Popular culture takes many forms in our society. It can range from the long standing impacts of professional musicians such as Michael Jackson to the invention of the new i-phone. However, one cannot truly evaluate the impacts of culture shifts in today’s periods without considering the impacts of current economic times and its impacts on popular culture.
Now you may ask yourself what today’s economic troubles have to do with popular culture, and I am about to tell you. Most of us under the age of 80 have no idea what it was like to live during the great depression. During those times families lived off of their home grown gardens, their hunted venison and many other homemade items. The economically troubled times had a wide impact on just about everyone. Businesses closed, consumer spending shrank, taxes increased and millions were without jobs. Sounding familiar. It should because it is exactly what we are seeing today.
According to Mortimer Zuckermen, in his recent article Nine Reasons the Economy is Not Getting Better, we are seeing wide spread economic retractions. This has a direct impact on the popular cultures of today. We are once again seeing families planting gardens, learning to can, preserve items and hunt for food for their families to eat. We are also seeing consumer spending on unnecessary items decrease. All of these changes will have a pronounced shift on the popular culture of today’s society.
Families will once again visit the local amusement parks as opposed to going on that cruise or taking the family on a weeklong beach vacation. We will see families staying at home and watching rented videos from Blockbuster instead of going out to the more expensive movie theaters, and we may not see as many families spending lavishly on items such as the new i-phone when they can buy the more utilitarian phone for much less money. Either way, today’s economics have a profound effect on popular culture.
At one time in many of our lives, we may have bared witness to the chiding remarks of many about the poor, decrepit, mediocre ways of our forefathers and how we are a much more advanced society. I have only this to ask, are we really that advanced. Sure we may have knowledgeable scientist, astronomers and physicist but without the money to fund the research and studies of these professionals all progress will cease. Life will once again take on the utilitarian aspects of mere survival, and the luxuries of today shrink as industries find themselves unable to survive without the surplus spending of today’s citizens. The current contractures, much the same as previous contractures will undoubtedly result in further consumer withdraws and a return to the popular cultures of yesteryear, hunting, fishing, and gardening as opposed to vegetarianism and shop hopping. The popular culture is seeing a shift; return even, to the cultures of yesterday. I say so be it….It was the life of excess and loss of values that propelled this country into the current position it is in. May we all survive this crisis and may we as well as our children learn from our mistakes and never look at popular culture the same again.
Bibliography
Yahoo Finance. (2009, July 15). Retrieved July 16, 2009, from U.S. News a World Report: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nine-Reasons-the-Economy-is-usnews-1021116601.html?x=0&.v=1
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