So, What Is Pop Culture?

WHAT CULTURE? Low culture, high culture, middle and underground and overground culture. Popular and unpopular culture and subculture. To anthropologists, culture is what people do. To elites, culture is what they have and everybody else hasn't. To marketers, culture is something to sell. If they sell it to lots of people, it is (by definition) pop culture.

John Cage said that music is any sound that you can get people to listen to. Extend that definition to art, and art is anything you can put on a pedastal or in a frame and that you can people to look at, or preferably buy. Extend that definition to culture, and culture is anything you call culture that you can persuade someone to consume. Words and music, still and moving images, clothes or the lack thereof, foods and drinks, machines, personal-sexual behaviors, workplace or spare-time activities, all are cultural items, and all can be sold.

LOCAL CULTURE: In any definition, primate culture depends on communication. We mostly-hairless apes and our hairier cousins teach each other languages, gestures, mores, customs, versions and perversions of more-or-less acceptable activity. Until very recently in primate history, all that communication and teaching and learning happened face-to-face (or in other close anatomical proximity), or at least within eye- and ear-shot. Like politics, all personal interactions are local.

Such necessary interactions include buying and selling stuff, such as the aforementioned foods and drinks, clothes, machines, entertainments, etc. In olden days were fairs and markets, when folks gathered together from miles around to exchange goods. In newer days were brick-and-morter stores, where one personally touched goods and handed over money for same.

With communications limited to face-to face interactions comes a corresponding limit on the volume and range of any specific cultural activity. A crowd may gather to listen to a speaker; listeners may then repeat the message, more-or-less garbled, to others more distant; and that's about as far as any message may travel, especially since more distant groups are likely to speak in different dialects and have different ways of understanding a message.

REMOTE CULTURE: Then we got clever. Writing, signaling, printing, telegraph and telephone cables, radio and television broadcasting, satellites, the internet (wired and wireless) — we can teach and learn and communicate and babble over long distances without ever touching one another. And such faster communications tends to homogenize and hegemonize language, flattening-out dialect differences and flattening-down small isolated tongues.

We can interchange goods and services and finances remotely, also. Some of us do little else. The marketplace of goods and ideas is virtual, online, abstracted. The number of products offered grows exponentially. The types of products constrict down to such classes as can be most easily categorized and marketed.

CONTROL CULTURE: Back before we all got so electronic and digital and sophisto, remote communications consisted of printed sheets that were carried from place to place, maybe posted publically or read aloud. And those producing such sheets preferred to be paid for their efforts, by selling the sheets themselves and/or by selling space in those sheets to advertisers, or by hiring themselves out to some institution (government or commercial or otherwise) to act as a shill or propagandist.

"Who pays the piper, calls the tune" — and so advertisers and ministries quickly came to dictate the content of the media they fund and control. Around a century ago they became even more clever, and funded research in a fledgling field called Psychology, to learn how what motivates people, the better to tailor messages directing consumption and control. Who calls the tune, analyzes the listeners' brainwaves.

VOX POPULI CULTURE: And so we come to 'pop' culture, a stream of messages paid for by commercial or governmental entities (and thus funded by skimming the income of the audience), delivered by whatever hot or cold media are available, ubiquitously broad- or narrow-cast to some largish portion of a population.

Some of those messages resonate within the minds of their recipients, becoming 'memes,' intellectual virii that infect a mass mentality. Some messages are more-or-less accepted for some period of time. Some messages are firmly rejected by the general populace (such as WAR ON DRUGS propaganda or a network TV season schedule) but, depending on the persistence of the funder, may be repeated (with variations) almost indefinitely, and may even find a place in the popular consciousness as anti-memes. So long as they are noticed and remembered, they serve their purpose.

Pop culture thus consists of a body of messages that gain the attention of enough people, and the actions and reactions of those people, generally of adopting and/or rejecting certain behaviors (including spending money in certain ways). If enough people react to the messages, they're 'pop' or maybe 'subpop' or whatever. When people start repeating the messages themselves, they become 'vox populi,' the voice of the people. When the people speak loudly, beware of halitosis.

How-2 B a Pop Star!

POPNESS: As noted above, Pop Culture is any stream of messages accepted by enough people. Those who gain renown in Pop Culture, who become Pop Stars, are those who entertain enough people. The secret of Pop Stardom is thus exceedingly simple: find an audience, and skillfully pander to it.

