Table Of ContentA History of Popular Culture
This lively and informative survey provides a thematic global history of popular
culture focussing on the period since the end of the Second World War.
Raymond F. Betts considers the rapid diffusion and “hybridization” of popular
culture as the result of three conditions of the world since the end of World War
Two: instantaneous communications, widespread consumption in a market-based
economy and the visualization of reality. Betts considers the dominance of
American entertainment media and habits of consumption, assessing adaptation
and negative reactions to this influence. He surveys a wide range of topics,
including the:
• emergence and conditions of modern popular culture
• effects of technology and global conflict
• phenomenon and effects of urbanization
• changing demography of the political arena and the work place
• development of music as theatrical performance
• film, television and visual experience
• growth of sport as a commercial enterprise
Directed at students and general readers concerned with the dimensions and
forms of popular cult ure, the book provides an engaging introduction to this
pervasive and ever-changing subject.
Raymond F. Bettsis Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and
the author of many books on culture and empire, including Decolonization, in
The Making of the Contemporary World series (Routledge, 1998 second
edition, 2004).
A History of Popular
Culture
More of Everything, Faster and Brighter
Raymond F. Betts
First published 2004 by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2004 Raymond F. Betts
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Betts, Raymond F.
A history of popular culture : more of everything, faster, and
brighter / Raymond F. Betts.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Popular culture – History. I. Title.
CB427.B46 2004
306′.09′04–dc22
2003018555
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-203-64465-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-67368-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0 415 22127 7 (hbk)
ISBN 0 415 22128 5 (pbk)
To the Many Students I Have Taught and
Who in Turn Have Taught Me
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 Popular culture in an early twentieth-century environment 9
2 Popular culture joins the war effort 25
3 Reconfiguring time and space 39
4 Picture this: a new world of images 55
5 All the world’s a stage: contemporary entertainment in
its many forms 79
6 Happily spaced out: the topography of pleasure and
diversion 107
7 The unintended outcomes 133
Conclusion: Reconditioning the human condition 145
Bibliography 148
Index 159
Preface
Few subjects range as far and vary as frequently as does popular culture. It seems
to embrace all and to discard much. Its consistency is change. Like the escalator
that is now so essential to shopping center, sports arena and airport, it moves
regularly, conveying us all up and down to different levels of engagement and
distraction, to goods and pleasures regularly rearranged to attract, to appeal, to
entice.
Unlike the elevator that encloses and limits our immediate vision of things,
the escalator opens out and provides a particular panoramic view of a carefully
arranged environment. Contemporary popular culture is all about movement,
about seeing things, about buying and having, about being distracted and
entertained. At one time, the word “transported” suggested a psychological or
spiritual change of condition, an imaginary movement from one state of
consciousness to another. Today, of course, being transported means being
moved swiftly– and usually effortlessly– from here to there and back again. Up
and down the escalator, on the plane and in the car, we have a form of spatial
freedom not known before the late twentieth century. The pace of life has
changed dramatically, as has the space in which we now move. We also see more
than did the people of previous cultures. Popular culture is about mass-produced
images changing their form in seconds, popping up as advertisements on the
computer screen, elega ntly laid out in photographs in trendy niche publications.
My effort has been to situate all this activity within the institutions and among
the devices where it moves, captures attention, allows diversion and assures
entertainment. I therefore have concentrated on transportation and communi-
cation, and the new environment they have created. Megamalls and cyberspace,
automobiles and movies, tourist destinations and airports provide much of the
structure of the text. They suggest the changes in both pace and space that have
become so pronounced in the last half century. Entertainment pervades all: there
is no denying that it has become a major industry, and many of its performers
and producers form a new class of the wealthy.
Prior to 1937, when Walt Disney did his first full-length animated film, Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, the appearance of characters populating fairy tales was
still largely left to the reader’s or listener’s imagination. Today, we see all. Our
visions, of course, are less internally-inspired than projected inward. Our culture
