Understanding popular culture /

What do denim jeans, television game shows, jello wrestling, sensationalistic journalism, and shopping malls have in common? They are all examples used by John Fiske to support his intriguing analysis of popular culture. Like Herbert Gains in his Popular Culture and High Culture (1974), Fiske argues that popular culture has positive value and should not be denigrated as an act of hegemonic mass control. In fact, popular culture is created not by the cultural industry, but by the people, active agents who construct popular meaning when the social relationships of the consumer intersect with the discursive structure of the object of consumption. Popular culture is thus the generation and circulation of meanings and pleasures within a social system. However, this process reflects power struggle. Fiske asserts that much of popular culture represents a struggle between the power of the dominant system and the various forms of resistance and/or evasion that emerge during the consumption of cultural commodities. Fiske develops a theory of everyday life that focuses on the creative, specific uses to which commodities are put. The author draws heavily on European scholars to support his theory which at times is somewhat obtuse though never boring. A companion volume, Reading the Popular (1989), provides examples to Fiske's argument. Upper-divison undergraduates and above. J. Lynxwiler University of Central Florida