TV improved. (How do I know this? I am watching House as I write this. It’s the episode about the girl from New Orleans. The script writers have just found a way to work a reference, unmistakeable but inoffensive, to oral sex into the script This is more than the I Love Lucy writers could ever dream of this.)

Is this a serious argument: “TV improved because it talks about oral sex”?

So, as noted by a commenter above, are you getting at shift in cultural process? Or, are the fundamental cultural process intact, but changes in enabling “knowing” technologies have had the effect of shifting the locus of cultural convention away from the elite culture defining classes to the people?

Why do I feel as though I’m channeling Lloyd Warner at the moment? Speaking of which, elements in Warner’s “The Living and the Dead” make me wonder if the elitist’s grip (strangulation) of pop culture wasn’t an abborition made possible by the nature of mass media to provid a soap box for a relatively few chattering elitist voices.

So, I wonder, are changes in information technologies enablers of this pop culture ascention?

I havent read your book, but there seems to be evolutionary claims being made, things are always improving. I don’t know if that is the best way to proceed when talking about culture and society, where there were and will always be incredible examples of a range of “greats”. While you are making of “proof” of some sort in the tv reference, lets face it, there are some significant, significantly changed fights along new lines of divisions between high and low – it starts from the Presidency and works its way through Fox vs other news sources, and then so on down the line, a chain…to the “street” and a whole new reach and range of an industry built on following and reproducing the drivel of idiots – really, that is the best term – idiots. And with these figures returns something that dispels the “classless” American society, of class-attributes given (Britney is white trash, Paris is “rich” trash, and Lindsay is… well, whatever trash, and the Simpsons, god need I go on…).

In other words, the space of that has changd radically, pardigmatically – also why we read blogs like yours – it is “reality” in quotes that has been this decades coopted space. It is managed by the usual culture fights, but they sound inadequate to describe the situation. From President and War Christians to rich/poor trash getting lots of money etc.. to Scientologists having so much press coverage through their Hollywood connections, it isnt the scripts or the plot details of a few programs that relate to “commerce” versus “culture”, but the real economy of rich (think: Gulf War Oil Barons; Hiltons; Trump; “celebrity” scientologists with so much money to be feared; etc.) versus everyone else who should accept the way things are in “their” culture.

Auto, yes, I spent my time, I got my ticket, but I like to think I left because I was enlightened not the other way round. Best, Grant

Brad, I couldnt disagree more. People may have taken up the topic of popular culture, but rarely did they dignify this topic with serious point of view. Which is to say lots of this was appropriated the text as something that then belonged to the academy and its theories. Almost never did the pointed heads take seriously the people who created and consumed these titles. Indeed, they took the precaution of never talking to these people. EVER. It was very much “ok, you just step aside, we will know tell you what these texts mean.” From an anthropological point of view this is an abomination. And by the by, Henry Jenkins is actually the hero of the piece because he dared actually to talk to fans and to take them seriously. Thanks, Grant

Greg, thanks for this clarification, I stand corrected and I have removed the title. Thanks! And I agree with you that Starbucks didnt invent the third space. But they did invent a third space, and they did so in the face of an acute discomfort with public life. Anyone not clearly engaged in gainful activity was supposed to be kook. Thanks, Grant

I don’t know about the rest, but The McDonaldization of Society isn’t primarily about pop culture or even really the cultural aspects of McDonalds at all. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it; there’s probably a little bit about the use of advertising, but it’s not the main point of the book, which is more about how McDonalds is a paradigm of how late-20th century capitalism achieves efficiency, and what some of the consequences of that are. Although it’s possible that Ritzer’s moved more in the direction you’re declaring against in his later consumer society stuff, which I haven’t read.

Also, since I’m posting, I want to take issue with something you’ve tossed off a couple of times in past posts: Starbucks didn’t “invent” third places. Third places have been around for forever. That’s a what a bar is. Starbucks isn’t even a very good third place, largely because, sort of in the mode of Ritzer, it exchanges character and local uniqueness for consistency across space. In fact, my own personal first encounter with the whole idea of third places was in an article arguing this point. I don’t mean to suggest that they don’t function that way regardless, just that it’s not anywhere near something they invented.

Whew. That’s been stewing for a while.

After all the ‘What’s up’ kind of campaigns and popular quotes from friends, mastercard didn’t revolutionize anything. The interessing point about that specific case comes form Japan : Previously to the mass campaign there was no word in Japanese that correctly encapsulated the notion of ‘priceless’. Mastercard decided (like many US-based brands that communicate in Japan) to use the original english ‘priceless’. Since then, according to the speaker, ‘priceless’ became a common Japanese word, used in regular conversation, and reshapping their relationship to money and to ‘stuff that you can’t buy’…

Food for thought

S.

Brian, exactly so, very well said. Best, Grant