Reading Comics by Mila Bongco has really got me thinking. Has the dominant culture created popular culture, using popular culture as a control device to keep itself dominant in society? Popular culture is not taken seriously – it is discredited due to its consumerist rather and artistic interests and its lack or rebellion of “standard American” morals and values. Popular culture, like comic books, is aimed towards the masses and as Bongco explains that “its generally accessibility (contrary to catering to a ‘cultured’ or ‘cultivated’ few) […] is characterized as unsophisticated and hence easy to cater to” (25). Popular culture is again devalued with the notion the mature and intelligent would not be bothered with such related mediums.
Combining the unimpressive packaging and delivery of popular culture with messages that contradict the ideology of the dominant culture, it is easy for the messages to be swiftly discredited as well. Bongco leads me to question that perhaps popular culture “[has been] ‘framed,’ their voice and arguments distorted and labeled as deviant and wrong, in such a way as to depoliticize them” (26). If values and ideas of popular culture are dismissed and presumed as immoral and incorrect, it can be assumed that the opposite values and ideas, or the values and ideas of the dominant culture would in fact be true. By placing oppositions and arguments against the ideologies of the “standard American” culture in a forum that can be easily challenged then rejected, the dominant culture can be perceived as superior by default.
Could this be the purpose for popular culture and not for the mediocre entertainment it is projected to be? Even the question reminds us to continue to think critically and examine more closely what the media, government, or other institutions are handing us. Quoting Bongco one last time, why aren’t we questioning “other major institutions of communication such as the Church, or the Law, whose legitimacy and responsibility seem to be taken for granted” (31)?
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