PopCult is an on-line magazine simply dedicated to pop culture. It is worth a look to get some solid discussion of contemporary artefacts and issues as, for the most part, other magazines are writing about entertainment products, not necessarily "culture." What you typically get in the regular press are articles interviewing celebrities who just happen to be selling something: a new movie, a new CD, a new TV show, or just their own fabulousness. Consequently, most of the media that's described as being about "pop culture" is really about the personalities of famous people.
What comes across in PopCult is a genuine love and interest in popular culture, left-field arts, personal obsessions and a site that actually believes in what it writes about.
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Extract:
Take a look at your local newsstand and here's what you'll see: racks upon racks of magazines that look almost identical. Whether they focus on music, fashion, cigars, fitness, women, or men, most magazines typically feature a grinning celebrity on the cover peeking out from behind squadrons of coverlines. It wasn't always like this.
From the "golden age" of magazine popularity in the 1920s-'30s and on through to the early '60s, even the most mainstream of magazines tried to lure in readers with distinctive design, original typography, and striking artwork. The cover was considered a canvas–rather than merely a billboard–by groundbreaking art directors like Mehemed Fehmy Agha (Vogue, House & Garden, Vanity Fair), Alexey Brodovitch (Harper's Bazaar), and Eleanor Treacy and Francis Brennan (Fortune). These and other designers of that era transformed magazines into works of art in themselves.
The Kony 2012 video, released online last week, has been watched nearly 76m times on YouTube, prompting not only a media sensation but speculation over the organisation’s background and profile.
Facebook and Spotify automatically want to share my every waking action, so that I'm like a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll.
Sharing. Now there's a basic social concept that has somehow got all out of whack. The idea behind sharing is simple. Let's say I'm a caveman. I hunt and slaughter a bison, but I can't eat it all myself, so I share the carcass with others, many of whom really appreciate it, such as my infirm 86-year-old neighbour who hasn't had a proper meal in weeks because he is incapable of killing anything larger than a woodlouse. Have you tried grilling a woodlouse? It's scarcely worth the effort.
But it's not all bison meat. Let's say I am still a caveman. The other thing I share is information: the thoughts inside my head or stirring tales of the things I have done. I grunt a hilarious anecdote about the time I dropped a huge rock on a duck and an egg popped out, and mime scandalous gossip about well-known tribesmen. I'm the life and soul of the cave-party.
All this sharing served a purpose. It kept the community fed, as well as entertained and informed. Now zip forward to the present day and, like I say, sharing has somehow got all out of whack. A small percentage of the population hoards more bison meat than it could eat in 2,000 lifetimes, awarding itself huge bison meat bonuses on top of its base-rate bison meat "salary". I say "bison meat". In case you hadn't noticed, I'm using it as a clever metaphor for money.
Sharing is for the rest of us. Not sharing money or bison meat, but personal information. Where we are. What we're doing. Share it! Make it public! Go on! It's fun!
Increasingly, I stumble across apps and services that expect me to automatically share my every waking action on Facebook and Twitter. The key word here is "automatically". Take Spotify, the streaming music service. I have written before about my admiration for Spotify, about what a technical marvel it is. A world of music at your fingertips! Incredible!
The love affair was doomed. Spotify recently reinvented itself as a kind of adjunct to Facebook and has subsequently adopted some truly hideous "social features". For instance: it will tell other people what you're listening to, live. Yes, you can switch this feature off. That's not the point. The point is that it does it by default. By default. IT DOES IT BY DEFAULT.
When Sony launched the Walkman back in the late 70s, its main appeal was that for the first time in history you could stroll down the high street listening to Neil Diamond belting out Sweet Caroline and no one could judge you for it. It made you the master of a private world of music. If the Walkman had, by default, silently contacted your friends and told them what you were listening to, not only would no one have bought a Walkman in the first place, its designers would have been viewed with the utmost suspicion.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for sharing thoughts, no matter how banal (as every column I have ever written rather sadly proves). Humans will always babble. If someone wants to tweet that they can't decide whether to wear blue socks or brown socks, then fair enough. But when sharing becomes automated, I get the heebie-jeebies. People already create exaggerated versions of themselves for online consumption: snarkier tweets, more outraged reactions. Online, you play at being yourself. Apply that pressure of public performance to private, inconsequential actions – such as listening to songs in the comfort of your own room – and what happens, exactly?
