese and heavyweight boxing champ Floyd Patterson were co-panelists at a symposium on literature and sport at the State University of New York-New Paltz in 1992. Examples go on and on but the one commonality that emerges is the role of popular culture as a model for the American Dream, the dream to pursue happiness and a better, more interesting life.

Popular culture is one of the most changeable aspects of our way of life. Literally here today and gone tomorrow, popular culture is never static but always dynamic. Its origins and movements are everywhere. Because popular culture has had various meanings over the years, a clear and precise definition is necessary.

The nature of popular culture makes it particularly difficult to define. As used today, the term is relatively new though its subject matter is as old as human society. In addition, popular culture must overcome two barriers: prejudice and the various definitions associated with it. Together they can be summarized in the statement, "I know what it is and I don't like it."

Yet every academic field has had to cope with popular culture to one degree or another, especially lately. Such fields as anthropology, sociology, religion, communications, theater, and, to an increasing degree, history, literature, and psychology have had to work to some extent in the broad fields of the everyday culture of people. Each has developed its own definition. Generally the definition has been associated with entertainment and leisure time activities, and usually with a negative connotation.

With the explosion of democracy in education since World War II has come a firm insistence on the inclusion without prejudice of democratic aspects of life. This changing attitude has brought a new attitude toward this inclusion and new fields and new seriousness and dignity toward those fields.

At first the new attitude and the resulting new subjects were treated with derision and fear-fear that the old canon and its shibboleths would be destroyed and replaced, and derision as a weapon to fight for retention of the old. Linguistically, in the fight to keep popular culture out of academia, the terms...