CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION TO POPULAR CULTURE

I. Main Learning Outcome:

After going through this chapter, you are expected to:

a. Explain and differentiate fundamental terms

b. Assess idea regarding what popular culture is.

Lesson 3: Feature of a Popular Culture

II. Learning Compass/Specific Objectives:
After going through this lesson, you are expected to:

a. Identify the features of a Popular Culture.

b. Explain the difference of each Popular Culture Features.

III. Let’s begin

Activity 1. Think and Share!

In today’s generation and in the rise of technology, think of a situation wherein you can say
that the situation become popular or trending. Elaborate your answer by stating the process
how and why the situation you think became popular. Share you output during the online
class discussion.
_________________________________________________________________________
_ _______
_________________________________________________________________________
_ _______
_________________________________________________________________________
_ _______

IV. Let’s Discuss

Features of Popular Culture

As the ‘culture of the people’, popular culture is determined by the interactions between people in
their everyday activities: styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals and the foods that people
eat are all examples of popular culture. In its origins, pop culture was all about entertainment on the
stage through a pastiche of music, dancing, and laughter. Indeed, the main feature that makes pop
culture distinctive, vis-à-vis cultures of all other kinds, is a collage of elements that somehow cohere
into a thematic whole that we grasp intuitively as integrated and cohesive. The following features can
be discerned as basic or, at least, as recurring: spectacle, pastiche, nostalgia, occultism,
make-believe, celebrities, and laughter.
Spectacle
 Spectacles are everywhere in popular culture—musicals, blockbuster movies, the Super Bowl, rock
concerts, and the like. Many historians actually trace pop culture’s origins to a specific kind of
theatrical spectacle that featured a wide variety of acts, called vaudeville. Vaudeville was popular
from the 1880s to the early 1930s and produced many of the celebrities who gained success in other
entertainment media, such as motion pictures and radio. Some vaudeville theaters featured more
than twenty acts in a single bill, including juggling, animal acts, comedy skits, comedic recitations,
songs, magic shows, and burlesque performances. Vaudeville was an offshoot of circus culture, where
the term spectacle had a specific meaning. It referred to the segment that opened and closed
performances and included performers, animals, and floats. As the band played and the ringmaster
sang, costumed performers walked around the circus tent or arena. The spectacle usually ended with
a trick called a long mount, in which the elephants stood in a line with their front legs resting on each
other’s backs.
Vaudeville/bodabil in the Philippines, more commonly referred to as bodabil, was a popular
genre of entertainment in the Philippines from the 1910s until the mid-1960s. In 1920, a Filipino
entertainer named Luis Borromeo returned from North America, renamed himself “Borromeo Lou”,
and organized what became the first Filipino bodabil company. The main showcase of Borromeo Lou’s
company was an orchestral band, which played what he called “Classical-Jazz Music”, and variety acts
in between. Borromeo’s band is credited as having popularized jazz in the Philippines. It was also
Borromeo who dubbed the emerging form as “vod-a-vil”, which soon became popularly known by its
Filipinized name, bodabil.
In 1923, there were three theaters in Manila that were exclusively devoted to bodabil. By 1941,
there were 40 theaters in Manila featuring bodabil shows. The popularity of bodabil was not confined
to Manila stages. Bodabil routines were also staged in town fiestas and carnivals. The typical bodabil
shows would feature a mixture of performances of American ballads, torch songs and blues numbers;
dance numbers featuring tap dancers and chorus girls and jitterbug showcases; and even the
occasional
kundiman.
Two of the most notable performers and musicians were Katy de la Cruz and Alex R. Castro.
Katy was hailed as “The Queen of Filipino Jazz” and as “The Queen of Bodabil” her signature tune was
her rendition of St. Louis Blues. Article by Alex R. Castro that covers her background and her
nomination for the 1924 Manila Carnivals. Held from 1908-1939, the 2week fair was organized as a
goodwill event to celebrate harmonious U.S.-Philippine relations and to showcase our commercial,
industrial and agricultural progress.
Through the efforts of wealthy producers and theater owners, who could foresee huge profits
from spectacle performances, vaudeville became a highly organized nationwide big business with its
own theater chains. In its heyday, it was the most popular form of live entertainment. Eventually it
came to be known more generally as a variety show, indicating that the vaudeville spectacle had
become sanitized and thus more family friendly.
Catchy and entertaining music was an intrinsic feature of vaudeville. The vaudevillian stage
thus introduced new musical trends to large audiences. One of these was jazz. One cannot overstate
the role of jazz in the spread of pop culture.
Jazz originated around 1900. Its roots lay in the musical traditions of African Americans. Most
early jazz was played by small marching bands or solo pianists. In 1917, a group of white New Orleans
musicians called The Original Dixieland Jass Band produced the first jazz records, garnering
nationwide attention for jazz. Two groups followed: in 1922, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and, in
1923, the Creole Jazz Band, led by cornetist King Oliver. The most influential musician at the time was
King Oliver’s second trumpeter, Louis Armstrong, who showed jazz to be not only entertaining but
also
emotionally moving. Armstrong was perhaps the first true pop music icon, despite his African
American ethnicity—a fact that indicates how the pop culture stage can often set aside cultural
prejudices toward race and gender. By then, jazz developed into swing, which became very popular,
leading to its association with ballroom dancing as a spreading popular trend.
Based on Richie Quirino's book, Pinoy Jazz Traditions, which won the 2004 National Book Award
in the music category (Philippines), PINOY JAZZ is a 58-minute video documentary that provides the
first-ever documentation of the development of jazz in the Philippines, from its infancy in 1898, when
Filipinos were first exposed to Black music performed by AfricanAmerican soldiers, to its present-day
maturity in which musicians are turning to indigenous sources for inspiration. Incorporating historical
still photography, turn-of-the century film footage, maps, old recordings, present-day performances
and interviews with veteran and contemporary musicians, the video presents an eye-opening view into
an almost-forgotten history of the art of jazz as it developed in the Philippines over the last century.
The movie Chicago brought out the importance of jazz in the origins and spread of pop
culture, encapsulated in its opening musical piece titled “All that Jazz,” alluding not only to the music
itself, but also metaphorically to the role of open sexual attitudes in pop culture. The main character,
Roxie Hart, becomes an overnight sensation after murdering an unfaithful lover. People react against
her at first because she is a burlesque star associated with jazz and promiscuity—the two evils in
society. For her courtroom appearances, Roxie and her lawyer devise an acceptable persona for
her—a pregnant and loving mother figure— emphasizing society’s hypocrisy. But Roxie is a
freethinking woman, unbridled by the yoke of tradition, which saw women only as wives and
mothers. This free-thinking woman continued to reverberate in all areas of pop culture. In the videos
“Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl,” Madonna showcased the power of that persona. The key era for
the rise of pop culture was, as mentioned, the Roaring Twenties. The public consumption of alcohol,
sexy clothing, jazz music, and socializing late at night became part of a new social mind-set. Before
World War I, women had worn long hair tied into a bun, ankle-length dresses, and long cotton
stockings. In the 1920s, they started wearing short, tight dresses and rolled their silk stockings down
to their knees. As mentioned above, they came to be called flappers, cutting their hair in a boyish
style called a bob and wearing flashy cosmetics. They danced cheek-to-cheek with men. Like Roxie,
they acted sexually in public. The era of pop culture had arrived.

