Where'd my fizz go?
Culture, in it's vary terms and degrees of use seems to cover both the largest generalized groups as well as the smallest most secretive. Culture seems most often to refer to a way or philosophy about life and how we as humans interact with the world around us and the people in it. To me, culture deals with our impressions of the world, and the worlds impressions on us. Culture not only seems to deal with what we find is beautiful, how we should and choose to live, where we came from, what we know, what we feel we can know, but also with how we see ourselves and how we see other people, especially those different from us, or in different "cultures."
The entire world in itself has produced and will produce an incalculable number of cultures; all the way from the view of the entire world's population down to the individual, culture for most intensive purposes, to me, is life. It defines how we live life, our goals, our cares, our hobbies, our dislikes, wants and needs.
And while all these things are all uniquely personal aspects of lives, we humans, as a distinctively social species, also take influences on these ideas from our society and people around us. We take a good amount of inspiration, rationality and preferences from the communities in which we live. We use others to gauge proper conduct when we interact with our families, with our friends, with our towns, cities, states and even with others in our country.
My own personal culture combines a unique number if interests with an equally unique upbringing. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 31st, 1982. Until I got to junior high school, my family moved around because my mother worked for a national construction company called Gilbane Building Company - currently commissioned for the $50 million renovation of IMPE. So it wasn't until about 6th grade that my family settled in one place; I've lived three different places in Ohio, in Maine, in New York, in Connecticut, in Colorado as well at three different places in Illinois.
So, for the first 12-14 years of my life, I didn't have any steady friends - moving every two years about - which resulted in me focusing more of my attention on finding personal interests rather then on social interaction. And while my social circumstances have changed to a great extent, I still concentrate a large portion of my piety with what interests me.
Over the years my tastes have evolved a great deal and have reached from everything from music (classical, country, hip hop, RNB, down-tempo, house, drum and bass, jungle. anything), to art, photography, writing, physics, mathematics, history, cars, comics books, movie production, journalism, DJ'ing, video games, high end electronics, personal computing, web development, desktop publishing, interior design, graphic design, and the list goes on. I even hold little bias even when reading: from Isaac Newton, to Steven Hawking, to Charles Dickens, Michael Crichton, Ayn Rand, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Norton Juster, Dr. Seuss, Ida Tarbell, Robert Caro, Stephen King, William Shakespeare, et cetera.
My interests have reached far beyond what I've ever dreamed. Having had the pleasure a visiting Japan, London, Barcelona, Paris and Rome so far in my life, my experiences have only left me with a tasteful and burning desire to see and experience a world far outside of my own more often.
Currently my head is filled with the likes of video games, computers, school, magazines, photography, books and art. I move in an out of phases of interest and concentrate my efforts on a number of different things at a time.
To me, currently, popular culture is that of youth and all things pertaining. From the fashion of different subcultures to the music, to the art they produce and the literature they read. I find that often people associate themselves with a particular image and attempt to portray that image to rest of the world. I've experienced this solely in the way people dress as well as experimenting with how people accept me in certain circumstances, sometimes solely dependent upon what I was wearing and how I looked. People often make quick judgments of another's personal character and preferences based only on what they wear.
To exemplify my point, I played around with wearing clothes that represented different categories of youth and observed how people reacted. I always receive far more looks when dressed up in say a black satin dress shirt, dress pants and dress shoes then after simply waking up and throwing on a jeans and a hoodie. Different settings most certainly require different levels of care and appearance; it is when people appear out of the norm that they are scrutinized or in some cases, praised as an individual. There are however, ways to look good while not simply conforming to the norm of a situation. And in the end, I feel that this is often what the fashion world attempts to capture. They want to capture individuality and attract viewers, but also - most often - conform it to standard constraints of "appropriate wear" for a particular occasion. It can be done both with brands and without.
In hip hop there are a number of huge branding labels, but at the same time there are things one can buy that will acquire the look without the brand. In the "hip hop" category of dress there are brands like Sean John, Rocawear, Hilfiger Phat Farm, Mecca, Enyce, Karl Kani, Pepe, Girbaud, Ecko, Triple 5 Soul, Baby Phat, Playboy, FUBU, Wu-Wear, Outkast, MCM, Willie Esco, Johnny Blaze, Vokal, Cash Money, Snoop Dogg Gear, Avirex, Ruff Ryders, Akademiks, Polo, Pelle Pelle, Airbrushed Tees, Northface, Hardwood Classics and Timberland. All of these brands portray a certain image, some a bit more classical in approach, some more street based. They implore everything from button up plaid shirts, cashmere cardigans, sued hats, stylish sun glasses, high grade leather coats to over-sized hoodies, baggy jeans, wrinkled khakis, branded t-shirts, wrist bands, head bands, beanies, down-jackets and the like. The unique thing about this culture is that people with money also wear these brands as it is the style of what the feel. Rich or not, upper class or lower class, the wardrobe isn't to far from being so similar. Often people spend their money on clothes because it's the image their looking for.
The standard more traditionaly upper class societies we have brands like Aramani, Louis Vuitton, Gucchi, Prada, Fendi, Burberry, Hermes, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Bally, DKNY, Etro, Bottega Veneta, Prima Classe, Kieselstein-Cord, Chanel, Jamin Puech, Dooney & Bourke, Vivienne Westwood, LuLu Guinness, Salvatore Ferragamo, Judith Leiber, Desmo, Dior and Furla.
