There is no doubt that over the last few centuries American pop culture has deeply permeated through society and occupied every little aspect of the daily life of each family in the US. Mass culture is highly accessible due to the modern media, it inspires, dictates manipulates and encourages, and its scale is exciting and frightening at the same time. However, sophisticated and manipulative as it is, American pop culture still holds on to the most “American” values, such as democracy and freedom of being able to decide what it is that you want and being able to achieve it.
Popular culture is a collective of ideas, values, aspirations, and commercial products that are dominant in mainstream society. It is manifested in different genres and forms of art, and it possesses an ideological constituent. The latter is distributed through the books and movies, music, TV shows, commercials, papers and magazines, Facebook and Twitter, and this constituent became so prominent in the world that it is considered to “have shaped contemporary globalization” (Crothers 14). Some American culture icons are so powerful, that their names became allusions to indicate a certain lifestyle. In Gilmore Girls TV Series, well known for their pop-culture references, Lorelai calls a young man, who is just passing through town “a regular Jack Kerouac” (Wessel par. 1). It is quite common for girls to dream to be Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, or Beyoncé and for the boys to copy James Dean. Indeed, popular culture tends to form and standardize society but at the same time, it is being formed by the same society itself.
These days popular culture and its mass influence are often regarded as a disease of the population and are used in a negative connotation. Modern idols are considered to foster consumerism, implant the aspirations for money, fame and destructive behavior and, more than anything, depreciate a human brain’s ability to think. Mass media is by far the most vigorous “shaper of a modern pop culture” (Johnson 256). Since the majority of the world’s population has easy and unlimited access to various sorts of media, it makes mass culture a powerful tool to bias a person’s opinions and decisions, while giving a person an illusion that the decision was his or her own.
Nevertheless, as it usually happens, every idea, that is inherent to a certain majority will eventually trigger an opposition. Cantor writes in his book: “America was born in a rebellion, and its popular culture has embraced rebelliousness ever since” (8). Both classic and modern American literature and movies are full of protagonists who match themselves against the others, break the rules and try to find their own path. A superfluity of the “wrong” values mentioned earlier, gave birth to a number of protestants and countercultures, fighting against the old idols and ideas and pushing forward the new ones. As well as it creates the meeting points for the masses, mainstream culture empowers the striving for individualism. Moreover, every effort to become unique has the potential to be followed by others and pass into mainstream thereby.
Mass culture is constantly developing, it is being distributed by the ones, who worship it, and enriched by the others, who contradict it. Despite the fact that American popular culture is definitely involved in the process of shaping a lifestyle and a way of thinking, the craving for freedom and individualism is an essential part of a human being, proving that the main decision on whether to follow the ideas of the masses or to find a different path is still up to an individual.
Works Cited
Cantor, Paul. The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. Print.
Crothers, Lane. Globalization and American Popular Culture. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. Print.
Johnson, Larry. Ye Shall be as Gods: Humanism and Christianity. New York: First Edition Design Pub., 2011. Print.
Wessel, Katrina. Every Gilmore Girls Cultural Reference. Explained: You’re a Regular Jack Kerouac. 2016. Web.