Popular Culture

The Rolling Stones may have been right about life, but their song would be a funeral dirge for popular culture. Popular culture is about "Satisfaction" all right, but its major concern is in ensuring that people can get what they want regardless of whether they need it or not. Not getting what you want is for monks, communists, and fans of the Cleveland Indians; getting it is why popular culture gave us credit cards.

And popular culture doesn't want you to have to sweat a lot in getting it, either. Stay on your couch and change channels, stay in your car and eat healthily, stay home alone and reach out and touch someone, stay on your Exercycle and listen to a good book. Popular culture has discovered the secret of perpetual motion in the age of relativity: stay in one place and everything will come to you. Around the world in thirty minutes - just stay tuned.

Popular culture is so easy to get because it's everywhere to be gotten - it surrounds us the way water surrounds a fish, as a transparent environment crucial to our survival. A fish looks through the water rather than at it and so do we tend to overlook the omnipresence of popular culture precisely because it is such a familiar part of our everyday environment. Consider for a moment, however, that the clothes you are wearing (mass produced, advertised, sold for profit), the mall or store you purchased them in (and the ritual of shopping which shaped the process and got you there and back), the food you eat (from restaurants or grocery store chains), the television programs which inform and entertain you (beamed to over 98% of American homes to be watched for an average of seven and a half hours each day), and the very textbook you are holding in your hands right now are all aspects of popular culture and you may begin to see how completely we are suspended in these popular culture seas - deep waters indeed.

The fact that we all get hungry and have to eat is a matter of elementary biology; the fact that American children recognize Ronald McDonald more often than any other figure except Santa Claus is a result of our popular culture and the choices we have made. We need to understand this culture, then, so that we can be more than a fish who just eats what's dropped into his tank, watches whatever passes by and ends up in the "big flush" - a passive part of his environment right to the finish.

The producers of popular culture will go to great lengths to mold their products to reflect the audience beliefs and values. When the producers of Fatal Attraction (1987) screened an early version of their film for a test audience, the response was far from enthusiastic. Audiences were critical of the movie's original ending, and registered complaints about aspects of all three of the film's major characters - Alex, Dan and Dan's wife Beth (Anne Archer). The filmmakers listened to the voice (and groans) of the people and returned to the studio to reshoot critical scenes in a manner more reflective of audience desires.