I'm a sucker for popular culture. As much as I fight my inclinations, I'm happier with the Grand Ole Opry than with grand opera; I lean in favor of Sherlock Holmes over Shakespeare; I'd as soon play a harmonica as an oboe.
Perhaps it's my blue-collar background. My folks could get excited
about Buck Owens and ``Hee-Haw'' while J.S. Bach and the Brandenburg
Concerti would leave them cold. They loved ``Lucy,'' but I think
they walked out on ``Masterpiece Theatre.''
As a student I found ways to study popular culture. I discovered
an academic discipline devoted to the subject, with a scholarly
journal publishing research papers on things such as ``How the
Lone Ranger illustrates Freudian repression,'' or ``Links between
the canon of John Wayne westerns and Shakespeare's plays.''
A university in Ohio offers advanced degrees in the study of popular
culture.
Even theologians get into the act. One of the most fascinating
books I ever read was by a Pittsburgh theologian who analyzed
professional football, country and western music, detective stories,
and cowboy movies as means of expressing religion. The title of
his book was something like, ``Your God is Alive and Well and
Living in Popular Culture.''
He talked about temples erected in major cities where large congregations
gather each Sunday to chant and cheer for a pantheon of uniformed
gods who kick, run and pass a swine's skin back and forth on a
grassy field searching for a heaven known as ``pay dirt.''
Journalism is a hotbed for popular culture. Perhaps that's what
attracted me to newspapers.
Newspaper reporters pay attention to many phenomenon that the
scholarly world labels ``kitsch.'' A sausage delivery truck designed
in the shape of a knockwurst is considered kitsch. On Long Island,
N.Y., near where I spent many summers, was a duck farm with an
outlet store built in the shape of a large duck; it was a landmark;
it was also kitsch.
My dictionary defines kitsch as ``garish, pretentious,
and sentimental art; usually vulgar and worthless.''
One can tell that's a high-brow scholar's definition: It's meant
to define things such as the songs of Elvis Presley, but it's
a perfect description of Wagner's operas, some would say.
Baseball, football and basketball are parts of popular culture
in the United States. Cricket and curling are considered high-brow,
though in Britain and Canada they are popular sports. Sloop racing,
which becomes popular every half decade or so with the America's
Cup Races, is borderline. Usually it's high-brow, but it can slip
into popular culture.
Oddly enough, it appears to be journalism that makes the difference.
If reporters and editors pay enough attention, a high-brow event
can be brought into the popular arena.
Among scholars, there used to be a vast distinction
made between ``high-brow'' and ``low-brow'' culture, but the gap
hardly exists anymore. Doctoral dissertations have been written
on The Beatles and on such Hollywood icons as ``Gone With The
Wind.''
Perhaps it's because there's so much money to be made in popular
culture. Among the valuable exports of the United States are Hollywood
movies, rock music, and casual clothing such as jeans and Converse
shoes -- and of course the most recognized product logo in the
world, Coca-Cola.
No publishing company in the world promotes or reveres popular
culture as does the Reader's Digest.
Perhaps that's why I'm a sucker for books that Reader's Digest
publishes.
This became obvious to me when I saw the 1997 edition of ``America
A to Z: People, Places, Customs and Culture.'' I knew I had to
own it.
This book won't make the New York Times Best-Seller
List, but thousands of people are going to plop down the $25-plus-change
to own it and let it gather dust on their coffee tables.
I doubt that any major magazine or newspaper will review the book,
but as a devotee of popular culture and a captive of Reader's
Digest multi-million dollar come-ons, I'm going to tell you how
good it is.
Where else would one find Polio Vaccine, Political Parties, and
Pollyanna given capsule histories on the same page?
They even have Stars and Stripes right there on the same pages
as Stand-Up Comics and Star Trek.
What other book offers the definitive overview of Pez,
the colored tablet candy expelled from personified plastic dispensers?
I learned, for example, that Pez manufactured a ``Make-a-Face''
dispenser with 18 interchangeable parts -- a kind of Mr. Potato
Head of the candy-dispenser world -- and that rare dispenser now
sells for thousands of dollars.
The 403-page volume (plus index) begins with AAA, A&P, and
Hank Aaron and ends with Zoot Suit and Zorro.
Consider the irony: Aaron, a black man in a white suit waving
a wooden wand and thrilling millions with his heroics, and Zorro,
a white man in a black suit waving a silver wand and thrilling
millions with his heroics.
America -- you gotta love it; that's what this Reader's Digest
volume proclaims loudly and clearly.
This self-proclaimed encyclopedia of Americana will
teach you that Kellogg's Corn Flakes were first developed as a
tonic for upset stomachs; that Teflon was invented just before
World War II and kept secret by the U.S. military, which used
it to contain U-235, the principal component of nuclear bombs;
and that the Atlantic City Boardwalk was originally constructed
to keep beachcombers from tracking sand into pubs along the ocean.
This book is a trivia buff's gold mine; a sentimentalist's attic
trunk; a journalist's volume of memories. Being a sucker for popular
culture, I love it.
Some ardent researcher digs out all the facts comprising America
A to Z, journalists get hold of them and put them out for public
consumption, and the notion of democratic knowledge takes hold.
I believe there's a close link between popular culture and democracy;
popular culture, like journalism, is knowledge of the people,
by the people, and for the people.
Low-brow? Kitsch? Perhaps. But I think it was Will Rogers (or
W. C. Fields?) who said, ``Never underestimate a man in over-alls.''
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Allan R. Andrews can be reached via e-mail at allan.andrews@reporters.net