Popular culture politics
You cannot live off a myth in the present; tradition is constantly being transformed; the old is giving way to the new in more ways than one. The new changes, or the crossing of trends and fashions, may be generating a feeling of existential urgency; the sublime seems to merge with the trivial and the creative with the conventional. A kind of reorientation is taking place so rapidly that classical concepts of culture seem out of date.
It is also a fact that the greatest number of new ideas in contemporary art, literature and culture have been emerging from the West. Western artists and cultural leaders have been expanding the concept of what constitutes contemporary art. It is important to note a convergence of new attitudes, especially since there has been a marked shift from the idealistic to the materialistic view.
The fabric of popular culture, now a celebration, is interwoven with changes in the media world, along with far too many soap operas, MTV music, McDonald’s fast food, sexist jokes, designer brand jeans, and aerobic sportswear, all with a special touch. with a view to maintaining “standards”. The so-called ‘cultural industries’ have been denigrated as tools of the hegemonic classes to impose passive servility on the majority of the people, be it Europe, America, Asia or Africa. They manipulate the multi-layered site of contemporary consumer culture, as well as the emerging hybridization of cultural identity.
A scrutiny of the ‘popular’, its texts and practices, should help us to negotiate the profound changes in cultural studies, as well as to relate postmodernist orthodoxy to post-Cold War developments (in the former Soviet bloc and / or in East European countries), post-apartheid developments (in South Africa and elsewhere on the African continent), post-colonial developments (in Asian and African countries), and more recently, post-September 11, 2001 developments (in the South / Southeast / West Asia, Middle East, USA and Europe).
The politics of popular culture, whether postmodern or postcolonial, is essentially the politics of the ways we see ourselves, just as the cultural, the social, and the economic are hardly distinguishable from each other. The relationship between popular culture and its two arms, commerce and profit, is very problematic. Instead of passively consuming a product, users now actively absorb it and revalue it to build their own meaning of themselves, of social identity and group cohesion.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack on American soil, there has been an increased American hegemonic political and economic presence in every country: television shows, newspapers and magazines have been replete with American style and vision. Gradually, American domination here, there and everywhere has resulted in a struggle by subordinate and subordinate forces, including terrorist forces, to demolish it.
A slow ideological indoctrination (to sustain consumer culture) of the masses, especially the expanding middle class by powerful interests, is taking place. The culture of the middle class is often less affiliated with a specific class, religion, race, country or politics, and unofficially it also remains indifferent to “national” issues, practicing a kind of “transnational” solidarity, as far as to consumerism. North American popular culture has given rise, not so much to economic exploitation, but to the ability to represent something, or someone, in a peculiar way: as symbolic power; as popular culture in the realm of power. Media society, whatever its shape, size or color, articulates this power, perhaps selectively, in contradictory ways, opening the door for others to decide with whom to associate or empathize. It exposes the mechanisms of identity creation, participates in identity politics, creates awareness of exclusion or inclusion, and builds counter-narratives with new critical spaces and social practices. It acts as a “central political agent” of the powerful.
The politics of popular culture reveals the conditions under which power relations have been shaped in various parts of the world and have apparently developed in an emancipatory way as everyday culture or high culture, where new things are emerging and creativity thrives. In music, for example, since the mid-1990s, musicians have been more lucrative. Choreographers have developed a new sense of body movement and the aesthetics of dance. The evolution of computers has already led to a “network culture” linking various art forms. Literature is already ingrained in this world today and trends in the fashion industry are set by FTV models.
Sometimes it can seem difficult to reconcile the various impressions, including the desire to break free from all the limitations of art or the destruction of its intrinsic meaning. The inherent contradictions and heterogeneity of the ‘melting pot’ popular culture seems to have become may not help us open the way to human consciousness or even start an intellectual debate. But who is to blame when “art blends so perfectly with the utilitarian”? To quote Hanno Rauterberg, “art, after all, is not dead, it is in a state of self-induced paralysis.”
We march towards an indistinct future. We experience the effects of globalization in fields such as communication, the media, and financial markets, just as we experience the fragmentation of politics in the face of widespread religious, caste, and ethnic conflicts, secular nationalism, and regional fundamentalism. At the same time, we are witnessing the impoverishment and economic marginalization of a large part of society. Almost all accepted norms and values are being questioned, just as standardization and differentiation are achieved at the same time. Yet the struggle continues for the coexistence of the glorious past and naked modernization almost everywhere.
What seems more appropriate is the need to appreciate the emergence of a greater degree of interculturality. Ruling politicians must respect one’s right to be different and help create new cultural spaces for others to belong. They must help defuse, absorb and avoid the conflicts that result from the collision of world religions and cultures that are rigidly separated, social differences must be respected and dogmatism must give way to dialogue. Our coexistence in a global civilization is not possible without some kind of global spirit on the part of the politicians of our country.
–Dr. RKSingh