¶ … pop culture and high culture are and how can you relate them?
Say the words 'high culture' and almost immediately the first images that spring to mind are those of Shakespearean acting and opera. We see Twilight as pop culture, but Romeo and Juliet and Carmen as great art. However, when Shakespeare wrote his plays, he wrote for a mass audience, not literary critics. In fact, some of his most enthusiastic fans were 'groundlings,' or people who listened to his plays on the ground seats of the theater. Opera was once considered popular music when it was first produced, even though it is almost always performed in lavish, costly, venues today. Clearly, the original intention of the author is not what makes something 'high' or 'low'-brow culture. However, because so many decades separate us from the vocabulary, stage conventions, and associations of Shakespeare and Bizet, these works are now considered high art because they often must be studied in the classroom...
High culture is what you are 'supposed to like,' while pop culture is what you 'really' like. But even this rule does not always hold true. Many people genuinely prefer to listen to classical music vs. The 'flavor of the month' on the radio. Many of my friends prefer watching an Academy Award-winning film vs. A schlocky, pandering Hollywood blockbuster. And high culture clearly has a popular, visceral power; otherwise films like Star Wars would not be famous for using classical music to command the audience's attention. And how can we explain Andy Warhol using images from pop culture like Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's tomato soup cans in his art? Although Warhol is considered to have…
