Groups of teen boys and girls graffiti-ing public parking lots, walls, tunnels. Young dudes forming bands or rap studios and making music. Sportsmen. Radio. The latest Nintendo/Koei/Capcom game. Warcraft. Princess Mononoke. Full Metal Alchemist. DC and Marvel comics. IPod and guitars. You name it, there are at least as many forms of pop culture as there are people decrying it and its effects on the youth today (me included), including increased suicide, drinking, smoking, and all that kind of thing. I think people pay a lot more attention to pop culture than they would like to admit, though. You like a certain band? You are participating in pop culture. You keep up with a telly show? You have a hobby associated with pop culture. You hate pop culture and choose to be a Goth? Guess what – you are also in a culture that is uniquely a product of modern making!
But for good or ill, pop culture is what makes society for the young. You might think, ‘Isn’t that philosophy or religion or history’s job?’ Not really. Those three big things make civilization. From the foundations of civilization spring society. Just as the ancient Greek philosophers laid the foundations for democracy, a democratic society became seen as the society with the ideal form of government, one which would allow all kinds of different cultures to take hold. Pop culture – that is, intelligent pop culture – springs from the expression of things that aren’t so important but people still engage in: essentially, pop culture springs from the need to engage in what is fundamentally a hobby, but yet is interconnected with what happens in people’s lives.
Although this makes pop culture addictive and fun, it really does not make people fall into delinquency. Or at least, it is aspects of pop culture that give the potential to act on this kind of thing, but it hardly implies causation. If you’re still not convinced, at the risk of sounding extremely snobbish (which is not my intention), look at me. I spend most of my time studying, meditating, and reading about Buddhist philosophy. The remaining time I use to spend time on sport and fitness, and I don’t do any of the hardcore pop culture that influences society, like graffiti, popular music like Christina Aguilera or whoever is on the radio. There are aspects of global pop culture that I think are boring, tasteless, and sometimes even undesirable, whilst I fully embrace others: for example, the rock band HIM, Japanese manga and anime like Hellsing and Bleach, the music of Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou and of course, Transformers. In many ways the existence of pop culture has been intertwined with our own existence; its influence can be found in our language (‘He’s out for the count’ comes from the golden age of televised boxing), our cinemas, our shopping malls, on our computers and TVs. The question is what you choose to
The study of pop culture alone makes it a worthy academic subject. To participate in it requires some feeling around in the dark, but eventually many are able to find something they like.
