BoredCaitlin, Hebdige

“Williams tentatively endorsed the new mass communications but was concerned to establish aesthetic and moral criteria for distinguishing the worthwhile products from the ‘trash’” (Hebdige 126)
Often in academia, and in our culture at large to a lesser extent, there seems to exist a need to separate “high culture” from “low culture,” or as Hebdige puts it here, “worthwhile products from the ‘trash.’” (For the purposes of this post, I’ll be referring to pop culture as “low culture.) From a certain perspective, I can understand why this separation exists, but I find the consigning of pop culture as “trash” to be problematic. It implies that popular culture is simply fluff for the masses and isn’t worth looking at on any deep level. In many cases pop culture can be seen as fluff, but does that automatically mean it’s not worth analyzing? If anything, I think it’s just as important, if not more so, to look at pop culture critically because it has a much wider audience, and thus a wider sphere of influence. I’m not saying that works of high culture can’t be influential on the public at large, but the average person isn’t going to curl up in bed with say, The Great Gatsby or any work of Shakespeare for light reading. Pop culture has power, and it’s imperative for audiences to be critical of the texts they consume.