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Popular Culture: Series
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The story of popular culture in early modern Europe is one of mounting social stratification and a concerted effort at repression by the political and religious elite. An interesting example of this is found in a series of questionnaires on communal religious practices distributed by Spanish officials under Philip II (ruled 1552–1598) in the sixteenth century. Communities had long associated themselves with local patron saints, who served as symbols of both internal unity and external competition. Communities entered into sacred contractual agreements with their saints, promising to honor them with lavish shrines, feast days, and votive offerings in return for agrarian fertility, economic prosperity, and protection from internal factionalism or natural catastrophes. Many of the saints operated as specialists, and localities often received outside pilgrims seeking types of assistance particular to their patron saint; some saints cured specific illnesses, others ensured good harvests, and so on. Spanish authorities in turn considered the plethora of local feast days and specialized saints as an obstacle to their campaign of centralization. Gradually, particularistic interests were countered through crown sponsorship of multipurpose cults associated with the ruling dynasty, especially the cult of the Virgin and the Bleeding Heart.
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Following the social upheavals of the 1960s, popular culture has come to be taken more seriously as a terrain of academic enquiry and has ... helped to change the outlooks of more established disciplines. Conceptual barriers between so-called high and low culture have broken down, accompanying an explosion in scholarly interest in popular culture, which encompasses such diverse mediums as comic books, television and the Internet. Revaluation of mass culture in the 1970s and 1980s has revealed significant problems with the traditional view of mass culture as degraded and elite culture as uplifting. Divisions between high and low culture have been increasingly seen as political distinctions rather than defensible aesthetic or intellectual ones (Mukerji & Schudson 1991:1-2).
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[O]fficial recorders of popular culture did not always play a positive or even a neutral role in its transmission and were prominently involved in elite attempts to suppress unofficial practices. Legal records—edicts, law codes, and criminal interrogatories—are another rich genre of documentation. In their attempts to enforce elite norms, early modern rulers released a plethora of edicts reviling impious deviations from religious orthodoxy and breaches of sumptuary and moral legislation—the wearing of prohibited clothing styles, lewd dancing, and excessive consumption at weddings. They attest to the rude nature of early modern sexuality, complaining of clerical concubinage, fornication between serving men and women, and clandestine marriages. One courtship ritual in particular, the nocturnal visit, was highly suspect. Reminiscent of the balcony scenes from Romeo and Juliet or Cyrano de Bergerac and practiced throughout Europe, nocturnal visits of suitors to unmarried women took the form of a non-coerced entry, generally through the window, whereupon the couple might sit and chat until the morning hours or, not uncommonly, sleep together chastely in the same bed, at times with the full consent of parents; naturally, accidents did occur, as the edicts take pains to remind us.
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One of a series of textbooks prepared for popular culture courses taught through the U.K.’s Open University. As well as offering general theories of identity, readings examine questions relating to specific identities including queer identity, motherhood and diasporic identities. Contains a useful appendix of key articles and bibliography.
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Motorock is the creation of a popular culture brand that blends the enthusiast markets of cars, stars and guitars. It is a yearly series of destination live events that showcase the excitement of motorsports, music, and lifestyle. www.motorocktour.com
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Expanding on the insights of his popular book and BBC-television series Ways of Seeing , this collection analyzes selected forms of visual culture including oil painting, photography and zoos. Locates different kinds of visual perception in specific social and historical contexts with the aim of highlighting its ideological aspects.
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