What are the types of popular culture?

The most common forms of popular culture are movies, music, television, video games, sports, entertainment news, fashion, and various forms of technology. Pop culture finds its expression in the mass circulation of items from areas such as fashion, music, sports and cinema. The world of pop culture had a particular influence on art since the early 1960s, through pop art. Folklore provides a very different second source of popular culture.

In pre-industrial times, mass culture matched popular culture. This former layer of culture still persists today, sometimes in the form of jokes or jargon, which is spread among the population by word of mouth and through the Internet. By providing a new transmission channel, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of popular culture. Some say that popular culture tends to support a limited understanding and experience of life through common and unsophisticated feelings and attitudes and its emphasis on the banal, the superficial, the whimsical and the disposable.

In this decade, a very popular novel entitled “The Life of Pi” was also published, which was later shot in a Hollywood film. A different source of popular culture resides in the group of professional communities that provide the public with data about the world, often accompanied by interpretations, usually as vulgarization, that is, in the past, popular culture worked analogously to the popular culture of the masses and nations. Progressive rock became popular and saw different bands and solo artists create chaos through this genre. Other examples are contemporary practitioners such as Darío Fo and John McGrath, who use popular culture in a sense that links to old popular traditions.

The term popular culture was coined in the middle of the 19th century and referred to the cultural traditions of the people, in contrast to the official culture of the state or of the ruling classes. The meaning of popular culture began to be related to those of mass culture, consumer culture, media culture, image culture and culture for mass consumption after the end of World War II, following the important cultural and social changes brought about by innovations in the media. The most influential criticisms of popular culture came from Marxist theorists at the Frankfurt School during the 20th century. MacKenzie, many products of popular culture have been designed to promote imperialist ideologies and glorify the British upper classes, instead of presenting a democratic vision of the world.

In fact, very popular types of music have often first evolved in small countercultural circles (punk rock and rap are two examples). Some Marxists complain that popular culture and its implicit insistence on a necessary causal relationship between consumption and self-realization perpetuate pernicious and deep-seated social and economic divisions that alienate the working class from the professional and idle ruling classes and cause general discontent and a decline in the quality and enjoyment of life for all (compare with Situationism). Widely used today, it is defined in qualitative terms. Pop culture is often considered a more superficial or smaller type of artistic expression.

Popular culture (or pop culture) generally refers to the traditions and material culture of a particular society. Cultural items that require extensive experience, education, training, taste, insight or reflection for their full appreciation rarely become elements of popular culture.