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New Perspectives on Pop Culture

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A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2022) | Viewed by 39116

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Prof. Dr. Daniel Stein

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Guest Editor

Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Siegen, 57076 Siegen, Germany
Interests: American studies; popular culture; seriality; comics and graphic narrative

Prof. Dr. Niels Werber

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Guest Editor

Department of German Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Siegen, 57068 Siegen, Germany
Interests: German studies; popular cultures; self-descriptions of societies; geopolitics of literature; social insects

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Popular culture has long been identified either as the expression of working class or common folk or as the lowly substratum of an idealized high culture; thus, the emergence of a media-crossing pop aesthetic in the 1950s marked the beginning of a whole-scale social and cultural transformation. As an aesthetics of surfaces and artificiality, of the somatic, the serial and mass-produced, the “zany, cute, and interesting” (Ngai 2012), pop has amplified the ambivalence of the popular, for instance, its qualitative connotations of the simple and trivial or the resistant and subversive, as well as its quantitative claims of being better known, more commercially successful, and more widely disseminated than that which is not popular.

The quantitative and qualitative components of the popular inevitably intersect if we assume that the simple and trivial can attract the attention of large audiences, because it requires no effort on the part of the recipients. According to this approach, popular culture is always low culture. That this is not the case becomes apparent when works of high culture make bestseller lists or when institutions of high culture seek popularity—when museums, opera houses, quality publishing houses, or theaters aim to attract the attention of many to justify their existence. The result of this process is the disruption of the established distinction between low culture and high culture, as these institutions would not claim that their popular exhibitions, concerts, publications, or performances are trivial.

With the popularization of the Internet in around 2000 and our current digital, algorithm-driven culture and its constant display of the metrics of popularity (likes, retweets, views; rankings, charts, hit-lists), the disruption of high/low distinctions has clearly intensified. In fact, pop’s popularity is putting pressure on the institutions of high culture, whose reactions range from accommodation and resilience to outright resistance. These developments call for new approaches to the study of popular culture.

We invite original articles that account for the role of pop in the transformation of the popular. We are particularly interested in work that examines the dissolution of high/low distinctions and for innovative analyses of pop as part of digital culture. Contributions that focus on the prehistory of these developments are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Daniel Stein
Prof. Dr. Niels Werber
Guest Editors

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Keywords

pop aesthetics
quantitative and qualitative popularity
metrics of popularity
charts and bestseller lists
high/low distinctions
accommodation, resilience, resistance
algorithms and digital culture

Published Papers (13 papers)

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13 pages, 440 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Reassessing the Gap: Transformations of the High/Low Difference

by Daniel Stein and Niels Werber

Arts 2023, 12(5), 199; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050199 - 13 Sep 2023

Viewed by 1420

Abstract

Popular culture is a relational term that denotes the other side of the high culture coin (Hügel 2003, p [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

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24 pages, 2881 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Of Auction Records and Non-Fungible Tokens: On the New Valences of Superhero Comics

by Daniel Stein, Laura Désirée Haas and Anne Deckbar

Arts 2023, 12(4), 131; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040131 - 27 Jun 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1465

Abstract

This article examines a recent form of marketing superhero comics that has garnered extensive media attention and has been promoted as the next big step in comics production: the decision by companies like Marvel Comics and DC Comics to offer selections of their intellectual properties as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Focusing specifically on Marvel Comics’ collaboration with the VeVe app, which serves as a digital auction house through which customers can buy comics and related merchandise, this article suggests that we are witnessing the popularization of an already popular product (superhero comics) in a process that is indicative of larger transformations of the popular. As an agent of such transformations, superhero comics were introduced in the 1930s and 40s as a “low medium” with mass appeal that was critically devalued by proponents of high culture, but they are now widely celebrated as a “popular medium.” We argue that this transformation from a popular but devalued (“low”) product to a popular and culturally valued (but not necessarily “high” cultural) artifact marks a shift from qualitative to quantitative valuation that was driven at least in part by popular practices of collecting, archiving, and auctioning that have enabled the ongoing adaptation of these comics to new social, technological, and media demands. The article uses the newsworthiness of big auction sales and the sky-rocketing prices that well-preserved comic books can garner as a framework for assessing the appearance of superhero NFTs and for gauging the implications of this new media form for the cultural validation of comics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

