Barron reiterates that human beings all come into this world as "potential social beings". As infants, we cannot depend on ourselves thus we are helpless and must seek others like parents and siblings to realize the most basic physiological needs. As time flies by people grow up and mature (not everyone) experiencing ongoing processes of social interactions that enable individuals to acquire the skills needed to fit in the human society. These ongoing processes refer to socialization. Barron further says, "socialization is imperative in the world we live in today since it is through socialization that each new generation learns of culture." Scholars have defined culture as the beliefs, values, behaviors and material objects shared by a specific group of individuals. Culture is a way of life that a clique of people shares in common.
Today culture depicts the way we dress to work, the type of meal we have and the way and who we spend our leisure time with (Hancock, Johnson-Woods and Karaminas). Culture provides a basis by which we can gauge the meaningfulness of our lives based on the standards of living, success, our looks and goodness. With a culture comes competition, and it is rare that you may find a culture that advocates cooperation. Looking at the society we are in, everywhere there is an element of culture. Marxism shows "culture does not create itself," but we humans are the creators basing them on a set of principles and customs that date way back that we expect people to live by. However, since we humans create it, then culture is flexible and can be subjected to change whenever need be but we rarely do that.
Popular culture is the collected store of music, fashion, literature, films, art, television, radio and dance that are devoured majorly by non-elite factions. For example, the working, lower and middle classes (Pineda and Jimenez-Varea). There are a lot of sociological arguments that oppose the relation given to pop culture. Some say that the use of popular culture is by those elites who tend to run a social media, mass media and other different pop culture channels to have control over those they deem to be below them. The other perspective is that the popular culture is the way for some individuals to show their rebellious ways against the dominance of particular cultures. There exist many elements of pop culture that influences and affects groups and individuals.
Music is the most prevalent aspect of the human society that affects a considerable number of individuals. Music comes in different genres, and each and every individual identifies with one or two genres. The genres stretch from rhythm and blues, rap, reggae, house, rock, electric, country and what have you. They are quite many genres that even new ones crop up and still find people who identify with it. These genres depict the different type of culture that the musicians try to enumerate in their songs. They exhibit entirely different lifestyles and in turn individuals who share an interest in this type of songs adapt to that type of lifestyle.
Music genres influence the way individuals dress up. In the society today, the dress code has transformed considerably. What used to be is no more, and there is no way that the traditional dress code will ever find its way back into human lives. Human beings have embraced dynamism in their nature thus the traditional way of things are far gone. Human beings always crave change; they are excited and stimulated by the different things they get to see. Hence, there is no surety that what an individual performs today is the same thing that they might repeat the following day.
Television and Films; these offers the best platform that influences the pop cultures that exist today. "Statistics show that about 90% of viewers are affected by the kind of life depicted in TV and changes their way of living" (Pineda and Jimenez-Varea). For example, through adverts people are, usually, stimulated always to want whatever is being advertised on the television. These adverts are always run over and again, thus whether one likes it or not they will find themselves adapting to that. Whatever the TV presents have a long lasting effect in sticking in peoples' minds, so many tend to adopt that way of life to feel a sense of belonging. The programs, shows and all the related video content influence individuals' way of life and this majorly affects children, they tend to copy all that they see on the television. For example, when kids are exposed to the violent programs or movies as seen on TV then eventually a kid will develop a violent mindset.
The films show different pop cultures that individuals tend to relate to, a case in point is the TV shows like scandal and House of Cards. They depict all that goes on in the white house and the things that politicians will do to stay in power. This results in a pop culture that identifies politicians as power hungry and will go to the extremes just to stay in power. In the show Scandal by Shonda Rhimes, Olivia Pope, the central character is depicted to be up to date in relation to fashion and style. There is even a blog that talks about her way of dressing. People like to dress in a way "they see celebrities do to fit a particular class"(Hancock et al.). Films that have a love and relationship theme have made people have high expectations on relationships. Some do paint obscene scenes that give people "detrimental ideas and high expectations" that would not be otherwise found on this planet. There are those movies that bring about a culture of social class differences and depict that there exist a perfect world where everybody is rich. Thus make individuals to yearn and wish for such lifestyle, "Single Ladies" by Stacy A. Littlejohn, for example. Each movie or film always affects people's way of life, and "there is not a thing we can do about it" says Peter Berger.
In conclusion, pop culture is just like any other movement that was there initially. Even though, it originated some time back, in the early fifties to sixties, it still holds a great influence in the society today and the way of life. A sociologist Peter Berger points out "nobody can deny pop culture; from the music to films, media platforms to fashion, television in our everyday lives. Popular culture cannot be refuted and unacknowledged, and it exists everywhere, and it's not disappearing anytime soon." It will keep on evolving further. In this era, people breathe and live pop culture; we cannot separate from it; we are all victims of this ‘trend setter’. A column on the New York Times by Reshma Saujani, states "there is no breaking free from it because it does exist in all phases of our lives. It has been integrated with all aspects of our lives, even in the places we did not expect, and there is no doing away with popular culture."
Works Cited
Barron, Lee. Social Theory In Popular Culture. 1st ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.
Guimar\~aes, Maria Eduarda Araujo. 'From Periphery To Centre: Fashion And Popular Culture In Brazil'. Film, Fashion \& Consumption 2.3 (2013): 299--311. Print.
Hancock, Joseph, Toni Johnson-Woods, and Vicki Karaminas. Fashion In Popular Culture. 1st ed. Print.
Pineda, Antonio, and Jesus Jimenez-Varea. 'Popular Culture, Ideology, And The Comics Industry: Steve Ditko's Objectivist Spider-Man'. The Journal of Popular Culture 46.6 s(2014): 1156-1176. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.