Collage, Bricolage, and Pastiche

Three French words, collage, bricolage, and pastiche, are often used to describe pop culture.
Collage is a term taken from painting, describing a picture or design made by gluing pieces onto a
canvas or another surface. By arranging them in a certain way, the artist can create strange or witty
effects that are not possible to achieve with traditional painting techniques. Many pop culture
spectacles, from early vaudeville to some sitcoms, are created by an analogous collage technique.
Vaudeville consisted of a combination of acts, ranging from skitsto acrobatic acts; The Simpsons
sitcom cuts and pastes diverse elements from different levels of culture into the same episode, as
mentioned earlier, to create a satirical collage.
The term bricolage emphasizes a unifying structure to the seemingly disparate components of
a spectacle or text, not just an admixture. It was first used in anthropology by Claude Lévi-Strauss
(1962) to designate the style of many tribal rituals that mix various symbols and myths holistically in
order to evoke magical feelings and a sense of communal harmony.
The disparate elements become unified in the act of mixture itself. Bricolage has been used to
describe the power of subcultures among youth (Hebdige 1979).
Finally, in painting pastiche refers to an admixture of elements intended to imitate or satirize
another work or style. Many aspects of pop culture, not just comedic ones, display a pastiche pattern.
A daily television newscast is a perfect example, since it amalgamates news about crime and tragic
events with those involving achievements of pop stars, creating a veritable pastiche of emotions and
meanings. The defining feature of all pop culture spectacles and texts may well be pastiche.