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12 pages, 278 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Apopcalypse: The Popularity of Heavy Metal as Heir to Apocalyptic Artifacts

by Jörg Scheller

Arts 2023, 12(3), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030120 - 06 Jun 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1830

Abstract

This paper examines the heavy metal genre as a popular form of apocalypticism, i.e., as a warning reminder or “premediation” of potentially (large-scale) lethal crises. By confronting the audience with disturbing, seemingly exaggerated scenarios of disease, chaos, war, and horror, heavy metal builds barriers in popular culture against what philosopher Günther Anders has called “apocalyptic blindness.” The genre, then, offers a kind of “aesthetic resilience training” particularly in relatively stable and peaceful times, when large-scale crises seem unlikely or, in the case of global nuclear war, exceed in their sheer dimension the human imagination. What connects traditional religious apocalyptic artifacts such as the Book of Revelation with heavy metal is a specific appeal to the popular. Apocalyptic artifacts and their contemporary secular heirs lend themselves well to popularization because of their strong affective and aesthetic sides, as the Revelation and its many ramifications in popular culture, not least in heavy metal, demonstrate. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

32 pages, 4770 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Paratextual Negotiations: Fan Forums as Digital Epitexts of Popular Superhero Comic Books and Science Fiction Pulp Novel Series

by Niels Werber and Daniel Stein

Arts 2023, 12(2), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020077 - 10 Apr 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3778

Abstract

This article examines the reception of popular serial narratives. Starting from the assumption that this reception presents both a challenge (how to study the vast and heterogeneous readerly engagement with these texts?) and a chance (readers of such texts tend to comment profusely about the reception process), we identify the paratext as a privileged space of readerly communication on, and serial engagement with, popular storytelling. We develop the concept of “paratextual negotiation” as a means of understanding letter columns and fan forums as (now mostly) digital epitexts that shape the evolution of particularly popular—widely noticed, commercially successful, long-running—narratives, with a focus on the German science fiction pulp novel series Perry Rhodan (1961–) and additional thoughts on the US American comic book superhero Captain America (1941–). Taking the quantitative-empirical metrics of attention measurement and their public display seriously by identifying and close-reading the most popular forum threads and the most broadly recognized commentary about these narratives, we argue that the participatory element of popular culture can be reconstructed in the interplay between series text and serial paratext and can be described as a force in serial evolution that thrives on a combination of variation and redundancy and of selection and adaptation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

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22 pages, 343 KiB

Open AccessArticle

New Perspectives on Old Pasts? Diversity in Popular Digital Games with Historical Settings

by Angela Schwarz and Milan Weber

Arts 2023, 12(2), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020069 - 03 Apr 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1860

Abstract

With their increasing popularity, digital games have come to stage notions of history and the past for ever broader circles of recipients, thereby shaping what is understood, interpreted, and negotiated as history in popular contexts. Digital games with historical settings not only adopt already successfully popularized and widely mediated images of history. They also integrate current social debates into the historical worlds they construct and recreate. Using three highly popular representatives of the medium as examples, this article examines how the debates about diversity and the representation of People of Color, which have intensified in recent years, inscribe a particular social self-image into the mediated staging of history and thus offer new perspectives on the past. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

17 pages, 798 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Now It’s My Time! Black Girls Finding Space and Place in Comic Books

by Grace D. Gipson

Arts 2023, 12(2), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020066 - 28 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2447

Abstract

This essay examines how Black girl narratives are finding and making space and place in the arena of comic books and television. With the rise in Black girl (super)hero protagonists on the comic book pages and adapted television shows, it is essential to explore the significance of their rising inclusion, visibility, and popularity and understand how they contribute to the discourse surrounding the next generation of heroes. Guided by an Afrofuturist, Black feminist, and intersectional framework, I discuss the progressive possibilities of popular media culture in depicting Black girlhood and adolescence. In Marvel Comics’ “RiRi Williams/Ironheart”, DC Comics’ “Naomi McDuffie”, and Boom! Studios’ “Eve”, these possibilities are evident. Blending aspects of adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, and STEM, each character offers fictional insight into the lived experiences of Black girl youth from historical, aesthetic, and expressive perspectives. Moreover, as talented and adventurous characters, their storylines, whether on the comic book pages or the television screen, reveal a necessary change to the landscape of popular media culture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

