Culture & Pedagogy: On the Popular Art of Reviewing Popular Art

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- CULTURAL STUDIES AND 'THE POPULAR'

Today cultural studies is regularly credited (or charged) with having challenged and transformed a once-dominant, unreflective concept of 'mass culture' which sought to depict popular cultural forms as politically dangerous or as morally and aesthetically inferior to 'authentic culture' or art. To be sure, contemporary theorists of popular culture are quick to point out the potentially anti-democratic sentiment expressed by early depictions of so-called 'mass' culture as witless and trivial if not, in fact, responsible for many of modern society's ills. Indeed, it's rare to see the views of a Q.D. Leavis, say, or a Theodor Adorno given much …