Pop Culture, A Byproduct Of Necessity

Any society, strictly in terms of its psychological growth, necessitates certain ill-influences. It is like the old saying of the East- Certain badness is mandatory for living out life. Society is a radical entity. It swings and turns on its belly and crunches and breathes fads. It recycles ideas, operative tastes, it takes away and brings back many folds, many small and big points that it has cautiously held in its creases. The beauty of society is its reliance on a cumulative effort and there lies its agony or bane too. Society cant do without collective ideas and thus those things that become fads get a greater chance of influencing masses. Pop culture is one strong point in the case.

Taken to a different league by Mass Media, pop culture has begun to mean what it did not intend to mean at the outset. Pop culture had smartly started and though there were always those who were against the idea, the detractors soon found out that a certain amount of it was necessary for giving masses their prime moments, its sun and shower. So Elvis Presley went on to become rage of generation and Madonna became the talk of towns and cities. Soon all this changed. The great Mass Media engine churned on its belly. The need changed. Television channels sprouted like jungle fire. It bellowed and beamed. In no time a new ethic was derived. It was meant to bring to the fore any thing that caused a stir.

As we know, music can cause stir but its the visual profanity that sensationalizes. This culture meant for consumption by masses is increasingly based on sleaze, visual slight and objects and entities that mean nothing to the pious senses as such. Music is enough in itself. It does not require a stage performance with remote traces of clothes or pierced tongues. However, this is just what sells today and is made to sell even more fiercely by the crazy media.

Television channels know for sure how it goes. The prime slots need visual occupancy. Music cant generate it. But swinging sleaze is wild fire. A Shakira with her voice is superb manifestation of God but a shaking Shakira is a certain prime time winner. Another big instance is reality television. Today, the bites of reality television are sent for rolls and re-rolls on television channels. Most of these are either participated by or at any rate judged by celebrities. It is the eventual marriage of the pop culture to mass consumption and news channels leave out no stone unturned to grip on the vice-like-draw of the reality shows.

What was high art and also real folk culture has been replaced by meaningless pop as it is circulated today. So we have Lady Gaga topping the charts but for all the wrong reasons. We have the Amy Whinehouses losing to the Christina Aguileras. And while this kind of comparison might be debated, there is no shying away from the fact that sleaze meter is the roll-call at the television channel offices.