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Popular Culture: Products
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[Q]uestioned this view on popular culture may be, it still leaves some traces, for instance, in theories depicting narrative as necessarily ideologically conservative, like Charles Grivel's Production de l'intérêt romanesque (1973). Such theories see dominant ideology as purely a matter of messages, propagated in this case through the forms of narrative fiction. Thus they easily arrive at an exaltation of experimental literature as necessarily revolutionary. However, they may neglect the fact that the ideology is never simply in the message, but in the position of the message in the general social discourse, and in the position of its producers in the social formation.
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Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public. Some argue that broad-appeal items dominate popular culture because profit-making companies that produce and sell items of popular culture attempt to maximize their profits by emphasizing broadly appealing items. (see culture industry) And yet the situation is more complex. To take the example of popular music, it is not the case that the music industry can impose any product they wish. In fact, highly popular types of music have often first been elaborated in small, counter-cultural circles (punk rock or rap would be two examples).
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Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture (for example: "My favorite character is SpongeBob SquarePants") spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.
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