Pop culture pathology (or Popular culture pathology) is the forensic study of popular culture in fields such as celebrity, music, fashion, food, aesthetic desire, television, as well as additional and often obscure media and stimuli. Pop culture pathology is an obscure branch of both Critical Theory and Cultural Studies.
Originating in private universities in the United States around the turn of the millennium, pop culture pathology is the systematic attempt to analyze trends in culture in order to examine more closely the relationships that the individual has to the world around them. The studies include experiments with the aesthetic experiences that people have in common, with the goal being to uncover the intrinsic trend that allows for the phenomenon of extrinsic trends. Some common philosophical foundations for this tradition are Michel Foucault and the philosophy of deconstruction pioneered by Jacques Derrida.
Read more about Pop Culture Pathology: The Botto Experiment, Implications of Popular Culture Pathology, What Comes Next?
Famous quotes containing the words pop culture, pop, culture and/or pathology:
“There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“It is often said that Poland is a country where there is anti-semitism and no Jews, which is pathology in its purest state.”
—Bronislaw Geremek (b. 1932)