1/91 I’m about to post a LONG series of tweets for The Popular Culture and Pedagogy Conference. The conference is being conducted entirely on Twitter. #POPC1
2/91 The title of my presentation is “Pop Cultural Literacy”. This is not an academic paper broken into a series of Tweets. #POPC1
3/91 Instead, this is a series of Tweets that, taken together, may vaguely resemble a conference paper. I won’t be carefully presenting an argument for a thesis. Instead I’ll be riffing on a series of related themes.#POPC1
4/91 In 1987 E.D. Hirsch’s book CULTURAL LITERACY caused controversy by claiming that there are things that everyone needs to know.#POPC1
5/91 There was no real need for controversy, though. Hirsch was simply arguing that common knowledge, shared information, is the basis for successful communication. #POPC1
6/91 Hirsch’s book included a list of things everyone needs to know, but the list was descriptive, not prescriptive. The items on the list were the kind of things one needed to know to read and make sense of a New York Times article. #POPC1
7/91 The controversy came when people misinterpreted Hirsch as saying that this list was fixed and set. Not only would Hirsch deny that, but he would deny that the items on the list were more intrinsically valuable than items not on the list. #POPC1
8/91 Hirsch readily acknowledged that the list was subject to change. Not many items on Hirsch’s list would count as popular culture.#POPC1
9/91 But these days any list of what constitutes cultural literacy would need to include items of popular culture. You would need to recognize Nirvana as a band from Seattle and not just as a Buddhist state of enlightenment.#POPC1
10/91 Successful teachers draw on pop-cultural literacy to effectively communicate with students. It was this desire to connect with students that led me into writing about pop culture. #POPC1
11/91 In the mid 1990’s the television show SEINFELD was huge. Most college students watched it regularly, and even those who didn’t watch regularly knew the main characters and the plots lines of some famous episodes.#POPC1
12/91 Students often knew the show better than I did, and they felt empowered in our classroom discussions as a result.#POPC1
13/91 Using pop culture in this way showed good will, and it fostered a sense of good will whereby students were willing to give philosophy a chance in a way they might not have otherwise.#POPC1
14/91 Because the Seinfeld was well-known, witty, and keenly observant about human nature, it made a perfect point of reference in philosophy class. At academic conferences, I frequently watched the show with colleagues and remarked on what lines would make it into a lect. #POPC1
15/91 When it was announced that the show was going off the air, I recruited a bunch of philosophy professors to memorialize our use of the show in the book SEINFELD AND PHILOSOPHY.#POPC1
16/91 The book was a commercial success, leading to similar books on THE SIMPSONS and THE MATRIX. 20 years later I have been involved in the production of over 75 similar books.#POPC1
17/91 The motivation of these books has been to duplicate what works in the classroom, connecting with people in terms of what they know already, some piece of pop culture, to discuss something they may not already know or be interested in, namely philosophy.#POPC1
18/91 While names like Plato and Aristotle rightly belong on any list of terms for cultural literacy, we need to show people why they should care about them. Explaining Aristotle with Homer (Simpson) can be more effective than appealing to Homer (the epic poet).#POPC1
19/91 Hirsch was worried about a loss of cultural literacy because of the problems it caused for those who lacked it and because it led to a diminished sense of community.#POPC1
20/91 These days I worry about a lack of pop cultural literacy. When I began this work in the late 1990’s there was a unified pop culture. You didn’t have to be fan of Nirvana or an avid viewer of FRIENDS to have a pretty good idea of what they were about. #POPC1
21/91 Fast forward 20 years and there is very little in the realm of pop culture that everyone can be counted on to know. I suppose that GAME OF THRONES references are recognizable even to people who never watched the show. But that is a rare exception.#POPC1
22/91 The explosion of the internet as well as the emergence of cable channels like HBO as purveyors of original dramas and comedies has resulted in a lack of a common popular culture.#POPC1
23/91 There is no single show or movie or song that everyone can be counted on to know and care about, never mind think deeply about.#POPC1
24/91 On the other hand, there are more options and more niches, allowing people to find shows, movies, and music that really fit their tastes and interests. It’s just that there are fewer people to share those tastes and interests with us.#POPC1
25/91 However, the internet has made it possible to find and join fan communities with people from all over the world. So now if you’re the only person in your high school who is obsessed with Green Lantern you don’t have to be alone.#POPC1
26/91 The philosopher Ted Cohen liked to speak about the “cultivation of intimacy” when it comes to works of art.#POPC1
27/91 Being fans or admirers of an artist or artwork joins us together in community with other fans or admirers. We feel an emotional connection to them, an affinity, a certain intimacy. #POPC1
28/91 Nearly everyone likes the Mona Lisa and the Beatles, so we don’t ordinarily feel a great connection with fellow fans of these icons. #POPC1
29/91 Of course, if we are more than just casual fans, then we may feel an intimate connection to other serious fans. But it is not automatic among casual fans.#POPC1
30/91 This is not to say that a pop culture icon cannot be huge and yet inspire devotion and connection. Star Wars fans come to mind in this regard.#POPC1
31/91 They may find it easier to bond with another person if the other person is a Star Wars fan, and not necessarily a mega-fan.#POPC1
