The Functions of Popular Culture

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This is a summary of my 2007 article "Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular Culture" from The Journal of Popular Culture. I argue that the basic functions of popular culture today are the same basic functions of crime, as described by Emile Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Method in 1895.

Briefly, these social functions are to:

produce social norms,
establish social boundaries,
create rituals that generate social solidarity,
generate innovation, and
pave the way for social change.

It's tempting to give specific examples from film, television or music for each, but that would be misleading. Popular culture accomplishes these functions through blunt ubiquitous force, not through acute specificity. We don't turn to one TV show for our norms and another for our innovations. What Not to Wear may in fact tell us what to wear, but we also figure out how to dress ourselves from all of the other media we consume. Most people will never watch that one show, and yet many will still wear the very same clothes. A million cultural exchanges, mediated by a handful of cultural industries allow popular commercial culture to, in effect, hold our society together. To some, it looks like social cohesion and sociality. To others, repression and hegemony.

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