Popular Culture Exam
Theory
Folk culture = the culture of a group of people (Kultur). Traditional and authentic.
High culture = culture obtained by experience and study (‘cultured person’).
Pop culture / mass culture = all the manifestation of modernity, like pop music, television,
social media, cinema, prose fiction, etc. Part of the people. It’s not meant to last.
Pulp fiction was made because literacy increased and they got a wider readership. Pulp
fiction are things like science fiction or gothic fiction.
Bildung = to finish something more enlightened than when you began it.
Films didn’t have ‘film stars’ for 20 years. It started to change around 1907/1911. The first
star was Max Lindner. Newspapers started to talk about ‘picture personalities’. Lobby cards
(cards hanging in the lobbies of cinemas) showed stars. Movie magazines went from
novelized movies to interviews with the actors, etc, showing more interest in the
personalities of the actors. Criticists call all of this capitalism, however the desires for the
stars came from the audience itself. Movie companies weren’t happy with this because they
had to pay more money for the actors because they were now ‘famous’.
Invention of youth: adolescents started wearing different clothes than grown-ups. Around
the 50’s/60’s, there came ‘the teenager’. This was seen as a separate phase of life. Spaces
emerge for teenagers, where they could go out etc.
The ephemerality of pop culture: pop culture is connected to the youths and isn’t made to
last. Things like music and films only stay actively popular for a short time. Pop is only for the
present, not the future. Same with fashion trends.
2 types of American writings:
- High literature: critical, complex, questioning, makes demands on intelligence, aims at
beauty and psychological accuracy, linked to tradition in form.
- Newspaper / magazine culture: celebratory of American culture. Flow, fragmentation,
shallowness, nowness, committed to change and transience, embedded in fashion,
celebrating modernity, open for anyone.
The culture now is scrolling on the phone. It’s the same as from previous years, but way
more.
Youth subcultures:
- The Teds / the New Edwardians: early 1950s to mid-1960s, interested in rock and roll and
R&B music. Posh people who started dressing in the clothes of the Edwardian period (1901-
1910). They dressed as if it was the golden age (style setters). They were called teddy boys:
rich posh people in suits, but they were working class people. Their image was being
immaculate. The women started doing the same, dressing in the same suits, and were called
Teddy Girls. Then middle class youth want to look like working class people.
- The Mods: began in late 1950s London, coalesced around modern jazz music. Tailor-made
suits. Rich people.
- Rude Boys: arose from the poorest parts of Kingston, Jamaica.
- Hippies: counterculture started in mid-1960 in the US characterized by free love, utopian
socialism, sexual revolution, psychedelic art / music and long hair.
- Skinheads: working-class British subculture of the 1960s, split off from the Mods.
1
, Embraced British working-class culture, anti-hippie.
- Glam: Form of music, fashion and personal expression. Glitter, queer.
- Disco kids and soul boys: 1980s, beginning of New Romanticism, club scene.
- Punk: music subculture born in the 1970s, influenced many subsequent subcultures hoping
to embrace the passion and creativity of punk rock. Anti-corporatism, leather jackets, dr.
martin shoes and spiked colourful mohawks.
- Blitz kids: 1980s, beginning of New Romanticism, club scene.
Hip-hop = the hip-hop movement began in New York (multicultural society – certain districts
have cultural meaning). There came the civil rights movement, which shows how hip-hop is
political. There came a DJ culture (the DJ is the performer) and graffiti culture (slogans,
tagging), as they’re all ways to make art work your own.
Common reimaginations of the Middle Ages:
- The dark age: this associates the Middle Ages with violence. This image isn’t true. This
image originates from the Renaissance. They associated the Middle Ages with primitivism,
superstition, and the domination of the (corrupt) Catholic Church.
- Romanticized Middle Ages: life was beautiful, heroism, social unity, etc. Originates from the
19th-century (Victorian period), because it was an idyllic age before industrialization. This
medieval revival led to medieval literature, architecture (ex: Big Ben), art, LARP, etc.
- Middle Ages as origin for national cultures: ex: the Alfred Millenary, who dressed up as
Alfred the Great, showing how medieval figures can become national symbols.
- ‘The Ridiculous Middle Ages’.
Medievalism = the re-creation, re-envisioning, and reinterpretation of the Middle Ages.
