What Is Pop Culture?

Last night I attended a fascinating lecture by UNLV professor Brandon Manning on incorporating pop culture into the classroom. But it was a much larger subject--what is pop culture? What does it have to do with our lives?

Pop culture is everywhere, and unless you're a monk it's inescapable. Music, TV, social media, movies, fashion, it's a large mass that sits on top of us like a fog. Of course, it can be for good for ill. Pop culture has changed the world, both for good and bad, and whether it's good or bad is still argued about (there are those who think the entire 1960s were a mistake, and clearly music was at the vanguard of the change).

Manning, in answer to a question, pointed out that pop culture is not just contemporary. He taught a course on black pop culture and it started with minstrel shows all the way to hip-hop. In some way I wonder if pop culture of the past, especially of our ow youths, is simply nostalgia, but there's no doubt that it informs who we are. He talked about how many TV shows and movies show teachers as idiots, while in my day, teachers were heroic, on shows like Room 222, Lucas Tanner, and The White Shadow. "Then came the '90s," Manning sighed.

When it comes to pop culture in the classroom, one is on a razor's edge. In college, you can play anything, like Nicki Minaj's "My Anaconda" or a Louis C.K. rant about white privilege ("Of course it's better to be white.") Teaching sixth grade, I have to be careful. I tried showing some things today, such as Weird Al Yankovic's parodies, particularly "Word Crimes," which takes the smutty "Blurred Lines" and turns it into a primer on proper English. My kids don't know Weird Al, but they know the songs he's parodying. Then I tried showing  Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass, which has no profanity and, on the surface, has a positive message about girls' body images. All my kids understood that, but Manning posed some deeper questions that would go over my kids' heads, such as why are their black back-up singers, and isn't the rotund dancer being mocked for his body image?

The one thing that is clear is that I have to learn this stuff. I can't quote Bob Dylan or The Beatles, which are to them like Rudy Vallee would be to me. I do have one girl who is into Nirvana, which is kind of amazing considering Kurt Cobain has been dead for over twenty years. These kids are into the Little Einsteins theme song (I had never heard of this show before) and various hip-hop stars that seem to all blend into one for me, and who all use the word "nigga."

But I know there is good rap out there. During the lecture someone mentioned Tupac Shakur's poetry, and I bought a copy of his book with my Amazon ap. He is from Las Vegas, and has something of legendary status here. I'm going to start teaching how to analyze text soon, so why not start with what the kids know?