Can Pop Culture Change the World? (And, For That Matter, Can Ponderously Titled Essays?)

Note: This post was originally an essay I intended to publish elsewhere, but since that didn't pan out, I thought I'd chuck it here, with a few modifications. Anyway, just letting you know, since the style is a little different than my normal posts on this site.

Can pop culture change the world? 

On the one hand, this is a ridiculous question for me to be asking. Everything changes the world by its mere existence. Take even the most inconsequential piece of pop ephemera—for the sake of argument, we’ll say DJ Snake & Lil Jon’s trap opus “Turn Down for What.” At the very least, we can accurately say that this song changed the world by transforming our universe into a sphere distinct within the multiverse for being “the one with ‘Turn Down for What.’” Hey, it beats Hamster-in-Butt World. 

Besides, asking whether or not pop culture changes the world seems to be missing the point of pop culture, which is, above all, experiential, right? So what if the only thing “Turn Down for What” gives the world is its own existence? Its purpose never was to solve world hunger or create economic equality or halt international terrorism. Its purpose was to give listeners an engaging three-minute-and-thirty-six-second experience. Complain that pop culture is slight, white-bread, or shallow, and you’ll hear the inevitable rebuttal that yes, that’s the point. Pop culture is about fun. 

Until it isn’t. 

We were supposed to see Selma in order to combat racism, right? Maybe this is just me and because I spend too much time on the Internet, but there’s a not inconsiderable portion of pop culture discussion that centers around how socially valuable a piece of pop culture is: listen to Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj sing “Flawless” and change the way the world thinks about body image; watch Laura Poitras film Edward Snowden in Citizenfour and change the way the world views the surveillance state; don’t read Jonathan Franzen’s Purity and change the way the world treats entitled white people. Listen to small, hometown bands and change the way the world views local communities. This isn’t a new thing.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin exists. Perhaps it’s just because I am a omnivoric consumer of pop culture and an aspiring creative writer and desperately want these things that take up a large portion of my life to mean more than just a couple hours wasted per evening, but there are times when pop culture certainly feels important. Roger Ebert calls movies “machines that generate empathy.” I think that can apply to pretty much any kind of art in our pop cultural sphere.

Consider the following:

-I feel like I know a little about Iran from watching A Separation

-I feel like I know a little about poverty and inner-city life from watching The Wire

-I feel like I know a little about migrant workers from reading The Grapes of Wrath

-I feel like I know a little about slavery from reading Beloved

-I feel like I know a little about everything from listening to Kanye West

All of which sounds absolutely insufferable if you stop and parse out exactly what I’m saying: that I—of very suburban, very middle-class, very Caucasian upbringing—have some sort of special knowledge from having read/watched/listened to pieces of cultural art, and that, equipped with that knowledge, I can somehow change the world. It’s ridiculous. But if I’m being completely honest, I’ve got to admit that I do think this way sometimes. Many times. Deep down somewhere, I actually do believe that by listening to rap, by giving my money to Capitol Records or Def Jam or whatever, I am making a contribution toward a better urban tomorrow (unless I’m listening to Macklemore, in which case all bets are off). I flatter myself with my own cultural tastes. I like President Obama just a little bit more than I would otherwise because he likes The Wire, too, so see, he proves it; my artistic tastes are important. 

Here’s the thing: A few years back, when people said to boycott Chick-fil-A to fight against homophobia, I didn’t do it. When people said to buy Chick-fil-A food to fight for religious liberty, I didn’t do it. I don’t tend to buy Chick-fil-A anyway because I’m more of a Five Guys guy myself, if we’re dealing with slightly more expensive fast food. But the point is that the cycle of what and why to boycott/buy things is exhausting and toxic, and after Evangelical Christians spent the better part of my childhood refusing to give Disney their money, the Disney corporation now owns Marvel and Star Wars.  Mission accomplished? I’ve become (if I haven’t always been) cynical about the possibilities of commercial pressures as a force for good, and some days, I wonder if it’s not all just a big scheme to get us to buy Coke one day and Pepsi the next. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get my money. The exception in my mind, it seems, is when it comes to pop culture. I buy an Against Me! album, and I am fighting the good fight for transgendered rights. 

