Thoughts About Popular Culture: Looking at The Faces of Popular Culture

In a Political Science course that I took, my professor once argued that the Western way of thinking is caged in this yes-or-no, black-or-white, and good-or-bad model. It is a way of thinking that makes it difficult to see beyond the processes of Westernization and colonization and the consequences these processes have on indigenous cultures, which has shaped the way that popular culture is defined. But, as is argued in this article, there are more than just the obvious traditions of the modern world.


This article seems to suggest a new way of looking at culture, one that does not consider one type of culture, but one that accepts that multiple can exist and effect one another simultaneously. The Spanish arriving to Latin America definitely changed how indigenous populations lived, but it was not just that the Spanish implanted their way of thinking and the indigenous people ran with that. It might be considered that the modern-day cultures that have arisen are just versions of modernized indigenous’ cultures that were influenced by the arrival of the Spanish.

If multiple cultures can exist simultaneously, ‘popular culture’ is not defined by number of people or geography and one country can have multiple ‘popular’ cultures. The indigenous cultures may also be considered ‘popular culture’, and so are given value and consequence because of its significance for a group of people. The ‘popular culture’ does not only contain the most popular songs and hobbies, but instead all cultural influences can be considered separately in those different cultures. This means that people are not restricted to looking at hit (international) musicians, but also more local groups. For example, Ariana Grande might be considered ‘popular’, or part of ‘popular culture’, in different Latin American countries, but one must also consider local groups and music to get a full grasp of the different regions.

This definitely complicates the working definition for ‘popular culture’, and challenges the dominant structures of thinking. What is considered ‘popular’ must change to fit the different groups and different histories that create unique, and the non-traditional views of culture. Now, history and the non-popular become part of the ‘popular’ because of the way they interact with the present. Although all these things might be true, the main point that I take away from this article is that Latin America is much more complicated than it is given credit to be. The past has shaped different modern cultures for different regions, thus the process of Westernization is occasionally at risk for being over-stated.


Rowe, William, and Vivian Schelling.  “The Faces of Popular Culture”.  Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America. London: Verso, 1991. 49-150.


Comments

  1. Unknown24 January 2017 at 00:15

    I totally agree with you on how popular culture is not restricted to certain regions!

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  2. Unknown25 January 2017 at 19:01

    I think your last paragraph really summarized what I got from the reading as well. Latin America is so much more complex and made of different parts and pieces that cannot be really put in one single box and defined in a certain way. I did not consider this before reading the article and I'm glad it made me reflect on this important fact

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  3. Maya Redlinger25 January 2017 at 23:48

    I think you bring up a good point in suggesting the need to update our "working definitions for popular culture". In class, discussed our own understandings of what "popular" and what "culture" are. While we did come up with pretty broad definitions for both terms, it would be interesting to revisit what we wrote to examine our definitions for signs of North American influence. It would also be interesting if we were able to compare our responses with the responses from a classroom in another region of the world (Latin America, for example) to the same exercise.
    -Maya Redlinger

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  4. GabrielleSC26 January 2017 at 00:13

    "It might be considered that the modern-day cultures that have arisen are just versions of modernized indigenous’ cultures that were influenced by the arrival of the Spanish."
    I would reframe the modern-day culture of various regions of Latin America to be not so much versions of modernized indigenous cultures with spanish colonial influence but maybe a whole new and transformed culture. I think its important to view these cultural phenomenons as potent expressions of their reality rather than sort of 'watered-down' versions of either Indigenous or European culture.

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