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13 pages, 1581 KiB

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Pop/Poetry: Dickinson as Remix

by Julia Leyda and Maria Sulimma

Arts 2023, 12(2), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020062 - 22 Mar 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 8988 | Correction

Abstract

In its meticulous, freewheeling adaptation of the life and work of celebrated poet Emily Dickinson, the television series Dickinson (Apple TV+, 2019–2021) manifests a twenty-first-century disruption of high and low culture afforded by digital media, including streaming video and music platforms. This article argues that the fanciful series models a mixed-media, multimodal aesthetic form that invites a diverse range of viewers to find pleasure in Dickinson’s poetry itself and in the foibles of its author, regardless of their familiarity with the literary or cultural histories of the US American 19th century. Dickinson showcases creator Alena Smith’s well-researched knowledge of the poet and her work, while simultaneously mocking popular (mis)conceptions about her life and that of other literary figures such as Walt Whitman and Sylvia Plath, all set to a contemporary soundtrack. This analysis of Dickinson proposes to bring into conversation shifting boundaries of high and low culture across generations and engage with critical debates about the utility of the popular (and of studies of the popular) in literary and cultural studies in particular. Full article

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22 pages, 503 KiB

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Getting Noticed by Many: On the Transformations of the Popular

by Niels Werber, Daniel Stein, Jörg Döring, Veronika Albrecht-Birkner, Carolin Gerlitz, Thomas Hecken, Johannes Paßmann, Jörgen Schäfer, Cornelius Schubert and Jochen Venus

Arts 2023, 12(1), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010039 - 17 Feb 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1961

Abstract

This article argues that the transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, have established a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular that has become dominant over the course of the 20th century. As a result, the popular is no longer either the culture of the ‘lower classes’ or the inclusion of the ‘people’ in the service of higher goals. The popular today is hardly the object of desired transgressions (Leslie Fiedler’s “cross the border, close the gap”) or an expression of felt or feared “massification” or “flattening”. Rather, being popular now means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged, as rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. These quantifying formats do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share, like, or retweet important, but popular news. Even the ‘unpopular’ can be popular: a despised politician, a hated jingle, an unpopular measure. The popular modifies whatever it affords with attention. Its quantitatively and hierarchically comparative terms (‘bestseller,’ ‘outperformer,’ ‘high score,’ ‘viral’) generate valences that do not inhere in the objects themselves. Conversely, the non-popular, which does not find any measurable resonance in these terms, risks being dismissed as irrelevant or worthless simply because it does not appear in any rankings or ratings. This can be observed particularly with artefacts whose relevance as part of high culture may be taken for granted even when they do not achieve mass resonance. The purpose of this article is to outline a theory of the popular that does justice to these developments by identifying two decisive transformations: 1. the popularization of quantifying methods to measure attention in popular culture around 1950; 2. the popularization of the internet around 2000, whereby the question of what can and cannot become popular is partially removed from the gatekeepers of the established mass media, educational institutions, and cultural elites and is increasingly decided via social media. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

15 pages, 289 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Metal Ballads as Low Pop? An Approach to Sentimentality and Gendered Performances in Popular Hard Rock and Metal Songs

by Theresa Nink and Florian Heesch

Arts 2023, 12(1), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010038 - 17 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1692

Abstract

Ballads are often among the bestselling songs of heavy metal and hard rock bands. Within these genres, ballads represent a way to address emotions such as love that are not part of the primary self-understanding of those genres. Still, “genre ideals and style” often seem to be at odds with the sentimental aesthetics of the ballad and its emotional expression and experience. In this article, we take a close look at the sonic, textual, performative, visual, and emotional-somatic articulation of love and the generation of sentimentality in three selected metal ballads. Even if the term “power ballad,” which is often used in reference to hard rock and metal ballads, refers to the simultaneity of “heaviness” in the sound and the thematization of love in the lyrics, sentimental ballads in the stereotypically more masculine-connotated genres nevertheless create friction and skepticism in their discursive evaluation, as they generate aesthetic discrepancies between concrete songs and genre conventions. Their quantitative popularity contrasts with their qualitative evaluation. Therefore, in a second step, we analyze the reception of the selected ballads, in particular their discursive evaluations in music reviews, in order to point out the ways of argumentation through which frictions are established. As a result, we show that evaluations are related to how love is addressed in the songs and to the extent of proximity of the ballads to genre rules. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

