Page 23 - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture an Introduction

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Popular culture 7

number one in the British charts. Such commercial success on any quantitative ana-
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lysis would make the composer, the performer and the aria, popular culture. In fact,
one student I know actually complained about the way in which the aria had been sup-
posedly devalued by its commercial success. He claimed that he now found it embar-
rassing to play the aria for fear that someone should think his musical taste was simply
the result of the aria being ‘The Official BBC Grandstand World Cup Theme’. Other stu-
dents laughed and mocked. But his complaint highlights something very significant
about the high/popular divide: the elitist investment that some put in its continuation.
On 30 July 1991, Pavarotti gave a free concert in London’s Hyde Park. About
250,000 people were expected, but because of heavy rain, the number who actually
attended was around 100,000. Two things about the event are of interest to a student
of popular culture. The first is the enormous popularity of the event. We could connect
this with the fact that Pavarotti’s previous two albums (Essential Pavarotti 1 and Essential
Pavarotti 2) had both topped the British album charts. His obvious popularity would
appear to call into question any clear division between high and popular culture.
Second, the extent of his popularity would appear to threaten the class exclusivity of a
high/popular divide. It is therefore interesting to note the way in which the event was
reported in the media. All the British tabloids carried news of the event on their front
pages. The Daily Mirror, for instance, had five pages devoted to the concert. What the
tabloid coverage reveals is a clear attempt to define the event for popular culture. The
Sun quoted a woman who said, ‘I can’t afford to go to posh opera houses with toffs and
fork out £100 a seat.’ The Daily Mirror ran an editorial in which it claimed that
Pavarotti’s performance ‘wasn’t for the rich’ but ‘for the thousands . . . who could never
normally afford a night with an operatic star’. When the event was reported on televi-
sion news programmes the following lunchtime, the tabloid coverage was included as
part of the general meaning of the event. Both the BBC’s One O’clock News and ITV’s
12.30 News, referred to the way in which the tabloids had covered the concert, and
moreover, the extent to which they had covered the concert. The old certainties of the
cultural landscape suddenly seemed in doubt. However, there was some attempt made
to reintroduce the old certainties: ‘some critics said that a park is no place for opera’
(One O’clock News); ‘some opera enthusiasts might think it all a bit vulgar’ (12.30
News). Although such comments invoked the spectre of high-culture exclusivity, they
seemed strangely at a loss to offer any purchase on the event. The apparently obvious
cultural division between high and popular culture no longer seemed so obvious. It
suddenly seemed that the cultural had been replaced by the economic, revealing a divi-
sion between ‘the rich’ and ‘the thousands’. It was the event’s very popularity that
forced the television news to confront, and ultimately to find wanting, old cultural
certainties. This can be partly illustrated by returning to the contradictory meaning
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of the term ‘popular’. On the one hand, something is said to be good because it is
popular. An example of this usage would be: it was a popular performance. Yet, on
the other hand, something is said to be bad for the very same reason. Consider the
binary oppositions in Table 1.1. This demonstrates quite clearly the way in which
popular and popular culture carries within its definitional field connotations of infer-
iority; a second-best culture for those unable to understand, let alone appreciate, real