xxviii Browne and it forms a simple diagram that represents several significant aspects
of the way the cultures interact with each other.
Folk Popular Elite
Culture
a. The relationship among the three is non evaluative. It means the three kinds of
culture have the same level and there is no designation of low, middle, or high and no one culture is to be described better or worse than any other.
b. The shape of the representatives “egg” indicates that popular culture is the
major portion of a society’s total way of life. It surrounds us and forms the fabric of our everyday lives in a way that folk and elite culture do not.
c. The relationship among the three is fluid. It means there are no hard and fast
lines separating the cultures from each other, but rather, each culture seems to flow almost indefinably into its neighbor. This fluid relationship in turn has
two important elements: 1
Each member or a society experiences all three types of culture. There are no lines to prevent an individual from moving freely from one cultural
type to another. 2
A given cultural artifact or event can change culture categories over time or because of changes in its mode of presentation or audience Brown in
Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 16-17.
4. Reflective Study of Popular Culture
Taking popular culture seriously cannot be separated from the beliefs and values. Those are kept inside the popular culture and must be revealed so the
xxix messages in it can be explained clearly. Popular beliefs and values are those
unseen convictions about the world which form a culture’s mindset and mold and color the way which the culture sees and interprets Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 7.
The range of beliefs and values characteristics of a cultural mindset is as vast as the culture’s history, its present circumstances, and its hopes and dreams of the
future and it can be as specific as the reasons which lie behind the way. Popular beliefs and values are the meanings which lie behind the artifacts and events
which are their visible expressions which its forms are the truths which explain the facts and thus weave existence into a pattern which we can recognize and
share Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 24. Reflective study of popular culture leads us to reveal the beliefs and values
of the culture but it cannot judge whether it is good or bad. It is guided by the popular culture formula as a valuable tool in which it both aids us in selecting
cultural elements for examination and reminds us how to examine them. Popular culture formula states that the popularity of a given cultural element object,
person, or event is directly proportional to the degree to which that element is reflective of audience beliefs and values. The greater the popularity of the cultural
element in an era or over time, the more reflective of the zeitgeist this element is likely to be. The formula assumes that audience choose a specific cultural element
over other alternatives because they find it attractive in its reassuring reflection of their beliefs, values, and desires ibid., p. 6.
The reveal of the beliefs and values from the popular culture product really has the connection to the objectivity of true and false. However the way is very
irrelevant to the study of popular culture because it should not judge whether the
xxx object is true or false. Popular culture must need the understanding and
appreciation to analyze it and the most important is to reveal the beliefs and values in the artifacts and events of popular culture. It never assumes that popular
culture studies of the mindset simply reveal that which is obvious, right, or common sense. Popular culture reflects and molds the beliefs and values that are
so embedded, that their truth is assumed rather that proven. The study of popular culture brings these assumed-to-be-true beliefs and values to the surface Nachbar
and Lause, 1992: 9. The most important thing of revealing beliefs and values in popular culture
is concerned only with describing, defining, and understanding what a cultural beliefs and values not whether the culture is wise or foolish, correct or incorrect.
Popular beliefs and values do not argue the truths they embody and express, but that they assume them. The result is that a cultural pattern can become an
entrapping web of beliefs. Its result must be seen as one build not as a separated one.
The audiences take the important role in valuing the artifact or event of popular culture so that the audiences will influence whether those cultural
elements will be popular and long lasting or not. They have the needs and desires to reflect their beliefs and values in order to ensure and strengthen that the product
will be accepted or not by them. The culture’s beliefs ought not to be taken as articles of faith because the audiences need to understand so they can decide,
choose, accept, and believe it. The point of the purpose is that the beliefs and values are believed and people make choice and take action based on it.
xxxi Beside reflective study, it is also reflective mirror in which the product of
popular culture really connects with the cultural mindset of the audience. As the reflective mirror, popular culture must focus upon two aspects of the zeitgeist, the
“transitory” and the “concrete” Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 5. Zeitgeist is a German word that refers to the spirit of an era, the major beliefs and values which
describe the particular outlook of a culture during the specific period of time ibid., p. 4. The zeitgeist which characterizes a particular era is composed of
“transitory” attitudes and perspectives which last only as long as the era itself and then fade from view. But an era’s zeitgeist also expresses deep-seated, highly
significant “concrete” beliefs and values which transcend the specific time period and represent the fundamental character of the culture itself ibid., p. 5.
B. Semiotic Film Theory 1. Saussure’s Theory
