Pop Culture

Pop Culture is the vernacular (people's) culture that prevails in a modern society. The content of pop culture is determined in large part by industries that disseminate cultural material, for example the film, television, and publishing industries, as well as the news media.* Furthermore, it can be stated that this phenomenon has something to do with the Western strategy trying to infiltrate the consciousness of its neo-colonies if not prospects. However, the understanding of pop culture should not be limited as just the aggregate of the aforementioned industries and power wielder, respectively; instead, it can be viewed as the prevailing result of a continuing interaction between societies (producers who sell, consumers who buy), hereafter called as the culture of consumerism.

Pop culture has diverse origins:

• Set of industries that make a profit by inventing and promulgating cultural material
  
• Powerful countries working to subjugate weaker states (with rich resources; cheap labor, raw materials, working conditions; weak legislation and West-influenced state policies; underdeveloped socio-political system)
• Folkloric element or the earlier layer of culture persisting in the form of jokes/slang, which spread through the population by word of mouth (i.e. Internet as new channel of folkloric transmission, giving a renewed strength of this pop culture)
  
• Set of professional communities that provide the public with facts about the world coupled with interpretation (news media, scientific and scholarly communities)

Pop Culture may exist with the following themes:

fads and trends, the appeal for current music star, fascination with rituals, nature and power of celebrities, fashion TV, the magnet of shopping malls, the culture of toys, kikay films, the imitation/franchise of American game shows (Family Feud, Deal or No Deal, Big Brother, etc.), formulas in best seller books turn into movies (Harry Potter, Twilight, etc.), the remaking of TV novels, pop culture of fifties and sixties and many more.

*Ma. Monette Dator's Media Education