2
Theory
Folk culture = the culture of a group of people (Kultur). Traditional and authentic.
High culture = culture obtained by experience and study (‘cultured person’).
Pop culture / mass culture = all the manifestation of modernity, like pop music, television,
social media, cinema, prose fiction, etc. Part of the people. It’s not meant to last.
Pulp fiction was made because literacy increased and they got a wider readership. Pulp
fiction are things like science fiction or gothic fiction.
Bildung = to finish something more enlightened than when you began it.
Films didn’t have ‘film stars’ for 20 years. It started to change around 1907/1911. The first
star was Max Lindner. Newspapers started to talk about ‘picture personalities’. Lobby cards
(cards hanging in the lobbies of cinemas) showed stars. Movie magazines went from
novelized movies to interviews with the actors, etc, showing more interest in the
personalities of the actors. Criticists call all of this capitalism, however the desires for the
stars came from the audience itself. Movie companies weren’t happy with this because they
had to pay more money for the actors because they were now ‘famous’.
Invention of youth: adolescents started wearing different clothes than grown-ups. Around
the 50’s/60’s, there came ‘the teenager’. This was seen as a separate phase of life. Spaces
emerge for teenagers, where they could go out etc.
The ephemerality of pop culture: pop culture is connected to the youths and isn’t made to
last. Things like music and films only stay actively popular for a short time. Pop is only for the
present, not the future. Same with fashion trends.
2 types of American writings:
- High literature: critical, complex, questioning, makes demands on intelligence, aims at
beauty and psychological accuracy, linked to tradition in form.
- Newspaper / magazine culture: celebratory of American culture. Flow, fragmentation,
shallowness, nowness, committed to change and transience, embedded in fashion,
celebrating modernity, open for anyone.
The culture now is scrolling on the phone. It’s the same as from previous years, but way
more.
Youth subcultures:
- The Teds / the New Edwardians: early 1950s to mid-1960s, interested in rock and roll and
R&B music. Posh people who started dressing in the clothes of the Edwardian period (1901-
1910). They dressed as if it was the golden age (style setters). They were called teddy boys:
rich posh people in suits, but they were working class people. Their image was being
immaculate. The women started doing the same, dressing in the same suits, and were called
Teddy Girls. Then middle class youth want to look like working class people.
- The Mods: began in late 1950s London, coalesced around modern jazz music. Tailor-made
suits. Rich people.
- Rude Boys: arose from the poorest parts of Kingston, Jamaica.
- Hippies: counterculture started in mid-1960 in the US characterized by free love, utopian
socialism, sexual revolution, psychedelic art / music and long hair.
- Skinheads: working-class British subculture of the 1960s, split off from the Mods.
1
, Embraced British working-class culture, anti-hippie.
- Glam: Form of music, fashion and personal expression. Glitter, queer.
- Disco kids and soul boys: 1980s, beginning of New Romanticism, club scene.
- Punk: music subculture born in the 1970s, influenced many subsequent subcultures hoping
to embrace the passion and creativity of punk rock. Anti-corporatism, leather jackets, dr.
martin shoes and spiked colourful mohawks.
- Blitz kids: 1980s, beginning of New Romanticism, club scene.
Hip-hop = the hip-hop movement began in New York (multicultural society – certain districts
have cultural meaning). There came the civil rights movement, which shows how hip-hop is
political. There came a DJ culture (the DJ is the performer) and graffiti culture (slogans,
tagging), as they’re all ways to make art work your own.
Common reimaginations of the Middle Ages:
- The dark age: this associates the Middle Ages with violence. This image isn’t true. This
image originates from the Renaissance. They associated the Middle Ages with primitivism,
superstition, and the domination of the (corrupt) Catholic Church.
- Romanticized Middle Ages: life was beautiful, heroism, social unity, etc. Originates from the
19th-century (Victorian period), because it was an idyllic age before industrialization. This
medieval revival led to medieval literature, architecture (ex: Big Ben), art, LARP, etc.
- Middle Ages as origin for national cultures: ex: the Alfred Millenary, who dressed up as
Alfred the Great, showing how medieval figures can become national symbols.
- ‘The Ridiculous Middle Ages’.
Medievalism = the re-creation, re-envisioning, and reinterpretation of the Middle Ages.
2