Some would even go as far to include names like Gap, Diesel, Echo, ENZO Angolini, Falor, Kipling, Lanvin, Matsuda, Missoni, Ralph Lauren, Romeo Gigli, Tommy Hilfiger, Abercrombie & Fitch, Chloe, Banna Republic, Lucky, American Eagle, Aero Postal, Express, Structure, New York & Company, Ann Taylor and Kenneth Cole.
Branding makes our world go 'round, even those unconcerned with buying brand names are impressed when they here someone mention they wearing Armani, have a Rolex or something of the sort. If anything this - branding - is a part of our culture; people where brands often because they feel it's a representation of themselves or a representation of what they want to portray, or because it looks good.
I've never particularly been one to worry about branding when it comes to fashion, but when it comes to high-end computing and electronics, brands are where it's at. Build quality, features, price, reputation of a company, experience with the brand and style are all important in making an electronics buy, and certain brands remain king in my book - namely Sony.
At the same time, I had a recent experience with a culture I'd been avoiding a bit for the past year. The local DJ culture in Champaign-Urbana goes far deeper then I had originally imagined. Once one takes the time to venture to some of the off campus bars, a distinctly more underground feel to music, style and fashion seems apparent. Far away from the scantily clad women that roam the streets like Green, Sixth and Daniel after 11pm, there is a certainly more refined flavor to both the appearance and tastes of attendees at bars. The Downtown Champaign bars generally tend to remind me more of Chicago then of Champaign Illinois. People dress classier; listen to different music - venturing away from the current mainstream hip hop craze.
One of my DJ friends asked me to DJ a slot at her 21st birthday party. Being a DJ herself, she had six different DJ's spin - all friends, all spinning different kinds of music. And then it struck me, more then anything, DJ's are fans of music in general, no matter what kind, if they think it's good, it's good to them. Beyond the standard labels and biases, if they hear something good, they admit it so. Far stranger then what you'll hear from most people. People like to generalize till their hearts content about everything in the world especially all things relating to popular culture - of which music has always been a part.
To often I've heard people say Hip Hop is thug music with no depth, or punk has turned in to mainstream trash, or rock is out. Most often I'm not sure I see people actually listening to the music they talk about. They find something they like and almost shut their ears off too it until it's almost forced down their throats. But at almost all times, the mass audience loves what's popular. If it's popular, it's hip in the general sense. And by the same token, if it's not, it's not. This idea of our culture can be applied to the way we think about everything we see, especially everything in the MASSmedia.
People consistently go from loving to hating some actors, and back again, because of a scandal, or a new movie, or a fantastic role. Though we generally all collect our favorite icons of the time, there are just some levels that people will mill over controversy until they get bored and it's onto the next topic, subject or person at hand. Its real life drama and people eat it up. Who's cool, who's not, what looks cool, what doesn't, what sounds good, what feels good, what we should buy, how we should eat and the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on. Though we all pick our favorites as I said, it's rare that you can go wrong with the popular choices, if not because that's what you like, then it's because of what everyone else has decided to like.
Now, that said, I'm not trying to purport a preposterous idea that individuality in America is dead. This is certainly not the case, I'm simply saying, from my perspective; there are large levels of perpetual hypocrisy running round in the media and in popular culture. What's hip one year, isn't the next; that's almost always the case. I'm not saying it's bad or good (ok so I am, I'm saying it's damn good), I'm saying that's our culture, we run in circles about almost every issue there is. Everything from politics to music to fashion runs on the "hot or not" American scheme of culture, and we love it, I love it. What a boring and mundane world ours would be without the continual movement of the ideas in and throughout our society.
Controversy tends to be a consistent catalyst in our own little worlds. Controversial topics to me are nothing "pop" culture fizzing up, and after it's all but settled and lost its carbonation, the topic grows stale and stagnant, and then it's on to the next hot and disturbing trepid issue. The best thing is that people can choose their small niches of interest to entertain themselves, but they can also entertain themselves on massive scale with the rest of the population when they engage in things we call "popular."
Admittedly, we humans are a species of hypocrisy, no one agrees with everyone else, and we almost always change our minds about something, about nearly everything. It is the life of our fallible race, being "right," is cool, but we tend to learn more when we're wrong, dead wrong, this is process that our culture repeats over and over. Certainly some opinions are better then others, but when it comes to pop culture the mass opinion is "the" opinion, the opinion of the masses, it's one that's never too afraid to admit it's made a mistake.
To me, popular culture is a generalized version of how we live, how we think and what we like. To me, popular culture consists of hip, stylish and young. It's your MTV, your hip hop, your fast cars, pretty women, your big budget movies and your mountains of cash. It's your brands, your labels, your TV shows. It's the Sopranos, Friends and Seinfeld. It's currently Dave Chappell and Comedy Central. Its your nightclubs, and your expensive clothing. It's your diamond rings. It's your rich and glamorous life. It's the mainstream music. It's Norah Jones, 50 Cent, Usher, Evanescence, Hobbastank, Lenny Kravitz, New Found Glory. But, it's also your home, your friends, your family. It's your public cares, your pubic beliefs, pop culture is your public life; your life in front of the rest of the world, it's your public eye on your world in general.
Popular culture seems to be a culmination of what the masses like, especially in America. Popular culture is what we see, what we like and what we buy. It's how we look at the media in general. How we view everything and how everything fits into our world. And I must say, with a life like this.. "Once you 'pop' you can't stop." Then again, that's my sole and humble opinion, plenty of room for error.