14 pages, 278 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Crime as Pop: Gangsta Rap as Popular Staging of Norm Violations

by Bernd Dollinger and Julia Rieger

Arts 2023, 12(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010021 - 20 Jan 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2877

Abstract

Crime is quantified extensively, mostly in order to prevent it, therefore assuming it as something purely negative. With the concept “Crime as Pop” we argue that such a view is one-sided, since crime is often staged as something that can be attractive and that can be used constructively for different purposes. We investigate this perspective by studying gangsta rap, which we consider a pop-cultural phenomenon that young people relate to in the context of interactive practices of identity construction. The stories told in gangsta rap are used by the youth recipients in a situation- and location-specific manner to present themselves in a certain way. Young people reproduce motifs of success that often characterize gangsta rap. They portray themselves as agentive and stage forms of resistance against people and institutions to which they might otherwise appear passive and powerless. Young people’s engagement with gangsta rap thus shows how the pop-cultural phenomena can be appropriated in many different ways. “Crime as Pop” illustrates the contingent connections of cultural phenomena and their appropriation that require detailed empirical reconstruction. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

16 pages, 312 KiB

Open AccessArticle

This Country Ain’t Low—The Country Music of Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash as a Form of Redistributive Politics

by Ilias Ben Mna

Arts 2023, 12(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010017 - 18 Jan 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2901

Abstract

This article examines how the country music styles of Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash serve as a form of redistributive politics in which ideological struggles are engaged in ways that dissolve low/high culture distinctions and instead offer a mass-accessible avenue through which cultural recognition is conferred to marginalized identities. This ranges from class-based social critique in Dolly Parton’s song “9 to 5” to the condemnations of the carceral state in Johnny Cash’s work. Engaging country music as an arsenal for social progressivism is not only an underexplored topic in pop cultural studies, but it also provides fertile ground for illuminating how perceptions of the genre are impacted by stereotypical images drawn from the “culture wars” and how these images interrelate with implicit low/high distinctions. For instance, what does the commercial success of Parton’s and Cash’s works say about the low/high distinction? In what ways do their songs, lyrics, aesthetics, and public personae offer a distinctive space for a type of discourse that affords recognition to oppressed communities? Through addressing these questions, I seek to illustrate how prominent segments of country music are resistant to the mere reproduction of cultural hegemony. In doing so, they actively disrupt widespread conceptions of low culture as reactionary. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

13 pages, 308 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Lived Experience—Immersive Multi-Sensorial Art Exhibitions as a New Kind of (Not That) ‘Cheap Images’

by Mirja Beck

Arts 2023, 12(1), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010016 - 17 Jan 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3614

Abstract

This article analyzes the phenomenon of multi-sensorial, digital, and immersive art exhibitions of popular artists, which has been widely neglected in academic research, from a historical perspective. Reflecting the significance of lived experience in art consumption, this 21st-century phenomenon can be confronted productively with early-20th-century art reproductions. The article focuses on the characteristics of both popular phenomena and on their advertisement, as well as on the discourse around them, documenting reactions from resistance to persistence and accommodation. The analysis shows noticeable similarities between the two types of popularization of high art, positioning the new immersive exhibitions in a traditional line of technical innovative art popularization. Whereas photomechanical art reproduction had an immense influence on the popular art canon, being also dependent on ‘photogenic’ conditions of artworks and thus focusing predominantly on painting, the contemporary canon is predisposed by the immersible characteristics of artists’ oeuvres. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)

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1 pages, 160 KiB

Open AccessCorrection

Correction: Leyda and Sulimma (2023). Pop/Poetry: Dickinson as Remix. Arts 12: 62

by Julia Leyda and Maria Sulimma

Arts 2023, 12(6), 226; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12060226 - 30 Oct 2023

Viewed by 1003

Abstract

In the original publication [...] Full article

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