One of the symptoms of academia’s struggle with defining popular culture is the inclusion and exclusion of many ideas and peoples. What this article made my question is the loose incorporation of stamps as Jack Child argues into the “what is popular culture?” discourse. Ultimately, after reading the Child article, I’m left unconvinced that it has a place in the popular culture discourse of the past or even in this technological age of modern popular culture. One of my larger criticisms of the article is that I do not believe it really gave a full answer as to how stamps are part of the popular culture of Latin America, he even said himself that stamps are products of the government. If we use our loose and flawed current definition of popular culture, as it stands in week two, (I will touch more on the definition later as I think it is pertinent to my point) then stamps are not products of ‘ordinary people’ (again more comments on ordinary to follow) because they are products of government. I can see how they could be considered products of a more general idea of culture, but the popular, I’m not too sure (I look for someone to convince me otherwise).
As I said previously, Child mentions that stamps are a product produced by the government, therefore I view that more strongly as a means of a propaganda even through his own example. This also brings up what I wanted to talk in class about on Friday, but we didn’t have enough time (perhaps I will talk about it tomorrow) that I’m perplexed towards our working definition of popular culture and don’t find it necessarily useful or accurate. The first concern is that there is no boundary as to what popular culture is: are stamps considered popular culture or just a symptom of general culture? Through our definition, who gets excluded or accidentally included by the term ‘ordinary people’? My general argument to our working definition is that it excludes many of the peoples whom we owe to our popular culture: communities of colour and the queer community as examples (There would be no modern make-up culture without drag queens and no Eminem without black artists). Essentially, our working-definition doesn’t give credit to the communities who deserve the accreditation. So, our working-definition is over accepting of stamps into the discourse on popular culture because of the thin and almost non-existent borders that it currently has, which isn’t to say that it has no place, but rather that we need clearer lines as to if it is to be accepted into this discourse especially since it excludes many perspectives at the same time.
“This also brings up what I wanted to talk in class about on Friday, but we didn’t have enough time (perhaps I will talk about it tomorrow) that I’m perplexed towards our working definition of popular culture and don’t find it necessarily useful or accurate. ”
OK, Dylan, you’ll have center stage tomorrow!
I think what’s at issue, in part at least, is that we haven’t yet thought much about what is meant by “the people.” Perhaps that’s something we need to investigate further, starting tomorrow.
Hi Dylan!
I definitely agree that I was left unconvinced by Child’ article that postage stamps should be considered a part of popular culture. I also like your readiness to challenge our current definition of Popular Culture, as I think that’s such an important thing to be able to do, especially in classes such as this one.
I would like to point out something that I mentioned in class, and that is that while stamps are indeed products of the government, the art that is on them is a product of artists contracted by the government. Of course, those images are usually already picked out by the Postmaster General when they contract these artists, so I suppose that could take away some of the effect of that point. On the other hand, the Postmaster General makes decisions on which image to put on a stamp based on recommendations from advisors as to what would be most effective according to current events and culture. That is why you can find postage stamps with images such as Harry Potter and Janis Joplin. Now, as I said, I’m not convinced that this means that stamps should be considered popular culture. However, as you said, we must give credit where credit is due!