Evolution of Pop Culture

By: Defne Eldem , Arts and Entertainments Editor, The Pawprint DAA

With a variety of meanings across time, popular culture now symbolizes the main behaviors and interests for the people of a given period, thus pop culture changes together with society. “Pop culture,” an ever-evolving term since its beginning, seems to have developed during the Industrial Revolution, when people moved from rural to urban areas and, as a result, created their own forms of expression after eventually understanding the idea of group identity. Middle-class employees utilized art and the media to distance themselves from their parents and bosses.

WWI and WWII made a permanent mark on pop culture, shifting their focus to an educational and persuading government tactic, encouraging individuals to assist with official HomeFront activities like restrictions and trash drives. Since then, the boundary between what is “commercial” and what is “genuine” has become greatly blurred, as pop culture has created a major business completely undiscovered to people.

The first pop culture “superstar” couldn’t go unacknowledged in this article as it transitioned from music to the theater arts. William Shakespeare, the actor, poet, and playwright, is one of the most important individuals in the early modern world, inspiring generations of artists from the early 1600s to the present day. Shakespeare’s works quickly spread throughout Europe, promoting English traditions portrayed in his plays in a variety of places.

Profit-driven urban centers were important in the evolution of pop culture into what it is today, taking these unique art forms to a commercial level and strongly investing in them through marketing, helping in the creation of a consumer and product brand. Pop culture spread from traditional newspapers into other kinds of media, such as cinema and broadcast radios, as educational values, new advances, and overall living quality increased.
It’s safe to say that pop-cultural evolution is closely connected with human development, adapting to new technologies, and world events. Although the setting of new pop culture might appear to be isolated to younger generations, people of all ages carry the baggage of what was popular at the time, allowing music, films, radio broadcasts, and much more to stay in constant contact with their identity.