Avoiding the popular

We all know them: the roommate who refuses to listen to Coldplay; the girlfriend who won't read Harry Potter; the sibling who forswore Survivor.

"It's formulaic and cliched," they say. Or, "It's part of a brainwashing conspiracy." Sure, sure. We see right through your excuses, and we know the real reason why you claim not to like Justin Timberlake: He's too popular.

Popularity's capacity to negatively influence taste is undeniable. But should it be? Is the popularity of a cultural product a relevant criterion of aesthetic preference? Are you reasonable in disliking Bono, not because he's bad but just because he's popular?

The answer is often no. Dislike for a pop culture item that stems from cultural elitism is ultimately just another brand of conformity. The difference between an elitist and my 11-year-old sister is that, while the latter chooses what other people choose, the former chooses what other people don't.

And that reeks of the worst kind of pretense and conceit. Few comments are more flagrantly self-congratulatory than "I was listening to Iron and Wine way before the Garden State soundtrack" or "this poem is so deep -- thank God I can read Cyrillic."

"I think it's too bad that people have so much of themselves bound up in their tastes," said 2004 College alumnus Etan Rosenbloom, a senior staff writer at the online magazine Prefix. "Who wants to say that they listen to run-of-the-mill, average music? Who wants to be identified as a run-of-the-mill, average person?"

But don't write off everyone with eclectic tastes; there are some tantalizing arguments for avoiding the mainstream. Popular culture is a huge industry that can distort the individual creative act. Using disturbingly sophisticated marketing techniques, cultural distributors fine-tune their products and carefully package them for mass consumption.

The result can be a little too polished.

"In allying myself with the counterculture, I see the creative act as rebellion," musician Christian Ervin told me. "Non-mainstream cultural products are somehow more pure, even if flawed -- or, actually, particularly if flawed -- because how else are we to place our mark of rebellion against the standardization of aesthetic practices?"

Penn professor Charles Bernstein, a critically acclaimed poet, suggested to me that the most popular artists are rarely the most innovative, and he challenged the priviledge of entertainment value over innovation.

"Poetry is an unpopular genre," he said, "but it's also the [research and development] of culture. The value of innovation in poetry may be similar to that in business -- it's a necessity."

Penn also has its mainstream, subcultures and countercultures. The University's large, culture-conscious student body -- and its formidable reserves of disposable capital -- sits right at the intersection of the two dominant, divergent trends in contemporary pop culture.

The first is the continuing commoditization, commercialization and capitalization of the culture industries. Today the production of art is more market-conscious and top-down than ever before. Trite crazes -- like reality television and boy bands -- dominate the major channels of media distribution. These evil forces unite when record company executives hold auditions and mold musicians to fit specific markets -- on television.

In addition to the move toward homogeneity, we are witnessing what I like to call the democratization of culture. This trend began in the 1960s, when the underground elbowed its way into the mainstream and voices of dissent, angst and even rebellion took over the vanguard of popular culture.

Today, the democratization of culture continues through technology and on the Internet.

The dominant cultural distributors are being undermined by peer-to-peer networks, digital home studios and the online proliferation and liberalization of information.

For example, recordings of artists, authors and poets are available for free download through PennSound, an online project that Bernstein co-directs. Through projects such as PennSound, the Internet is transforming the means of cultural production and distribution.

It's tricky to gauge whether the overall trend is toward homogeneity or diversity -- after all, we live in the times of both Napster and American Idol. But as conglomerates continue to amalgamate and the resistance continues to innovate, the battle for our popular culture will only escalate. The future of creativity could be at stake -- so please, consume responsibly.

Daniel Nieh is a senior East Asian Languages and Civilizations major from Portland, Ore. Low End Theory appears on Fridays.

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