Earlier this Spring I was asked to be a part of Bob Turner’s Footnotes series in which I was interviewed on the relationship between Christians and movies. While answering Bob’s questions I was unsure of where I wanted to take the conversation—the relation between Christians and media being as complex and multifaceted as it is. I settled, however, on the mundane, in recognizing that watching movies or television is a casual pastime, a typical way for Americans to enjoy themselves.
I think that idea deserves expanding, particularly in response to the common idea that Christians are supposed to retreat from the world. Most of the following post will be in response to an article that was recently shared with me, “Against Pop Culture,” but I think the ideas espoused in that article are not unique to its author. Plenty of people view pop culture as a dirty word and something to rise above.
You should check out the article, written earlier in July, if you haven’t already. The writing is good and the argument worth considering. Yet, it’s not terribly clear in the article what exactly is meant by “pop culture,” the thing the author is against, or what precisely might be wrong with it. But what is clear early on is that engaging in pop culture and, specifically, watching Netflix—a repeated example—is not optimal. That is, there is always a better use of time, something more worthwhile we could be doing. And at this first point, I’ll have to agree, but I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise. We can all agree that being productive or being creative is a nobler pastime. If I turn on Netflix the moment I walk in the door until I cozy into bed, something has gone terribly wrong.
But the article seems more pointed than this, that there is something inherently wrong with pop culture. Though it doesn’t really go into this, perhaps the issue is with the first term, “pop.” Again, I could maybe see a point of agreement here if popular culture was understood as a stand-in for the fleeting, for empty fads. But this keeping-up-with-the-Kardashians version of pop culture is never defined; instead, what seems to be in play is some sort of cultural elitism. This idea that the popular is intrinsically less—that it lacks the beauty or insight of the underground—is one of the greatest shortcomings of hipster culture. It’s high culture versus pop culture, and I can say with confidence anyone who espouses this clearly hasn’t seen Jurassic Park or doesn’t understand the craft of filmmaking.
Another possible cause for the articles maligning of pop culture is a vendetta against screens. Most of the examples of pop culture have to do with television and social media, and the general criticism seems similar to what we usually find ourselves telling teenagers. And while the health of our eyeballs and some research seem to be in agreement with this cautionary word, it is worth noting that we should not too readily give into an anti-screen bias. About halfway through the article, the author lists several activities that are better than watching Netflix (again, they probably are)—the first of which is reading. This an interesting option because the author is either referring to educational reading, which again leads us to the argument about optimizing our time, or to entertaining fictional reading as a replacement. If the latter is the case, this is medium bias of the highest sort and an unjust dismissal of the film form.
Whatever the author deems wrong with pop culture, we are behooved to acknowledge what it offers the individual. Its first merit—the one most commonly discussed by academics and dismissed in the article as “high-minded justifications”—is that enveloped in pop culture is the beauty of many arts, of great storytelling and visuals and music through cinema or television or even recent songs on the radio. Surely it does not need to be defended here that life worth living involves beauty. The other merit, the one mentioned at the top of the post, is more earthy: it is the acknowledgment that popular culture holds within it the various elements of rest, entertainment, socialness, and fun that comprise the day-to-day human experience. Enjoying the latest Justin Bieber song (non-ironically, I might add) or finding thrills in the bombastic Fast & Furious franchise is not a vice but a low-hanging fruit. And sometimes enjoying fruit doesn’t mean getting a ladder.
So again, I’ll agree that watching too much Netflix isn’t optimal. But to suggest that humans ought to only do the optimal thing at all times is an ethical standard long past being taken seriously. And to go further, to throw-out a blanket dismissal of the world of cinema, television, or even the lowly domain of pop culture is too much.