charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote
Pop culture is as important a part of culture as
history or science.
I doubt even the Beatles will have the long-term consequences of Crick-Watson.
True enough. Nevertheless if you ask the man on the street about
Crick-Watson you are more likely to get a blank stare than if you ask
him about the beetles. Direct consequentiality is only one measuring
stick for determining the importance of a person, object or event.
Einstein is perhaps the best remembered name among scientists, but very
few who remember his name have a clue of what he was talking about.
It will be a long while before we know the full cultural impact of the
Beetles. What we hear today of Bach or Gregorian chant is still a
modern interpretation of these works, but there are recordings of the
Beetles and other twentieth century musicians performing their own
works. That creates a different dynamic. Books have fared better
because they could penetrate to the masses much earlier.
The image of Mickey Mouse has persisted long enough to motivate the
Disney Corporation to seek extensions to the term of copyrights.
Cabbage-patch dolls drew their inspiration from the top selling novel of
1902. We cannot know now whether Pokémon will have a long-lasting
cultural impact, nor can we know that about any other currently popular
offering. All we can do is document what is happening so that our
readers will understand allusions to them. We can offer plot summaries
and character lists based on these works themselves, but we should not
be offering our own analysis about what they mean or speculations about
their future impact. That _would_ be original research.
Pop culture is the bunch of sticks that makes flimsy
individual elements into something with a higher breaking point.
And when you can't be sure which struts or joists are essential to
keeping the bridge from falling, it is safer to keep the sticks in place.
Ec