Bottom-Up Pop Culture

Why is it that so much of widely prevalent pop culture has such lowly, nay, disreputable, origins? This phenomenon spans everything from fast food (pizza was originally a creative way of using leftovers in working-class bakeries near the docklands of Naples, Italy) to music (expletive-laden rap lyrics started out as street poetry from poor black ghettoes in America’s decaying inner cities).

Other examples abound. Take fashion, for example. T-shirts were originally crude working shirts for sailors laboring in the sultry tropics, fashioned from the cotton lining of chests used to store tea. Jeans began as miners’ working trousers, hacked out of sailcloth…

Music and the performing arts provide even more examples. The Blues, that plaintive musical expression of poor black slaves and sharecroppers of the American Deep South is the foundation of much of today’s Rhythm& Blues, Jazz, Pop and Rock music. Then there’s the Tango, an energetic expression of sexuality, owing to its origins in the brothels of Argentina. Or the fact that samba ensembles from favelas or slums put up the most spectacular shows in the carnivals of Brazil.  

Closer to home, we’ve had the tapori influence on Bollywood, spawned from the chawls of Mumbai. And what about ghazals and kathak, both of which had far from respectable origins in the seedy kothas of the courtesan’s quarters of Awadh? And as Tariq Ali has pointed out, some of the sharpest, most bitingly satirical poetry on the present political mess in Pakistan has come from the hermaphrodite minstrels of that country; the Hijras, whose ambivalent sexual status enables them to address both genders with impunity at public functions.

Even a lot of what is counted as mainstream highbrow culture today had origins that were somewhat déclassé. Once upon a time, opera was the 17^th century Italian equivalent of the trashy Bollywood blockbuster, providing an often melodramatic orgy of spectacular blood-and-thunder to thrill the lumpen masses.  The novel in its earliest avatars was derided as a frivolous, even sinful, distraction; one that diverted Christians from proper perusal of The Good Book, i.e. The Bible.

However, a good deal of popular literature has remained defiantly raffish, trendily disreputable even now; the kind unlikely to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Or, for that matter, any other prestigious mainstream literary award, such as the Booker Prize. I’m glad to say that two of my favorite genres, Science Fiction and the Graphic Novel can be counted among these – though they have their own awards – the Hugo and Nebulas and the Eisners.

The lowly pulp origins of both mean that they have not (yet) been wholly hijacked by stultifying academe and cordoned off from the general public as the exclusive preserve of a narrow circle of the literati. What both have is a large and articulate fan base that actively participates in the production of their favored genre through conventions, blogs and fan fiction. The producers of Science Fiction and Graphic Novels have a very symbiotic relation with their readers, one that has so far prevented both genres from lapsing into excessive self-referential navel-gazing.

Judging from the rude vitality and widespread popularity of much middlebrow pop culture, this may be a good thing. Highbrow mainstream “respectability” could well be the kiss of death for both and should be avoided at all costs. That way lies the Sahitya Kala Academy – with a lot of worthy works unread and shows unseen, except by a very small coterie of culture vultures.