Nostalgia
Nostalgia is the sentimental attachment to trends from one’s past. Whether it is Elvis movies,
Disney cartoons, Beatles albums, disco dancing, Barbie dolls, punk clothing, adventure comics, or
other cultural item, people react nostalgically to the trends and popular artifacts of their youth. The
business of memorabilia is a profitable one indeed, as sales of items from the past, including
Hula-Hoops, Coca
Cola classic bottles, and the like continue to make conspicuously obvious. People seem to maintain
and cherish the trends of their youth well into their later years.
But this does not mean that pop culture is incapable of producing meritorious and lasting forms
of art (music, novels, and so on) that transcend simple nostalgic value. Indeed, some of the modern
world’s most significant artistic products have come out of pop culture (as previously mentioned). The
comic book art of Charles Schulz (1922–2000) is a case in point. His comic strip Peanuts, which
debuted in 1950 as Li’l Folks, appealed—and continues to appeal—to all kinds of audiences, because
of its intrinsic philosophical and poignant portrayals of the human condition.
Through the strip, Schulz dealt in a unique and aesthetically powerful way with some of the
most profound questions of life, such as the nature of good and evil. The characters in the strip are
children and animals, and they are among the most recognizable figures in modern pop culture:
Charlie Brown, his beagle Snoopy, Lucy, Schroeder, Linus, Peppermint Patty, Sally, and a bird named
Woodstock. Each character has a distinct personality. Charlie Brown is a born loser. Lucy is crabby and
rather devious. Linus is an intellectual attached to his blanket. Snoopy acts and thinks like a human
being. Schroeder loves to play the music of Ludwig van Beethoven on a toy piano. They have become
characters to which most people relate today and can be used as metaphors of human nature.

Occultism
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a serial killer known as the Zodiac used astrological signs in
his messages to the media, becoming a dark and mysterious celebrity. Two movies have since dealt
with the allure that the Zodiac held for people from that era. The first one was Dirty Harry (1971) in
which a killer aptly named Scorpio is exterminated by Dirty Harry Callahan, a hardnosed cop played by
Clint Eastwood, thus allowing for a pseudo-cathartic effect to occur. The second movie is David
Fincher’s 2007 Zodiac, which taps into our intrinsic fear of the unknowable that the Zodiac evoked in
his heyday. These movies illustrate the grip that the figure of the serial killer has on pop culture. They
also bring out the fact that pop culture delves into occultism—a fact borne out not only by movies,
but also by the popularity of horoscopes and doomsday documentaries on television.
Occult practices from palm reading to magic shows have always been a part of carnival
sideshows and early vaudeville. And the most popular of all pop culture genres—the mystery or thriller
narrative—is really a form of occult storytelling, where mystery and fear of the dark are evoked.
Television shows such as Supernatural and Lost, Gothic adventure heroes such as Batman, and many
other spectacles cater explicitly to the occultism instinct as a form of cathartic entertainment.
Make-Believe
Spectacles, texts, and locales within the pop culture landscape allow people to indulge in make
believe. Disney’s Fantasyland and Magic Kingdom are examples. As copies of previous fictional worlds,
they are part of a communal make-believe. They are copies of copies, and people appear to
experience them as more real than real, indicating that simulated worlds are more desirable to the
human imagination than the real world. Constructing a make-believe identity in this simulated world
allows people to perceive themselves on their own terms and relate to others accordingly.
Disney-worlds, malls, sports events, and certainly the virtual worlds on the internet are more
meaningful than real worlds, which are perceived as banal and boring. Eventually, as people engage
constantly in makebelieve, everything from politics to art becomes governed by simulation. Only in
such a world is it possible for advertising—the maximum manufacturer of simulation—to become so
powerful. This is why people are easily duped by charlatans and hucksters in real life, from marketers
to politicians.

Celebrities
Another salient feature of pop culture is the fact that it produces most of our celebrities. It is
sufficient to point out that it is an intrinsic component of pop culture. Like the heroes of ancient
myths, the celebrities of pop culture are both exalted and condemned. Some become icons, especially
after their deaths, venerated (at least for a time) like religious icons. Two well- known examples of
this are Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Icons can come from all areas of pop culture— from sports
(Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, and so on) to science
(Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and so on). Differentiating between celebrities and icons is part of the
aim of pop culture studies.

