Pop-culture--Flavor of the Month

Pop culture is comprised of everything that is fashionable in our society.  Everything that you can conjure up that is part of what the masses consider en vogue can be attributed to pop culture.  The entertainment industry has much to do with what Americans consider trendy.  The music, movies, and television that is consumed by our society is what churns out the majority of what would be considered pop culture.  It does not take into account the quality or talents of the performer or the depth of the cinematic experience. It is based solely on whether it is accepted by mainstream America.  In order for anything to become popular it must be marketable to the masses and accepted by those same people.  If you polled people today and asked them who or what comprised our pop culture you would get answers like American Idol, Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, Dancing with the Stars, etc.  All of the popular and trendy musicians, television shows, actors and actresses, and even some transcendent politicians comprise today’s pop culture.  During the sixties if you ran that same poll you would get names like JFK, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and so forth.  The common theme is that these are fixtures of what is popular at the moment and the flavor of the month so to speak.

Sadly, there are amazingly talented musicians and entertainers, whose talents are overshadowed by the freight train that seems to be pop culture.  In the essay “Pearls before Breakfast” by Gene Weingarten, the author explores how the throngs of people commuting to work in Washington DC seemingly ignore a world-renowned classical musician.  Joshua Bell is known throughout the world of classical music and plays to sold-out halls of music aficionados.  The former prodigy is considered a musical genius by many and people pay a hefty price to experience one of his concerts.  On a typical morning in the subway of our nations capital, the violinist dressed in casual clothes plays a hand-picked score of music putting every once of his energy into each note and is basically dismissed by the thousand or so people that walk by him.  Bell commented, “It was a strange feeling, that people where actually, ah … ignoring me.” The beautiful music that echoes from his one of a kind violin is not trendy by any sense of the imagination and does not fit into what the masses find attractive.  Classical music is something that is appreciated by a select group of people and therefore shunned from what is considered pop culture.  In almost an hour of playing, Mr. Bell was tipped a staggering $32.17.  I can guarantee you that if one of the popular entertainers of our era held an impromptu concert in the middle of a bustling city, people would stop and the situation would turn into a security nightmare.  Pop culture fails to embrace classical masterpieces, shunning it for another regurgitated version of what was popular on the Billboard Top 100 last week.