It'll only get worse. Here's what I am listening to on Spotify. This is the page of the book I am reading. I am currently watching the 43rd minute of a Will Ferrell movie. And I'm not telling you this stuff. The software is. I am a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll.
You know how annoying it is when you're sitting on the train with a magazine and the person sitting beside you starts reading over your shoulder? Welcome to every single moment of your future. Might as well get used to it. It's an experience we'll all be sharing.
Yes, sharing. A basic social concept that's somehow got all out of whack.
"The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era". Go to the website, where you can download the film for free.
Poet and novelist Simon Armitage has been writing about Britain for decades now. In the latest in The Guardians National Conversations series of interviews, Armitage talks to John Harris about the obstinate nature of poetry and the culture of violence in Britain that he believes precipitated the UK riots.
Is an unmade bed art? How about a saucy seaside postcard - or even a slogan T-shirt? It's art to the person who thinks it expresses their life, says Katharine Whitehorn.
Here is an excellent article from BBC News online magazine that discusses issues of taste within the High Culture/Popular Culture debate.
This blog has distilled movie poster design into 13 categories. Despite the lighthearted approach and overwhelming generalisations of the critique, the visual analysis is spot-on. Composition, colour, perspective and typefaces are all considered.
Where do artists first discover they're artists? In school, almost always – stumbling across the instrument they end up playing like a virtuoso, picking up the paintbrush that will eventually lead them to the Turner prize. But government cuts and curriculum changes have placed a question mark over arts in schools. Creative Partnerships, a scheme that saw musicians, actors and artists visit 2,500 schools every year, has been scrapped. And last December, the coalition announced that schools were to be assessed on subjects collectively known as "the English baccalaureate". This doesn't include music, art or drama.
So, if not in school, where will tomorrow's musicians, actors, dancers, directors and artists learn their craft? Step forward extracurricular arts groups. Three – the National Youth Choir, the National Youth Orchestra, and the National Youth Theatre – have been training young talent for decades. How do they do it? Who attends? And what do they get out of spending their holidays immersed in the arts? The Guardian's Laura Barnett spent a day with each to find out.
What struck me most about these youth groups? Two things: the enthusiasm of the teachers and the joy of the kids – joy in their subjects, joy in meeting others who feel the same way. It is especially stirring to see this at a time when so much is being said about the disaffection of the "lost generation". And these aren't stage-school brats. While private-school pupils still dominate, all three groups (especially NYT) are making a real effort to attract a wider range. What's also clear is that there is a gulf between arts opportunities at the average state school and those at an independent school like Shrewsbury, with its music wing stuffed with instruments. If that gulf continues to grow, we could see fewer state-school pupils even thinking of applying for groups like these. And that's a sad and worrying thought.
Ricky Gervais recently made comments on Twitter and used the word 'mong'. When disability campaigner Nicky Clarke questioned his use of the word and it's links to Down's Syndrome, a nasty war of words raged between Gervais's supporters and those sympathetic to Nicky Clarke's views. This blog entry by comedian and writer Robin Ince tries to make sense of the issues.
Cultural icon Morrissey discusses how the media is obsessed with insignificant issues and fails to make valid critical comments on the state of nation, the august riots, contemporary culture and the current music scene in an interview with clashmusic.com. Read it here.
Watch the video below and consider the cultural implications that the song implies:
Here are two articles written at the time of Tate Modern's Street Art exhibition in 2008. Francesca Gavin asks if there is an element of hypocrisy behind our attitudes. Alice Fisher comments on how an anti-establishment movement has taken over The Tate.
In this article from the BBC website, visitors to the London Tattoo Convention are asked if they have any regrets. Lucy Townsend test runs a fake tattoo but finds she isn't ready for the real thing.
In this article, Jonathan Jones argues that, far from being commercially driven and intellectually shallow, Andy Warhol's images of women are the result of his life long religious belief.
Are our most popular films, books and TV shows too entrenched in nostalgia? Read Robert McCrum and Boyd Hilton debate the state of British culture in The Guardian here.
Critic Mark Kermode has outspoken views on the movie industry's underestimation of the mainstream film-goer's intelligence. He is just as vocal about the audience's "diminished expectations". Read his comment in The Observer here.
The image above is from See No Evil - Bristol's Street Art Project, a massively successful undertaking by a forward-thinking city. But in his Guardian ArtBlog, Jonathan Jones asks whether this commercial popularity is killing the spirit of street art.
