What is Pop Culture?

The introduction of Storey's Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction begins with idea that in order to talk about popular culture, we need to understand its definition. In line with Greene's idea that a writer should frame their writing in a way to create perspective for the reader, Storey suggests that the chosen definition of popular culture will affect this frame. Thus, it becomes very important to understand the way it can be defined. However, coming up with a definition is not so easy.

In order to understand popular culture, we should understand what the terms 'culture' and 'popular' mean first. Both, are also seemingly difficult to define. Storey lists several possible definitions. Culture can be defined as a way of life for a group of people, intellectual, spiritual or artistic development, or works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity. He then describes several possible definitions of popular. What stood out most to me was the first definition of culture: "a way of life for a group of people." I think this definition ties in to all of the other definitions for both popular and culture. The development of artistic texts have become a way of life for us. Using the definition of popular that describes it as "widely favored or well liked" gives the impression that something popular impacts the lives of many people, thus it is affects our way of life. Defining something as popular can also become a problem though. The term popular gives the impression that the subject is inferior because we often describe popular works as low art and others as high art. This line becomes gray when works go from being high or to being popular or when works go from low art to high art.

While it is difficult to define popular culture, we cannot ignore its importance. As Storey explains, studying popular culture is central to studying culture. This ties in to my chosen definition of culture as a way of life. If we want to understand a group's way of life, we should understand what that group finds important and finds favor in. Certainly if we spend many hours a week watching TV or playing video games, we find them important to us, otherwise we wouldn't partake in these activities. Thus, it is worth asking why we find them important and what influence those works have on our way of life.

Let's Agree to Disagree

In "Argument as Conversation," Greene encourages the reader to think of writing in a social manner. He explains that writings can be seen as conversations between the authors. If a reader disagrees with the viewpoint of something, they will continue the conversation by writing about their stance. Rather than merely agreeing with someone's views, Greene explains that readers must extensively research a topic in order to gain their own perspective. After gaining this perspective, the person must then learn to frame it to their own readers. This guides the potential readers to learn about the perspective that the author intended and furthers the argument.

Greene makes some good points. I hadn't previously thought of the connections between writings as conversations, but this is a useful view. When we write a research paper, we drawn on many sources and present them in a way that argues our view and discusses several other author's works. Thus, it becomes a conversation. When several more people write about the same topic, they further the discussion. Greene also suggests that using writings of experts helps improve the authority of our own voice. These points I certainly agree with; however, I think it simplifies the issue and potentially creates bias. In the research paper example, we wouldn't want to gain our facts from an opinionated source. If someone else is arguing for one side, and is making a good argument, certainly it will influence our opinions on the subject. This, I believe, makes it harder for us to draw our own conclusions.  Greene does suggest extensive research first so a person should be reading all sides of an argument to gain an overview and be free from bias. While this can be done, it is difficult to change your mind once you have an opinion.

The other idea of Greene's that I disagree with is that there is nothing new to have an opinion on. New conversations are started everyday, but Greene's ideas seem to overlook this. He writes as though every argument has already been made and we, as writers, must join the conversations instead of starting a new one. This view is very limiting and doesn't consider future problems. At the very least, old problems will affect us in new ways. When the Bill of Rights was created, our founders valued privacy; however, than could not have foreseen the Internet and the problems it would create in order to discuss it then. It was not until recently that we have seen the problems regarding our privacy and we cannot foresee what future discussions will be.  

Through this writing, I have proven Greene's main point. When we read other pieces, we will always have an opinion and we are able to use it to add to the conversation.