Pop Culture

POP CULTURE DEFINITION

In daily life, we need to interact with others. Our behavior interacting with our environment is a part of socialization process. The identity one environment with others is different. Carla takes this definition as culture (http://www.carla.umn.edu/culture/definitions.html). What is the most popular in a certain environment will create new identity which is also called as popular culture.
If we talk about popular culture (it can also say as “pop culture”) many people absolutely will have a fresh figure of the recent culture. It is like a same action done by people in a certain community to create their own identity. For some people, they will be proud if they include themselves into popular culture development (It is like an effort to socialize with the environment), moreover, the trend setter of the pop culture is a well known person. For example: Avril Lavigne enjoys wearing yellow mini dress, some people argue that she looks casual but beautiful, they will believe if they wear yellow mini dress, they will also be as casual and beautiful as Avril does. That is the reason why pop culture is called as well liked by many people (Storey, 2001:6). The same action done by community will produce ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images and other phenomena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture). From the example above, the idea comes from Avril using yellow mini dress. There is a perspective that she looks beautiful. Some people who state that opinion will take an attitude to wear yellow mini dress. It will create a phenomenon that yellow mini dress is a trend in fashion. It depends on each person to judge, whether the culture is good or bad. Even though we have our eastern norm to limit our attitude in filtering western culture, now however the norms will be shifted time by time because of the recent culture will influence the mind of some people.
Popular culture is able to determine the class in the society. Most of pop culture related to the something luxurious, because usually the trend setter of pop culture is a famous person. There is an assumption that people who are capable to follow the popular culture are an up to date person and it also gives impression that they have a high culture. People who can’t totally follow the trend of pop culture will have an impression that they are out of date. They will look strange because they don’t act as common people. For example; you will look strange if you wear big and thick glasses when many people are interested wearing soft lenses or small glasses. It makes pop culture defines as mass produced commercial culture and high culture is an individual act of creation.
Many people assume that following the trend in pop culture will make them as a normal person. They will not look strange, because the need to socialize themselves into their own environment. The trend of pop culture is not always a new or fresh thing. It can probably the old culture which is needed to renew little bit. So we can’t exactly predict what is the next pop culture.


Sources:
Storey, John. 2001. Cultural Theory and Pop Culture. Great Britain: Prentice Hall
http://www.carla.umn.edu/culture/definitions.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture