Introduction

The concept of popular culture, the alternative view of the establishment as viewed by the masses, first appeared publicly in the late 1960s. One of its earliest proponents, Dr. Ray Browne, a professor at Bowling Green State University (Ohio), offered courses on popular culture (ultimately establishing a separate department which granted degrees in both American Culture and Popular Culture). He encouraged colleagues to replicate his efforts at other academic institutions. In 1970, Browne and his associates formed the Popular Culture Association (PCA) and held the inaugural annual conference in East Lansing, Michigan. In 1978, the American Culture Association (ACA) was founded to focus on those areas that are strictly American and which are not in the strictest sense "popular" in nature. The ACA held its first conference in Pittsburgh in 1979 in conjunction with the Popular Culture Association.

Attempts to forge widespread agreement regarding a definition of popular culture has inspired an extensive academic debate on the part of scholars concerned with developing a disciplinary focus in the field. While no single definition has gained widespread support, most expert appear to agree that popular culture represents a mainstream phenomenon encompassing the arts, entertainment, fads, artifacts, beliefs, and values shared by many, if not all, segments of society. These include the mass media, fast food restaurants, youth programs (e.g., Little League baseball, scouting), carnivals, amusement parks, board games and scores of other categories. Many individual items that are not popular at all may still be considered part of popular culture studies due to genre categorization (e.g., a romance novel no one bought or a cheap space adventure film that failed financially). Such examples represent attempts to imitate more successful works already acknowledged to fit within the popular culture umbrella.

Browne insists that the term refers to all those aspects of our daily lives that are not narrowly academic or intellectual and that are free from the elitist standards that commonly dominate the fine arts. Other critics assert that popular culture is all those things people do to amuse themselves when they are not at work.

Phenomenon of American popular culture around the world presents problems that have become central to cultural studies: cultural innovation, representation, transmission, and reception. In the 1960s, media theorist Marshall McLuhan proclaimed that electronic communications turned the world into a "Global Village," in which "our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind in us." In McLuhan's media fantasy, "We can program twenty more hours of TV in South Africa next week to cool down the tribal temperature raised by radio last week."

Nations around the world have cultivated distinctive relationships with American popular culture. Great Britain’s receptivity to U.S. pop culture was significantly influenced by the longstanding political alliance between the two countries as well as the equally entrenched tradition of economic competition. Germany's experience of long-term occupation and re-education by the United States during the post-World War II years resulted in a particularly complex and intense relationship with the United States. Italy's need for an "economic miracle" in the 1950s left it receptive to a particularly virulent strain of Americanization.

France probably adopted the most "anti-American" stance among European nations regarding cultural influences in general. The French have even pushed to rid their language of invading English terms while Canadians (perhaps motivated more by fears of economic submission) have placed limits on the importing American publications, sound recordings, etc., in their country. On the other hand, Third World countries have been easier to influence due to the considerable American aid poured into those countries along with American products. In fact, the dominance of American popular culture throughout the world has been largely a manifestation of raw economic power that also reflects decisions made within the importing countries.