Laughter

In any episode of the animated TV series South Park, one is bound to find a moral subtext—
something in society, for example, political correctness, that is raised to general awareness through
comedy. Similarly, in any episode of The Big Bang Theory, we are presented with comedic portrayals
of changing relationships and the role of common young men—known as geeks—in contemporary
society. As Arthur Asa Berger (2005, 38– 39) observes, “People crave humor and laughter, which
explains why there are so many situation comedies on television and why film comedies have such
widespread appeal.” Humor is a basic feature of many YouTube sites, which highlight very funny
occurrences from the spectacle of everyday life. In some ways, the phenomenon of pop culture is an
exercise in laughter and its psychological benefits. Although many aspects of this culture engage us in
serious emotional ways, many others allow us to laugh and express ourselves cathartically. The
ancient theatrical dichotomy between tragedy and comedy manifests itself in various new forms in
pop culture, suggesting that they are complementary aspects of the human psyche.

V. Take Note!

According to origins, pop culture was all about entertainment on the stage through a pastiche
of music, dancing, and laughter. The following features can be discerned as basic or, at least, as
recurring: spectacle, pastiche, nostalgia, occultism, make-believe, celebrities, and laughter. Spectacle

Spectacles are everywhere in popular culture—musicals, blockbuster movies, the Super Bowl,
rock concerts, and the like. Vaudeville specific kind of theatrical spectacle that featured a wide variety
of acts. Some vaudeville theaters featured more than twenty acts in a single bill, including juggling,
animal acts, comedy skits, comedic recitations, songs, magic shows, and burlesque performances.
Vaudeville was an offshoot of circus culture, where the term spectacle had a specific meaning. It
referred to the segment that opened and closed performances and included performers, animals, and
floats.
Vaudeville/bodabil in the Philippines, more commonly referred to as bodabil, was a popular genre of
entertainment in the Philippines from the 1910s until the mid-1960s. In 1920, a Filipino entertainer
named Luis Borromeo returned from North America, renamed himself “Borromeo Lou”, and organized
what became the first Filipino bodabil company.
Two of the most notable performers and musicians were Katy de la Cruz and Alex R. Castro.
Katy was hailed as “The Queen of Filipino Jazz” and as “The Queen of Bodabil” her signature tune was
her rendition of St. Louis Blues. Article by Alex R. Castro that covers her background and her
nomination for the 1924 Manila Carnivals. Held from 1908-1939, the 2week fair was organized as a
goodwill event to celebrate harmonious U.S.-Philippine relations and to showcase our commercial,
industrial and agricultural progress.
Catchy and entertaining music was an intrinsic feature of vaudeville. The vaudevillian stage
thus introduced new musical trends to large audiences. One of these was jazz. One cannot overstate
the role of jazz in the spread of pop culture.

Collage, Bricolage, and Pastiche

Collage is a term taken from painting, describing a picture or design made by gluing pieces
onto a canvas or another surface. By arranging them in a certain way, the artist can create strange or
witty effects that are not possible to achieve with traditional painting techniques. While The term
bricolage emphasizes a unifying structure to the seemingly disparate components of a spectacle or
text, not just an admixture. Finally, in painting pastiche refers to an admixture of elements intended
to imitate or satirize another work or style.

Nostalgia
Nostalgia is the sentimental attachment to trends from one’s past. Whether it is Elvis movies, Disney
cartoons, Beatles albums, disco dancing, Barbie dolls, punk clothing, adventure comics, or other
cultural item, people react nostalgically to the trends and popular artifacts of their youth.
Occultism
Occult practices from palm reading to magic shows have always been a part of carnival
sideshows and early vaudeville. And the most popular of all pop culture genres—the mystery or thriller
narrative—is really a form of occult storytelling, where mystery and fear of the dark are evoked.

Make-Believe
Spectacles, texts, and locales within the pop culture landscape allow people to indulge in make
believe. As copies of previous fictional worlds, they are part of a communal makebelieve. They are
copies of copies, and people appear to experience them as more real than real, indicating that
simulated worlds are more desirable to the human imagination than the real world.

Celebrities
Another salient feature of pop culture is the fact that it produces most of our celebrities. It is sufficient
to point out that it is an intrinsic component of pop culture.

Laughter
“People crave humor and laughter, which explains why there are so many situation comedies
on television and why film comedies have such widespread appeal.” Humor is a basic feature of many
YouTube sites, which highlight very funny occurrences from the spectacle of everyday life. In some
ways, the phenomenon of pop culture is an exercise in laughter and its psychological benefits.
Although many aspects of this culture engage us in serious emotional ways, many others allow us to
laugh and express ourselves cathartically.

V. Concretizing

a. Using an appropriate graphic organizer, differentiate the features of popular

culture.