Of course, that's not nearly enough. IF POP STARDOM WAS EASY, WE'D ALL BE DOING IT.

Entertainment is complicated; people are complicated, even in mobs. Every effort at gaining popular acceptance for some product or service or entertainer is fraught with risk and uncertainty. Some efforts are more straightforward and predictable than others; those selling snacks in a cinema have a much better grasp on their customers' tastes than do the studios that put films up on the big screen. Is this because hot dogs and popcorn are more consistent than sequels?

PEOPLE, ETC: People and products arise in many arenas to become Pop Stars. All become stars due to a combination of luck and pluck, savvy production and marketing (which may or may not work), some modicum of training, hard work on somebody's part, and possibly divine or demonic influence (if such exist). But the marketing is vital; if not exposed furiously to the public, they won't know or care who you are.

You may think, "Yeah, well sure, PEOPLE (and maybe some animals) can be stars, but PRODUCTS? C'mon now!" Just look at soft drinks and McFood, cartoon characters and toys, certain automobiles; all such may be sold as pop stars, and the selling may succeed.

But humans have an advantage, for now. [As animation becomes more realistic, more virtual stars will emerge. Bet on it! And animations are more pliable than most unaltered humans,] People with some mix of charisma and ability and notoriety, and lots of exposure — these are the stars consumed by audiences worldwide daily. They may be currently-active professionals, politicians or pundits or clergy or clowns or artists or athletes or educators or formal entertainers, or washed-up pros who can get on broadcast media and talk about their creative demises or at least tolerate being objects of derision. The human advantage is to at least appear to be responsive, interactive. Some level of responsiveness is called 'personailty.'

DO IT NOW! So, how to be a Pop Star? Start with some charisma. There is evidence that close-up charisma is chemical, based on pheromones, so you may need some horomone supplements or genetic engineering. You can pander all you want, but if you're as boring as over-boiled cabbage, you can kiss Pop Stardom bye-bye.

Next, throw in some ability. You may be naturally gifted in some area, and/or well-trained, and/or artificially stimulated or enhanced, but you must give people SOME reason to pay attention to you and not to some other ambitious schlub. And pick your area of expertise carefully — there may not be much of an audience for the world's best kazoo player.

Next, gain some fame, either for your outstanding positive performance in some area, or for the notoriety of having committed some horrendous or obnoxious or (quasi-)illegal actions. There are numbers of prominent United States clergymen, broadcasters and artists who have taken the latter route, including most right-wing radio commentators. Once you've garnered name recognition among a substantial population, your career can last nearly forever, the same as many burnt-out one-hit country music singers.

If you can grab some divine or demonic or angelic or alien-ET influence, now is the time to go for it. Pray or curse a lot, practice appropriate rituals, switch on your UFO-attractor beacon — do whatever it takes, because you may need all the help you can get.

PERFORMANCE: Now, determine who your target audience is, what they want, and START PANDERING, DAMMIT! To pander effectively, you'll need exposure to the audience and a self-serving message to deliver. Keep the message simple. Deliver it over and over and over and over. Then do it again. And again. And again. And yet again.

And be consistent; your audience doesn't want to hear (and won't tolerate) changing messages, unless they're really wasted and can't tell the difference. In fact, if you can get your audience thoroughly but blamelessly intoxicated (on chemicals or sex or endorphins or any other excitement), so much the better.

* Nobody ever lost any money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people. —H.L. Mencken
* There's a sucker born every minute. —P.T.. Barnum

These may be real quotes, or just apocryphal attributions. The truth matters little in this instance. It rarely does. Keep that in mind also — don't be constrained by petty consistency or strict accuracy, they only get in the way of a good performance. One simple statement, right or wrong, repeated over and over and over, is worth more than every quibbly complicated truth ever mumbled. Pop Stars need only be true to themselves, whomever they happen to be at the moment.

You now possess all the tools needed for Pop Stardom. Break a leg.

Why I Don't Give a Shit!

DON'T I CARE? Well, maybe I do. Maybe I lust after stardom as a singer-songwriter (who hates to perform in public) or a writer-photographer (who is too lazy to send maaterial cold to possible markets) or a webmonkey-pundit (who self-publishes and thus has little chance of gaining renown). Maybe I know I'll never be a Pop Star myself, and I'm just a bitter misanthropic crank bubbling foully in a foetid pool of my own despair, ranting feebly at the reality of the Pop World. Something like that.

