AFTER DEADLINE
Deciding what constitutes pop culture is a challenge
By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer
If I could sing and play guitar like John Lee Hooker, I'd write a little blues song that starts with, "Nobody knows what you do when you're the pop-culture writer."
To the casual reader, the most obvious (and annoying) thing reporters about popular culture do, of course, is make a lot of allusions to pop-culture icons — as I did with John Lee in the previous paragraph. It's an easy but useful way to segue into a discussion of what exactly we pop-culture writers do.
A few assumptions have to be made. First, I have to assume that many of you know who John Lee Hooker is, and the rest will catch the hint that he's a famous blues musician.
I also assume that you recognize the personal, sorrowful format of the traditional blues song. So, my clumsy lyric about being a misunderstood pop-culture writer (transposed from the Jimmy Cox tune "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out") is supposed to conjure in your mind the image of me as a self-pitying journalist who's about to justify his existence in the newsroom.
The setup is supposed to serve as an example: Pop culture provides us with a shared set of language, images and ideas that we use every day as shortcuts to communication and understanding. On my beat, the goal is to identify and put in context the many ways that popular culture connects us.
So what is pop culture, anyway? To my editors, it's just about everything: television, movies, music, art, books, advertising, video games, recreation, technology, architecture, anything at all that informs or reflects the dynamic ways we think and behave as a culture.
That sounds great, but "everything" hardly constitutes a beat, or specialized area of reporting. That's why the biggest challenge pop-culture writers face on a daily basis is deciding what to cover and what to exclude.
Because space, time and readers' attention spans are all limited, some basic questions have to be answered before my editors and I pursue a story.
We ask, does this new advertising trend, children's toy or fad phrase have enough buzz, significance or impact to highlight in our section? Do readers care how many reporters showed up to see Kobe Bryant practice at UH, or why there are so many gay men in prime time sit-coms, or where parents can buy Bey-Blades?
Television, movies, books and music are primary sources of pop-culture capital. A lot of people are simultaneously exposed to common experiences and ideas via these media. Significant trends or blips in these areas are therefore usually worth covering.
When an idea, movement or trend overlaps different pop-culture areas, we'll find it even more compelling. Britney Spears rose from teen music idol to pop-culture icon when her look and style of performance was widely copied by other performers, and when her overtly sexual image raised the issue of the widening acceptance and appeal of adolescent sexuality in America.
It's also worth noting the ways in which popular culture reflects our reactions to current events, social changes or political issues. Television, for example, served as a sounding board for our collective shock and grief after the attacks of Sept. 11. David Letterman's first show after the attacks, for example, was seen as an important cue that a national recovery was under way. TV news specials, and later TV movies, engaged in a process of hero building during an early period of vulnerability. Even the widely circulated Taliban jokes that followed revealed something of our anxiety and anger. The Advertiser followed all of these developments.
In writing pop-culture stories, it is important to get a grasp on what is happening and why it is important at the moment. It may be even more important to place the subject in context — historical, social or political.
In addition to significant long-term trends, which we may track for months or years, we also pay attention to things of a more fleeting nature, fads that even in the short term speak to who we are and what we're interested in at a given moment.
Over the last few years, my beat has found me noshing curry with artist Satoru Abe, hopping cow patties with The Rock, and arguing the merits of punk rock bands with author Matthew Branton.
I've also written about work-from-home scams, about the tone of the media in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq and about the cultural significance of "Grand Theft Auto."
But whether the subject is Yao Ming or Yu-Gi-Oh! the basis for my interest is the same: the reader.
To drop another one of those annoying pop-culture allusions (this time with apologies to the Stylistics):
"You are everything, and everything is you."
Michael Tsai covers pop culture for The Advertiser. Reach him at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2461.