32/91 Smaller icons, though, seem to generally inspire more immediate and perhaps deeper connections among fans. Here I think of fans of shows like Firefly, Supernatural, Veronica Mars, and Arrested Development. #POPC1
33/91 Fans of cult shows and films are often obsessive and speak to one another in the idioms of the fictional worlds. They are like two Americans who meet in Prague.#POPC1
34/91 They have a quick and easy bond that may lead to a deeper bond. At the very least they speak the same language and share a common set of experiences that sets them apart from others and joins them together. #POPC1
35/91 Ted Cohen thinks that it is important to have this kind of intimacy with at least some people. We do not want to feel all alone in what we like. When others like what we do, our tastes are validated.#POPC1
36/91 The discovery of one area of common fandom may lead to discovery of another. Long before algorithms that suggested other things we might like, we knew that fandoms formed overlapping circles. A fan of x was also likely to be a fan of y.#POPC1
37/91 There are some cult icons that we don’t want too many other people to like or appreciate, though. We see this especially with music.#POPC1
38/91 Consider a band you liked before most people had heard of them. That early fandom connects you strongly to other early fans, and it can inspire a sense of superiority over those who come to the party later.#POPC1
39/91 With bands, it can also inspire a sense of ownership. We can come to feel as if the band owes us something for being there from the beginning, and we can feel betrayed when the band’s sound changes and attracts a larger audience.#POPC1
40/91 As Cohen suggests, our needs for connection and intimacy with fellow fans vary. Sometimes it is nice to connect with a large crowd on a surface level, as one might in singing along to a Billy Joel song.#POPC1
41/91 Some of the connection and pop cultural literacy that we value is generational. I was 11 years old when MTV first came on the air, and I feel something more than nostalgia for the songs and videos from the first few years of MTV. #POPC1
42/91 I can immediately connect with someone the same age who remembers the same videos and can name the original VJs.#POPC1
43/91 It’s not really fandom that makes the MTV connection, but rather a common experience. MTV is a bit like an old neighborhood that I didn’t always like but which nonetheless supplied the basis for experience. #POPC1
44/91 Of course, other generations can point to other sources of pop cultural connection, like remembering the night they saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, but I wonder if such touchstones have become fewer and less powerful.#POPC1
45/91 As a teacher, I look for common elements of pop culture that students will recognize, understand, and appreciate. My goal is to take students from what is familiar in pop culture to what is foreign in philosophy by speaking the idiom of pop culture.#POPC1
46/91 But the older I get, the harder this is to do. Part of that is natural. The older generation is usually not on the cutting edge in its appreciation of pop culture. But part of it seems to result from a loss of history and a splintering of tastes.#POPC1
47/91 I’ve already suggested that with the profusion of TV, movies, and music made available by the internet we can no longer count on a handful of pop culture icons to provide a common language. A related consequence is that older pop culture is soon forgotten.#POPC1
48/91 Once upon a time, historical knowledge of pop culture could be counted on for pop cultural literacy. A kid in the 80’s knew the music of the 60’s and knew many television shows from the 60’s thanks to reruns.#POPC1
49/91 Now, with so much available, there is no need to go back into the vault to find movies, music, and TV you like.#POPC1
50/91 For at least 5-7 years after THE MATRIX came out in 1999, I could count on every student in my class knowing the movie. Now, 20 years later, only a small fraction know about the choice between the red pill and the blue pill.#POPC1
51/91 Teachers still bemoan the difficulty of getting students to read books. But these days it can be difficult to get students to watch a Hitchcock film or listen to a Bob Dylan song outside the classroom. #POPC1
52/91 Yes, these artworks seem old, but the cultural distance that students must cross is equally off-putting for some of them.#POPC1
53/91 Maybe it’s a good thing that we move on quickly thanks to new movies, music, and TV. But it worries me that pop culture is disposable.#POPC1
54/91 After all, that is one of the charges brought against pop culture: that, unlike high culture, pop culture is not meant to last and isn’t worth preserving.#POPC1
55/91 The truth is that most high culture isn’t worth preserving either.#POPC1
56/91 We have only a handful of Greek tragedies and comedies—most have been lost. Likely they were not as good and not as worth preserving.#POPC1
57/91 Similarly, we have only a small fraction of the Elizabethan dramas performed on London stages. Yes, we have all of Shakespeare, but nearly all of the works of his contemporaries have been lost.#POPC1
58/91 We should note, of course, that Greek tragedies and Shakespearean plays were the popular culture of their time. They were appreciated by regular people and only became the stuff of scholars hundreds of years later.#POPC1
59/91 Barring complete catastrophe, all, or nearly all, of today’s popular culture will be preserved in digital form. In the future, historians will likely have access to nearly all the popular culture of our time. #POPC1
60/91 What will they think? Will they be able to sort the wheat from the chaff? Will they be guided by what our tastes were? Will they come to appreciate movies, music, and TV that we did not consider to be first-rate? #POPC1
61/91 In the classroom I have found short references to popular culture to be more effective than extended illustrations. This is because my pedagogy is to use pop culture to explain philosophy rather than to make pop culture an object of study.#POPC1