Or maybe I don't give a shit about Pop Stardom, for myself or for others, for valid reasons. Maybe people only seek external recogition and validation because they feel a great lack of internal validation and worth. Maybe the only people who aspire to power and fame and wealth don't deserve such. But who decides on who 'deserves' what? And what is Pop Culture worth?

REWARDS? You might ask, "But surely you want some rewards out of life! Aren't there other paths to fame and fortune besides Pop Stardom?" And I'll reply, "No, there are no other possible paths (other than inheritance and/or gross manipulation), and don't call me Shirley!"

Consider that almost everyone you've heard of but don't know personally is a media creature, out in front of cameras and microphones on a regular basis. Consider that they have either used fame to gain wealth, or wealth to gain fame, or sought and achieved both together. They may later have self-destructed in some more-or-less spectacular or sordid way, but that's besides the point — or maybe it's a likely end-game, the terminal phase for those who attain 'success' but aren't mentally-emotionally-spiritually equipped to handle it. The Rags-to-Riches-to-Ruin story is common enough to support such a hypothesis, eh?

To be a media creature necessitates that one flattens-out their human complexity, presents a consistent if dishonest image to the world, or else is already so flat as to be largely artificial. Compromise one's principals, or have none to start with — that seems to be the pattern.

ADMIRATION? You might ask, "But surely there are famous people you admire, some who have attained worldly 'success' without selling-out or becoming soulless?" Again I'll warn you about that 'Shirley' thang, and I'll note that the uncompromising tend to either burn out quickly or die rather young. Victims of a conspiracy? Who knows?

Yes, there are a few public people I admire. Two names that come immediately to mind are musicians, John Cage and Frank Zappa. Zappa had both fame and fortune, and died around age 50. Cage lived much longer but is better known as a theoritician, for his compositions are VERY rarely performed, and he never exactly got rich at what he did. Still, he had fun.

REALITY? You might ask, "OK, forget the 'surely' stuff. But the world we live in is dominated by wired and wireless media, messages beamed from communications centers that strongly influence how people live and work and think and act. Pop Culture is everywhere; it's the (virtual) air we breathe, the sea we swim in. How can you ignore all this?"

And I'll thank you, and respond that ignoring hype is pretty easy. Travel a lot (especially in lands where the language is difficult or unknown, or in remote areas without wired or wireless commo) and the immediate reality strongly supercedes whatever mass media messages manage to leak through. At home, don't watch any TV. Pick your reading and listening carefully. I've read of someone who only looks at news publications after they've aged a decade, so as to have some perspective on what's really important. Approach every juicy lurid statement with extreme skepticism, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary substantiation.

Are omnipresent marketing messages 'reality'?? They are, to the extent that Reality Is Whatever Bites Your Ass (my definition); anything that affects you is 'real,' whether or not you like or believe or value it. When others absorb those messages and act on them in ways that affect you, they're real. When inflamatory rhetoric inspires abuse and mayhem and war and genocide, the lies become real. The lies are still lies, however.

* Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship. —Prof. Saul Lieberman
* [Johannes Kepler was] too sane enough to ignore reality but too mad to value it. —Arthur Koestler

Pop Culture is a virtual reality field, an imaginary construct that envelops its victims with bizare fantasies. As a long-time computer programmer, I'm comfortable with designing and building artificial universes. But after I've constructed my castle in the air, I don't try to live in it. Too much weather blows in, eh? And it's hard to hang pictures on misty walls.

Pop Culture and the Sex Wars

MOTIVATION: People are driven by many impulses, a mix slightly more complicated than the classic formula of Greed and Fear. We more-or-less hairless apes generally want to fit within social structures; to have opportunities to reproduce; to gain sensual and mental pleasures and comforts, and avoid pains; to have "tight sex, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit."

Resolving these impulses leads to paradoxes and conflicts. Social sturctures often place severe limitations on personal behaviours that aim towards those sensual and mental pleasures and comforts. Rules and paradigms are built into religio-ethical systems to enhance those limitations; "sin" and "karma" are excellent tools for social control.

SEDUCTION: A marketeer trying to seduce a populace into consuming their message is forced to appeal to those human-animal desires. Sex sells. Bright imagery sells. Flavors and scents and sounds and touches sell. Combine those into an advertisement for a bottle of cola, and it sells. Appeals to personal pleasure sell.

