POPULAR CULTURE

POPULAR CULTURE 

The term popular culture was fashioned after the popular art movement which took place in the US and Great Britain in the 1950s. The movement was a reaction against expressionism which emphasised forms in themselves rather than realistic representation of reality. Popular culture artists used satire in their work. 

Popular culture artists depicted reality that common masses faced in their everyday life. Popular culture appealed to the masses as it was for everyone and not just for the elite class. 

POPULAR CULTURE AND MASS CULTURE 

With the dawn of industrialisation, mass culture was mass manufactured and mass produced. Mass Culture is the culture that is tailored according to the taste of mass audiences. Popular culture is a positive term for mass produced or mass disseminated cultural products. 

Scholars have agreed that mass culture and popular culture are terms which are used interchangeably. However, popular culture refers to a culture which is shared, accepted and liked by the people. It is not the culture of the elite. 

Mass culture is a culture which cuts across and includes a range of social classes and groups. 

CIRCUIT OF CULTURE 

Stuart Hall and his colleagues discussed the 'circuit of culture ' and the articulation of production and consumption. 

Hall suggested that political economy in some ways structures encoding and decoding of media objects. Media culture is produced within an industrial organisation of production. Here products generated according to codes and models were accepted within industries. 

According to Hall, certain cultural codes are so widely circulated and integrated into mainstream culture that they get 'naturalised' in society. Thus the encoders message is put forward and the people decode cultural meaning to it through their own experiences and local culture.  (An ideal e.g. In today's india is the 'Kala Chashma' song). 

Thus we see that culture is a description of a particular way of life and expresses meaning and values. There is a continuous process of cultural encoding and distribution. The way culture is produced and circulated is decided by the audience and controlled by advertising, marketing and design. The way things are represented affect our understanding of them and how they are shared with others.  It also helps us understand how media culture is produced, circulated and distributed. 

IMPACT OF POPULAR CULTURE ON SOCIETY 

Popular culture includes the beliefs, practices and objects that are a part of everyday tradition. It includes mass produced culture such as popular music, films, mass marketed books and magazines, large circulation newspapers, etc. 

Media defines popular culture through movies, billboards, TV channels, fashion magazines, bloggers, etc. Media constantly tells people what the current trends are, what they should wear, what they should look like, how they should behave, what music they should listen to, etc.

Popular culture has a both positive and negative impact. 

Positive contribution is seen when popular culture helps to establish social boundaries. For e.g. Music concerts bring social solidarity among people irrespective of their religion, class, caste, social status, etc.  They share a common identity through the music even though they are strangers to each other. 

On the other hand, popular culture through media tends to bombard our senses from all sides. This people try to follow what they see on TV or on billboards, in magazines or hear on radio and sometimes challenge social norms. This could lead to negative impact. 

Thus popular culture plays a significant role in the formation of public attitudes and values and also plays an important role in shaping the patterns of consumption in contemporary society. 

ADVERTISING AND POPULAR CULTURE

Popular culture refers to beliefs and practices and the objects through which they are organised that are widely shared amongst a population. It is the ideas, perspectives, attitudes and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of any given culture. Heavily influenced by mass media, popular culture permeates the everyday lives of the society. It includes everything from ‘common culture’ to ‘folk culture’ to ‘mass culture’.

Popular culture is the expressive content that is produced and consumed. It is light entertainment that is delivered through the channels of mass media and finally absorbed voluntarily, to be interpreted by the individual who receives it. Information then goes back in the form of ratings or sales figure that will influence the subsequent round of offerings.

Popular culture consists of symbols, for e.g., television serials, films, comic books, music etc. Popular culture gives pleasure upon reception and this pleasure giving feature is a central aspect of the popular culture experience.

Advertising on the other hand refers to the paid-for messages that attempts to transfer symbols into commodities to increase the possibilities of its purchase. For this reason advertising may be looked at warily. Although advertising comes in many forms, the main mediums focused on are television, radio and magazines.

Advertising is seen as a means of communication and aims at changing behaviour (forces individuals to purchase advertised goods). Popular culture  however aims to give pleasure and not to change viewers behaviour.

Advertising is almost always briefer than instances of popular culture (30 sec of a commercial against 30 minutes of popular culture) Media and space is expensive and advertisers have to work within budgets.

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN ADVERTISING AND POPULAR CULTURE

Both are products of culture industries and are to be understood as artistic products.
Both pay great attention to style.
Both share the use of same mass media method.
Both are approached as economic entities as well as symbolic entities

Advertising and popular culture have come to occupy central positions with a global economic growth.

Popular culture is more welcome than advertising.

Thus advertisers use Popular culture to create attractive messages for consumers. Advertisers appropriate popular culture material such as celebrities, music, comedy styles and anything else that can be used as accepted and as enhanced symbols for their products
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To communicate with consumers, advertisers comedies, music and celebrities, all part of popular culture. Music has the ability to stimulate extraordinary emotional feelings. Adult consumers derive emotional benefit from popular music. It is this appeal that advertisers try to exploit to stimulate consumer’s interest in their products.

Advertisers choose leading entertainers as spokespeople, as opposed to lesser known individuals, as it helps build audiences attention and the brand ambassador helps increase the brand status and ensures product success.

The utility of music is acknowledged within the advertising industry. Background music can set up a mood with targeted consumers and lend an emotional dimension to a brand. Although much of the music in advertising is original an increasing proportion of it consists of reused popular cultural hits.

Advertising does not deplete or obliterate popular culture. The interpenetration of advertising and popular culture is recognized and highlights from one adds luster to the other. The target audience are always on the lookout for symbols and meanings which reverberate back and forth between the two domains. Popular culture can even aid in the creation of new norms.

To communicate with consumers, advertisers have an ample stock of purchasable symbolic material to draw upon. Advertisers turn to popular culture that is pleasurable, emotional and non-coercive. Popular culture is the seat belt of the stars who can command general recognition from a diverse population. The stars are likely to deliver the emotional material the spectator is looking for. For e.g. the popular song ‘Dhoom Machale’ became a part of the day to day lingo of  youngsters. Advertisers who used ‘Dhoom Macha Diya’ below their visual reported increase in sales.
                         
Cultures are dynamic and change occurs when resistance slowly yields to acceptance. Gradually there comes an awareness of the need for change. Once the need is recognized, acceptance cannot be prevented. .