American pop culture is a mass culture rooted in capitalism. It includes popular entertainment such as cinema, commercial art, music and fashion. The main driving force behind popular culture is mass attractiveness, and it is produced by what cultural analyst Theodor Adorno calls the cultural industry. In addition, following the theory of cultural imperialism, the domination of a culture favors it as a point of reference for development and progress.
For example, several key artists from the 1950s to the 1960s, such as Andy Warhol, were inspired by mass culture and called their movement Pop Art. Shakespeare and 19th-century Italian opera, Charlie Chaplin and the Marx brothers, The World's Fair Midways and the amusement parks of Coney Island, Elvis and Sinatra, The Simpsons and the Sopranos, Tupac and Destiny's Child represent popular culture in its appeal to an audience defined by its heterogeneity. American popular culture is consumerist by nature, since it attracts its target audience to consume its material goods. There is no more fascinating and richly documented popular culture topic than the amusement park.
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. Pop is specific to something that contains qualities of mass appeal, while popular refers to what has gained popularity, regardless of its style. The depictions of Shakespeare, Levine shows us, were not the only cultural products that were “sacralized” and removed from the general public as urban elites established new cultural hierarchies in the late 19th century. Second, many of the most successful and popular jazz musicians were African-Americans, who were otherwise oppressed in American society at the time.
He argued that the products of the cultural industry are popular because they are homogeneous and comply with standard conventions; therefore, the media influence children's tastes. Pop culture, although large, fickle and elusive to define, is actually a general term that encompasses anything that is currently in fashion, whose ingredients or most of them are familiar to the general public. American cultural identity stems from the totality of the cultural production that this nation has produced and disseminated throughout the world. The dramatic increase in the number of film productions per year reflects the global reach of American popular culture in theaters and speaks of its impressive extension to other cultural spheres.