Yet such personal satisfaction is anathema to social controllers. "Get'em by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow." Churches and governments have long imposed strict controls on skin and sex, intoxication, speech and thought, on all manner of personal appearance and expression. Freedom is anarchy, is fun; but fun sells.

CONFRONTATION: Thus in the USA we see a set of to-the-death struggles between cultures. One one side is Pop Culture, the marketers of personal pleasure, nearly every product imaginable; on the other side is Prude Culture, the forces of control in religious and governmental instututions. We call these struggles the Culture Wars, but they're really the Sex Wars. Who controls sex, controls minds and behavior.

This is not a Liberal vs Conservative polarity. Many of the largest and professedly most 'conservative' corporations are also the nation's largest purveyors of pornography, and provide the media channels by which Pop Culture marketers hawk their sensual wares. And there is a huge degree of hypocracy within Prude Culture, as its stalwarts profit from the very products they are supposedly trying to repress. Big surprise; if sex and drugs were public and legal, massive control infrastructures would have to be dismantled, massive bribes would disappear, millions of controllers would have to find honest jobs. But I digress.

TENSION: The apparent conflict between Pop and Prude Cultures generates a tension that benefits both. Prude Culture owns the guns, the courts, the legal and social whips and stocks and pillories, yet also owns part of Pop Culture, which generates money and influence. When portions of Pop Culture are banned or stigmatized, they become more appealing to rebellious-minded consumers, the "forbidden fruit tastes sweeter" paradigm. And envelope-pushing products and messages provide Prude Culture an excuse for existence.

Prude Culture encompasses those who fear change and challenge. Pop Culture seems to promote changes — actually, only changes in consumption, which may be reflected as changes in lifestyle, but only within prescribed limits. What looks like a Culture War or Sex War is about as real as the Cold War, an excuse for the participants to aggrandize power and influence. Do not look for winners or losers, only players and dropouts.

The Future of Pop Culture

Pop culture is an artifact of marketing, a construct of mass advertising. Pop culture depends on mass communications, on funding, on messages designed to move blocks of people in calculated ways. Pop culture is younger than the oldest living human.

Until communications media became ubiquitous, pop culture was impossible; once such media saturated the populace, pop culture was inevitable. But as media streams proliferate, the culture fragments. With 500 channels there is no mainstream, only muddles and eddies.

Each marketeer tries to build a culture in their own image or at least to their benefit, a wave of messages pulsing and beating in a unique pattern. Some patterns imprint on human minds and are thus successful, so it's not surprising that other marketeers adopt those patterns, and thus many messages from many sources closely resemble each other. Yet they beat and pulse independently; what we call Pop Culture is a heterodyning of those myriad superimposed signals.

The number of signals, and phase differences between them, is likely to increase, as are the media in which they are transmitted. Thus what we call Pop Culture will become ever more schizo and pervasive, ever harder to escape without disconnecting from the infosphere. And such disconnection could be fatal when foods and medicines and medical devices are involved.

Consider the current message pathways: print and audio-video media. Consider the POSSIBLE pathways: directly implanted into your body, your nerves, your brain, your musculo-skeletal system, your DNA. And the messages themselves will be products.

Huh? OK, think about this: you can wear passive clothes, fabrics or whatever that just lay on you, wrap around you. But soon we'll have clothes woven from semiconductor thread that can sense you, sense your environment, and be programmed to change their colors or patterns or shapes accordingly. Active clothes, live-display clothes.

Now consider the renewed popularity of body modifications such as tattoos and piercings, now also passive. Why not be tattooed or pierced with active semiconductor threads and devices that change according to program? Why not take plastic surgery to another level and be sculpted into a new gender or subspecies or lifeform? Why not have your DNA altered to the same purpose? And how much will it cost to transform yourself into something new?

You receive messages; you dress accordingly. Your appearance sends a message or three. Your clothes are both products and signals — look at that logo t-shirt you're wearing. This is now. Tomorrow, your active clothes or active tattoos or active DNA will define you, again both as products and signals. And the day after, it'll be your chip implant or your brain surgery or your DNA transplant.

That's what to look for in the future of Pop Culture, the incorporation of products and signals into your very essence. With a receiver in your head, you'll BE the music, the voice, the word. With tailored genes, you'll BE the laboratory, the protein factory. With holiness injected into you, you'll BE some sort of god, while you last. The last one out of the gene pool has to pull the plug.