{"id":378,"date":"2012-07-24T13:42:32","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T13:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=378"},"modified":"2016-09-13T21:08:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T21:08:34","slug":"is-there-such-thing-as-low-brow-taking-pop-culture-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/is-there-such-thing-as-low-brow-taking-pop-culture-seriously","title":{"rendered":"Is There Such Thing as “Low-Brow?” Taking Pop Culture Seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by Martha Hoffman, Journals Editorial and Production Manager<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Maybe it\u2019s my age, but sometimes I feel like two different people inhabit my mind: there\u2019s the person that was obsessed with sociology in college, reading Critical Race Theory for fun and over-scheduling classes I didn\u2019t need because I was genuinely excited at the thought of learning and figuring out what I was most passionate about. This is the half of me that feels most at home at Berghahn, the intellectually curious and studious parts of me thriving as I help in the production of academic and scholarly journals.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also the other part of me: the girl that loves reality television, blockbuster movies and popular music. I can spend hours looking for fun dance songs, watching network comedies and am willing to pay NYC movie theatre ticket prices to see a rom-com if a friend is willing to do the same.<\/p>\n

The other day, I was working on creating an ad for a new issue of Girlhood Studies<\/a><\/em>. I was looking at the last issue, and an article title caught my eye: \u201cSome Assembly Required: Black Barbie and the Fabrication of Nicki Minaj.\u201d<\/a> The topic of Minaj has come up in my life from time to time, though it\u2019s usually on the internet, radio or tv, and if anyone\u2019s discussing her it\u2019s usually not her merits or her culture significance but rather her butt, face or the fact that she can\u2019t rap. It\u2019s not that I think Minaj can\u2019t rap, I\u2019ve just noticed that the most vocal commentors of the artist are those insisting she\u2019s not an artist to begin with. With any type of fame, knee-jerk vitriol seems to follow. Admittedly, my comments about her have often fallen into similarly shallow categories, albeit positive: I think she\u2019s beautiful, funny and a decent rapper. However, other than those cursory observations, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever stood back and thought about her in a larger context, whether it be from a gender-, race- or cultural standpoint.<\/p>\n

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I think this happens with a lot of popular culture. It becomes relegated to only being pop culture, and that\u2019s where it remains in the psyche of both its audience and those who choose not to participate.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Dawn Whitney\u2019s article provided a fresh reminder that it doesn\u2019t have to be this way. Too often, ugly terms like \u2018highbrow\u2019 and \u2018lowbrow\u2019 end up relegating certain parts of culture to never be examined or taken seriously. But why shouldn\u2019t they? Nicki Minaj is listened to and watched by millions of people, many of whom are young, impressionable girls. I\u2019m used to seeing academic articles dissecting Shakespeare, Sartre, Woolf, and Donne. But why was it so jarring to be sitting at my desk and see the last name \u201cMinaj\u201d jump out at me while I flipped the pages?\u00a0 So many mainstream movies, musicians, and television shows are considered \u201cguilty\u201d pleasures. They are cultural consumption that doesn\u2019t get talked about, unless it\u2019s in terse, over-simplified summations: \u2018I hate her,\u2019 or \u2018I love him\u2019 or \u2018that movie sucks\u2019 or \u2018that song is so annoying.\u2019 It\u2019s refreshing to see an academic article in an award-winning journal that delves into the complicated construction of a public persona that could easily fall into one of these categories.<\/p>\n

Pop culture and academic writing shouldn\u2019t feel as dichotomous as it sometimes does. Even while willfully ignoring the newest trends and fads, it\u2019s important to recognize the influence of popular culture on ourselves as well as younger generations. Even if I hadn\u2019t already been a fan of Nicki Minaj, Whitney\u2019s article points out that her existence is influencing perceptions of femininity, race, and what constitutes musical talent for a large part of a burgeoning generation. Why would I want to ignore that? Why would anybody? Whitney\u2019s article is well-written, and her interest in a topic that many other scholars wouldn\u2019t touch is exciting.<\/p>\n

I want to challenge myself to reject the notion that the part of me that loves a sappy Hugh Grant movie or the newest song by Britney Spears can\u2019t be the same person that works at Berghahn and loves academic non-fiction. I think the two interests make for an interesting perspective, and it\u2019s one that makes journals like Girlhood Studies<\/em> so revolutionary and important.<\/p>\n

Though I know GHS <\/em>is far from the first journal to write about pop culture from an interdisciplinary standpoint, and Whitney isn\u2019t the first to write about Minaj, I\u2019m still taking this blog post as a platform from which I can express my excitement about well-researched and dynamic pop culture writing. There\u2019s a chance Whitney herself wouldn\u2019t agree with the way I\u2019ve interpreted her article, and so I feel compelled to include the disclaimer that these are my feelings upon reading her article, and nothing more. Maybe Whitney should be left out entirely.<\/p>\n

I remember in college I once had a professor that was impressed by my coursework, but also continually fascinated by my love of reality television. He treated it as such an anomaly to my character, as if I had a third arm, the standard two being my love of English and writing and then this third protruding limb: my fervored excitement when I talked about Real Housewives or the Real World. \u201cHow do you sit through it? It\u2019s so painful!\u201d I tried to explain that it was its mass appeal that excited me, it\u2019s obvious, accelerated influence on media and television. The way it agitated culture\u2014the way it agitated him<\/em>\u2014was fascinating and it didn\u2019t feel like something that so many should be able to ignore. I think around that time I started to shut up about popular culture around others for fear of embarrassment, but I wish I hadn\u2019t. It\u2019s worse not to be looking at it. It\u2019s worse not to care.<\/p>\n

Image: Nicki Minaj at the Fall\/Winter 2011 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, by Christopher Macsurak<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Martha Hoffman, Journals Editorial and Production Manager   Maybe it\u2019s my age, but sometimes I feel like two different people inhabit my mind: there\u2019s the person that was obsessed with sociology in college, reading Critical Race Theory for fun and over-scheduling classes I didn\u2019t need because I was genuinely excited at the thought of… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,222],"tags":[157,198,199],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9148,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/9148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}