Politics and Popular Culture

In an age where film stars become presidents and politicians appear in pop videos, politics and popular culture have become inextricably linked. In this book John Street provides a broad survey and analysis of this relationship. He argues that we need to understand politics as a form of popular culture and popular culture as a form of politics. Popular culture involves the organizing of our pleasure, and therefore our values, identities and interests. But at the same time our access to and enjoyment of popular culture depends on a series of political decisions and processes which shape that culture. In Politics and Popular Culture, Street explores the debate about the political character of popular culture between those who see it as a form of manipulation and those who see it as populist self-expression. He argues that such approaches are limited and that we need to alter our perspective on the politics of popular culture. He does this by looking more closely at the ways in which the state organizes the production and consumption of popular culture, and at how political judgements are part of the creation and the pleasures of popular culture. This book will be invaluable for students in cultural studies, mass media studies, sociology and politics.