62/91 Of course many people do study and teach pop culture, but that is not my own interest or approach even though I have great respect for the artistic value of many works of pop culture.#POPC1
63/91 In order for short references to work effectively for all the students in the class, the work of pop culture needs to be shown or explained.#POPC1
64/91 For example, in class I will sum up the plot of the SOUTH PARK episode “Cartman Land” and then explain how it illustrates the problem of evil. #POPC1
65/91 It used to be possible to make quick SEINFELD references like “not that there’s anything wrong with that” or “yada yada yada” that virtually everyone would get.#POPC1
66/91 Today virtually no student knows SEINFELD, and the pop culture fan bases are so dispersed that it’s difficult to make a reference that nearly everyone will get. #POPC1
67/91 I suppose that for a moment it has been possible to reference the House Lannister, but soon that reference will not resonate widely, much as references to Slytherin no longer bring knowing nods. #POPC1
68/91 The fact is that attempts at inclusion through pop culture references have always involved exclusion as well. Even when all students knew SEINFELD, not all of them knew it well or liked it. So my references would end up marginalizing or alienating some students.#POPC1
69/91 This is the unfortunate thing about cultivating intimacy through pop culture connections. We exclude by our attempts to include. This is not our intention or design, but it is our effect. So what can we do about it? #POPC1
70/91 One of the dangers of using pop culture references in the classroom is that the teacher ends up looking like he is trying too hard to be cool. Nothing is less cool than trying to be cool. #POPC1
71/91 So, sometimes I’ll purposely use a way out-of-date reference to Mr. T or Michael Jackson to elicit groans of dissatisfaction, opening up the opportunity for students to supply their own, more current references or examples. #POPC1
72/91 My experience is that students are often hesitant to supply their own examples because they consider taste so subjective that they don’t want to assume or impose their tastes on the rest of the class.#POPC1
73/91 This strikes me as very different from my own experience in college from 1988-1992. My impression and recollection of myself and my classmates is that we had very definite and very differing views about the superiority of certain movies, music, and tv. #POPC1
74/91 We were not shy about speaking about the movies, music, and tv we liked, and we were glad to argue for their superiority and to express our dislike for what we found to be inferior. Maybe my memory is skewed or inaccurate.#POPC1
75/91 But it seems to me that today’s students are more concerned with not causing offense to others by expressing belief in the superiority of what they like.#POPC1
76/91 Oddly, there was probably more of a need for sensitivity is my student days because we quite often had definite opinions about what we liked and why. More importantly, there were strong socioeconomic correlations to fandoms.#POPC1
77/91 Preppy kids, who tended to come from wealthier families, liked U2, The Smiths, and The Cure, whereas kids from blue collar families liked classic rock and metal. A whole constellation of tastes in clothes and cars went along with the music.#POPC1
78/91 Indeed, musical preferences could be used to signal not just socioeconomic status but to mark ethnic and racial divisions, with dance music and rap as the listening preferences for many minorities.#POPC1
79/91 Maybe I’m just too old and unobservant, but these days I don’t notice large socioeconomic divisions in pop culture fandom.#POPC1
80/91 When I ask students about it, they agree. Contra Bordieu, they don’t see a class divide concerning the cultural capital of high culture either.#POPC1
81/91 I don’t have empirical evidence, but I suspect they are correct, or at least that high culture is no longer quite as exclusive as it used to be. If so, that is a good thing. And it leads us back to the earlier concern about inclusion and exclusion. #POPC1
82/91 It is no longer as predictable who will feel excluded by a reference. Sports fandoms are telling in this regard. Pittsburgh Steelers fans are in the minority in my area of PA—most people are Eagles fans. #POPC1
83/91 So when I wear a Steelers shirt I get lots of positive comments from other Steelers fans. We are bound by being in the minority. No one feels excluded because of my shirt. #POPC1
84/91 But when I mention the Steelers in class I connect with only a few students, and the Eagles fans tend to feel excluded.#POPC1
85/91 One of the aims of this conference is to be available to anyone with a Twitter account and an internet connection. That is certainly laudatory. After all, many academic conferences cost a lot of money for registration, travel, and lodging.#POPC1
86/91 People who don’t have the time or money are excluded from such conferences.#POPC1
87/91 Twitter itself can be considered part of popular culture. The medium is the message, as McLuhan said.#POPC1
88/91 I have to admit that as a technophobe who will soon turn 50, I probably would not have participated in this conference if I had not been invited to give this keynote. I don’t Tweet very much, nor do I monitor my Twitter feed closely.#POPC1
89/91 I like that Twitter requires brevity, but I’ve short-circuited that requirement by sending out a large number of brief tweets. Maybe that’s OK, and maybe more communication will be done this way in the future.#POPC1
90/91 Allow me to admit that in the past I have not found Twitter to be a good forum for fruitful debate and discussion. Hopefully, this conference will provide a different experience for all of us and change my mind.#POPC1
91/91 Thanks to Alexander Lester for the invitation to be part of the conference, and thanks to all of those who are participating.#POPC1
