Is it dumb to take Popular Culture Seriously

Popular culture is often thought of as an inferior and debased form of culture, but there are many arguments that challenge this and support popular culture. An example of popular culture in modern day society would be the era of “Reality Television”, and in particular – “Big Brother”.

One of the main points in opposition to the popular culture debate is that “Popular culture is a drug addiction”. QD Leavis went onto say that, “...it could lead to a habit of fantasying, which will lead to maladjustments in actual life”. In other word we become addicted to certain aspects of popular culture, and it ends up changing how we see the world, act and think. I believe it is true to say that Big Brother is drug addiction, reality TV usually goes on for weeks at a time, and even if you hate it, you still watch it just because you want to see how it develops. It seems harsh to compare something like Big Brother to a Crack addiction, but it does work on the same basis – watch it once and you’re hooked. As for the “fantasising” and “maladjustments in actual life”, well this could also be proved correct; Big Brother is referred to as reality TV pr

ogram, but how much of what we see is reality? The program is edited by the producers and gate keeping takes place, so this cannot be an accurate portrayal of reality. If people mistake the program for reality then fantasising takes place, and if they change their lives in any way because of it then this will be maladjustment. From this angle I believe we cannot take popular culture seriously.

Post-Modernist views on popular culture would be that the popular culture debate itself is a meta-narrative, and therefore has no meaning or value. In a way the post-modernists would disagree that popular culture is “dumb” because it is healthy to just enjoy the lives we have, while we have them, and not worry about whether what we watch makes us a better person. I agree with this statement because even the most educated people in modern society like the professors at Cambridge and Oxford Universities must still watch popular culture as a way of relaxing. It can’t be healthy to constantly bombard our brains with information to aid our education, and what is the point when a large majority of that information will never be used again?

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