QUESTION
Instructions: Essay Questions: Recalling our discussions on Popular Culture, read and answer each question completely and comprehensively. ( 10 points each )
1. What or who determines popular culture?
2. Where does popular culture come from? Does it emerge from the people themselves as
an autonomous expression of their interests and modes of experience, or is it imposed
from above by those in positions of power as a type of social control?
3. Does popular culture rise up from the people ‘below’, or does it sink down from elites
‘on high’, or is it rather a question of an interaction between the two?
4. Does the emergence of culture in commodity forms mean that criteria of profitability and
marketability take precedence over quality, artistry, integrity and intellectual challenge?
5. Does the increasingly universal market for popular culture ensure that it is truly popular
because it makes available commodities people actually want?
6. What wins out when popular culture is manufactured industrially and sold according to
the criteria of marketability and profitability—commerce or quality?
7. Is popular culture there to indoctrinate the people, to get them to accept and adhere to
ideas and values which ensure the continued dominance of those in more privileged
positions who thus exercise power over them?
8. Is it about rebellion and opposition to the prevailing social order?
9. Does it express, in however an imperceptible, subtle and rudimentary manner,
resistance to those in power, and the subversion of dominant ways of thinking and
acting?