The lore of popular culture. Such a simple phrase. And yet one loaded with context and nuance and considerations from every conceivable angle. The very combination seems a contradiction: popular culture is manufactured and corporate; lore is communal and organic. Academic folklorists scoff at the very notion of popular culture and pop culture scholars dismiss folklore.
But what about everyone else? There are undeniably moments, people, and ideas that live on in the public consciousness as more than literal memories but as narratives — stories with cultural meaning, passed on over time to represent the values of the culture itself. It is in these narratives where the line between folklore and popular culture has become blurred beyond meaningful distinction.
Let’s take, for example, Woodstock. The literal event that was Woodstock exists in the mind of the public because of popular culture’s representation of the event, not because we all physically experienced one weekend in 1969. Countless documentaries, movies, albums, and news broadcasts have created and reinforced a narrative that equated Woodstock with an invented culture of the 1960s; namely, “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”
So we have Woodstock, an event of popular culture, was repurposed by popular culture (eg, movies), and distributed to popular culture in order to reinforce an imagined narrative of what popular culture in the 1960s was like for popular culture.
Confused? Don’t be, it’s just poplore.
In this series, we’ll take a look at countless more examples and analyze why and how they fit into this poplore paradigm, and what it means for studying American culture. By using the tools of folkloristics to dissect and critique popular culture, we may just find a new understanding of the narratives that shape and inform our everyday lives. If nothing else, this should be a lot of fun because — let’s be real — if you’re not having fun, what’s the point?