Tim Delaney’s article on Pop Culture: An Overview defines popular culture as ‘the vernacular or people’s culture that predominates in a society at a point in time.’
During the Industrial Revolution, the middle and working classes began to conceive their own culture where the latter, who was experiencing a cultural shift from agrarian subsistence, utilised said culture as a distinguishing factor from their ‘superiors’. Subsequent to World War Two, capitalism bolstered popular culture in the form of marketing to generate profit, thus firmly amalgamating popular culture with that of the media, manufacturing and consumerism. Print marketing, radio and television as the most archetypal means of endorsing mass culture have now contemporarily morphed into streaming services and social media. Sure, once we tune into Netflix and see The Circle USA contestant Shubham soften his skepticism on the toxicity of social media due to making life-long friends we too have faith in its ‘perfection’…right? Definitively, branding one show as microcosmic for the entire condition of popular culture is insufficient. However, I suppose delving into the realm of the perpetually polemical and omnipresent social media service TikTok can aid in recognising both popular culture’s ‘peril’ and ‘perfection’ towards investigation.
The rise of TikTok subcultures enables creatives and viewers to readily express and accept themselves, consequently constructing a community which, under the bigotry prevalent in society, would be masked for fear of reproach. The fashioning of leisure and recreation as ‘aesthetic’ in the form of one of many media subcultures, Cottagecore - alongside that of Goth, Punk and E-girls and boys - permits a celebration of the marginalised, particularly that of queer folk, evoking a sense of affinity; such community is heightened by the soothing self-expressions that pervade homepages, for instance from glimmering women gliding across flower-coated meadows to quaint cottages cascading with wisteria and bearing baked treats inside. Additionally, the tailoring of Cottagecore as a domain in which progressive politics can thrive is accentuated in its abandonment of toxic masculinity, granting a territory that centres, lauds and unifies women against their suppression, and thereby elevates the subculture into one of re-evaluating the female narrative.
Similarly, Dark Academia in all its entirety (tweed jackets, sweater vests and college exteriors boasting libraries reminiscent of Hogwarts and Royal Core) foments ingenuity, community and scholarly motivation. That being said, it can undermine the established ‘perfection’ of pop culture. For one, the ubiquity of affluent white men within the Dark Academia narrative effectively excludes state school students, especially those that are women of colour, from validation to what social media constitutes as ‘popular’. This thereby values and upholds the elitism and exceptionalism prevalent in historically partisan and highbrow institutions to further perpetuate and ratify socioeconomic disparities. Moreover, its oversaturation and conflation of the ‘paradigmatic pupil’ with solely private academies perilously accentuates the insecurity of underrepresented students whose futures have already been stigmatised from the outset of their scholastic career. Therefore, such portrayal engenders unnecessary sentiments of imposter syndrome towards accessing higher education at ‘esteemed’ institutions, inhibiting social mobility, or otherwise endorses toxic amounts of productivity in order to assimilate to the expected (as eternalised by YouTube’s 12 hour study livestreams), alienating one from self-enjoyment. Additionally, Dark Academia’s romanticisations, from superfluous studying to perfectionism, is grotesquely heightened with its glorification of mental health struggles such as depression, consequently glamorising and undermining them in a 15 second video due to its ‘mystique’.
Conclusively, while popular culture is incessantly (and rightly) being challenged, this article is not to say that we should ‘cancel’ prevailing creative outlets for their perils. Instead, upon disputing certain aspects, we should be astutely aware of what we popularise and how to ensure its lack of harm. As the saying goes, “Vintage Style, Not Vintage Values”. As for the ‘peril’ or ‘perfection’ of popular culture, outrightly labelling it one or the other would be strenuously disingenuous, hence the quotation marks. Popular culture, in all its artistry (remember Cottagecore?), has its flaws. But it is up to us to induce emphatic change to the pivotal pillars of industry which will eternally mould humanity and its systems.
Upon asking a student on the significance of unceasingly re-gauging the popular, they articulated:
“Yes, I think it’s important we re-evaluate who [the same goes for what] is mainstream and celebrated and why, as otherwise they [gravely] risk being idolised.”
By Juliana Pamiloza