Here’s the other thing: pop culture tastes are so closely connected with the construction of social identity that it’s difficult to tell where I end and the world-changing begins. When Kony2012 was still making waves, Teju Cole wrote an article for The Atlantic about what he calls “The White-Savior Industrial Complex,” which refers to the phenomena of Westerners—and specifically white Westerners—proclaiming their opinions about social issues as a way of making themselves look better to others: ideological fashion statements. I’ve done it; the other day on my Facebook, I posted an article about Bernie Sanders addressing income inequality. I haven’t contributed to his campaign. I haven’t done anything to address economic inequality myself. I worry that homeless men will use my money for prostitutes or something. But forget Facebook; I do it even more frequently when it comes to pop culture. I mean, just look at this essay: do you think I’m talking about The Wire just because it’s relevant? You say you like The Wire, and people think you’re progressive and cool—either that or a television snob, but look, let’s stay positive here. Most days, I do think I’m pretty progressive and cool. I like being progressive and cool; it makes me feel better about all those years when I wasn’t. And plus, being progressive and cool means that you are one of those people who change the world. 

Something also worth considering: in that same Atlantic article, Teju Cole also says that “a good novel shouldn’t have a point.” It’s hard to feel like you’re changing the world when the novel you’re conspicuously reading on the city bus doesn’t have a point. I don’t have a solution to this problem. 

Back in September, though, I went to a movie screening at Scruffy City Hall in downtown Knoxville. It’s not important what movie it was. I parked my car in the Market Square garage, walked out the Wall Ave. exit past that alley where the restaurant employees always take their smoke breaks, and moseyed toward Scruffy City Hall. The sun had just gone down, which is the perfect time to be outside on a late-summer evening, the sky that shade of minty blue and orange, the air cool and the asphalt still hot, so I took my time getting inside. My expectation was that I would go see this movie and afterwards, talk with people afterwards about the framing, mise-en-scene, themes, social relevancy, and all that. Possibly discuss the Altman influence on this particular film. My expectation was to show people I knew a thing or two about movies, and because I knew a thing or two about movies, the connections I forged with people through deft conversation would eventually help to make Knoxville—the world—a better place. 

I still go into public movie screenings—not to mention literature readings, lectures, concerts, etc.—with this expectation. I’m not saying that I learned a lesson.  But here’s what actually happened: because I took so long moseying across Market Square to Scruffy City, it was already theater-dark inside, and the Public Cinema group director was already wrapping up his introduction to the movie. No one saw me come in, and in fact, I couldn’t see anyone else more distinctly than just blurry silhouettes and the occasional blue or orange light shining dully off someone’s skin. I had to maneuver around the dark clumps of tables, feeling the grit on the floor beneath my feet and smelling the strange mix of popcorn and beer in my nose, before I found a seat, alone at a table off to the side. The movie started, and the incidental conversation that had filled out the room quieted to a handful of murmurs that I could not pick out, save for a few scattered phrases: “Do you need more beer?” “Be back.” “Did you call?” After a while, it became hard to pick out even those snippets as everyone tuned into the movie and responded together. We all laughed at the funny parts, gasped at the twists, fell quiet at the sudden intimacy of the ending. And when the movie was over, the lights up front kicked back on, the director thanked us, and we all filed out back into Market Square. By the time I made it back to my car, I couldn’t have told you who around me in the garage had been in that screening and who had just been to Tomato Head or somewhere, and I’m sure they couldn’t have said the same about me. I had talked to no one the entire night, hadn’t been able to bestow my insights about the cinematic techniques or social relevancy. But I felt fulfilled. 

Did that movie change the world? I don’t know. Thinking back on it, the importance of that screening was not the sum total of my experiences seeing the film’s images and hearing the film’s sounds—it wasn’t just about fun. But it also wasn’t just about the content of the movie. If the movie had a message (and for the record, this is probably one of those movies that would be labeled “socially valuable” by those online discussion groups), that message wasn’t key to the importance either.  What actually seems to have mattered that night wasn’t just the sensory experience or social message or anything else contained in the text of the film itself—over everything, it was that a group of people gathered together in a dark room and engaged with the sensory experience and social message as a fluid collective. That screening was important because it made people sacrifice the individuality, autonomy, and identity construction we normally associate with film criticism and cultural engagement. It was the interaction of aesthetics with not just an individual but with an anonymous collective. 

Which makes that movie screening sound a whole lot like an online experience. Or listening to a song on the radio. Or being one of the thousands of people who buys the same book and reads it alone in a room. Does this simultaneous loneliness and self-obliteration have anything to do with the world at large? What’s the point? 

I have no definite answers, only the speculation that maybe the twin-sided good and evil of pop culture consumption is that, like voting or charity donations or random acts of kindness, it often has little to do with yourself specifically but rather with the fact that you are obliterating yourself by participating in some larger, amorphous social force. It's not saving anyone or curing some tangible problem. But there's still some value in it—psychological, spiritual, I'm not sure. All I know is that it's a good thing to be reminded that art exists for reasons other than my own commentary.

Which, I realize is a mighty ironic thing to say on a blog dedicated to sharing my own personal thoughts on pop culture. Context sucks.