1 "To provide its happy people with perpetual* fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization."
– Jeremy Seabrook, English author (1939 - ), Third World Network

2 "The media no longer ask those who know something ... to share that knowledge with the public. Instead they ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimate it."
– Serge Daney (1944–1992), French film critic

3 "Whoever controls the media controls the mind."
– Jim Morrison, American singer (1943–1971), The Doors

4 "What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish."
– W.H. Auden, English poet (1907-1973) in The Dyer’s Hand (1962)

5 "Music is banned in Khomeini’s Iran on the grounds that it stimulates the brain. We’ve done him one better in the land of Coke and honey – using music to put people’s brains to sleep. " – Dead Kennedys (American punk band, 1978 - ) in Triumph of the Swill

6 "I think that we have created a new kind of person in a way. We have created a child who will be so exposed to media that he will be lost to his parents by the time he is 12."
– David Bowie, English entertainer (1947 - )

7 "The average American who spends six hours in front of the TV screen can not distinguish between these fictional situations and reality. For all too many Americans the real world has been replaced by the false reality of the TV environment. The control of the opinion-forming media is nearly monolithic."
– Mohamed Raisudeen, 20thc author of Media, Jihad & All That

8 "A properly functioning system of indoctrination has a variety of tasks. Its primary target are the "stupid and ignorant masses". They must be kept that way: marginalized and isolated. Ideally, each person should be alone in front of the TV screen watching sports, soap operas, or comedies, deprived of organizational structures that permit* individuals lacking* resources to discover what they think and believe in, to engage in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and programs, and to act to realize them. This unfortunate mass of the population is the proper target of the mass media and a public education system focused on obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions."
– Noam Chomsky, American writer, linguist, dissident (1928 - )

Popular culture studies is the scholarly investigation* of expressive forms widely disseminated* in society. These materials include, but are not restricted to* products of mass media such as television, film, print, and recording. Thus, popular culture studies may focus on media genres such as situation comedies (sitcoms), film noir, best-selling novels, or rap music. Other, non-mediated aspects of popular culture would include such things as clothing styles, fads*, holidays and celebrations, amusement parks, both amateur and professional sports, and so forth.

Ideally, the study of these or any other popular materials should be done holistically*, viewing them both aesthetically and also within the social and cultural contexts in which the materials are created, disseminated, interpreted, and used. In this way the study of popular culture involves the use of methodologies from both the humanities and the social sciences in the effort to interpret expressive cultural forms, specifically those that are widely disseminated in a group (that is, those that are popular) as part of dynamic social intercourse.
Popular culture scholars study these created, expressive, and artistic materials as their primary data, much as literary scholars take the novel or the sonnet as their primary data. In this way popular culture studies are within the tradition of the humanities. However, popular culture studies differs from traditional humanities studies in that it recognizes* the existence of alternative systems of aesthetics which guide* the creation of popular materials and the evaluation of those materials by an audience.
Popular culture scholars apply this principle to popular arts such as television programs, popular films, popular music, best-selling novels, genre fiction such as mysteries or romances, and so on. The popular culture scholar situates the discussion of any aspect of popular culture within the larger context of the meanings and values of the society within which it exists.

A fundamental debate over the essential nature of popular materials themselves exists. Some scholars equate* the materials of popular culture to the mass media, and therefore maintain* that popular culture did not exist prior to* the Industrial Revolution, the rise of a large middle-class segment* of society, and the simultaneous* rise of rapid printing. Other scholars use the term "popular culture" to refer to the expressive materials of any group, large or small, pre-industrial or post-industrial.

One might argue that the study of popular culture as a scholarly discipline can be traced back* at least as far as the writings of Giambattista Vico, who anticipated* today's cultural studies programs as he attempted* to discover the ‘principles of humanity’ in his New Science of 1775. However, most scholars agree that the last fifteen to twenty years have seen a significant movement among scholars of all backgrounds toward an awareness of* a large body of cultural expression that has fallen outside of most research prior to that time.

“Low culture is based on marketing. Low culture is what you sell the masses, and they rush out and buy the latest CD...because everybody's doing it. And in two years' time it's in the dustbin - and quite rightly so.”
- Brian Sewell, Art critic

“I think the difference between high and popular culture is becoming increasingly difficult to define... I'm sure that Damien Hirst's shark, if it can be preserved in formaldehyde for another twenty, thirty years will stand the test of time because it was a ground breaking piece of art; nobody had done that before.”
- Kim Evans, Executive Director, Arts Council

“The definition of what is high and what is popular culture has changed enormously over the last twenty, thirty years.”
- Mark Thompson, Director of Television, BBC

“I think there's a lot of nonsense talked about distinctions between high culture and so-called* popular culture.”
- Chris Smith MP, Culture Secretary

People have been (1) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling on walls as long as they have been building them. The term ‘Graffiti’ comes from the Italian verb graffiare, meaning ‘to scratch.’ It covers a wide range of public inscriptions, from the early (2) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling on the walls of caves at Lascaux to drawings quickly drawn on contemporary bathroom stalls. The late-twentieth century has seen the (3) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling of a market for graffiti as an art form, although the majority of graffiti remains unsolicited* and anonymous.
Historically, graffiti has been used mainly as a form of personal communication. One of the earliest uses developed in the United States among hobos* who rode the (4) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling across the country in the first decades of the twentieth century. The complicated symbolic language of these transients was scratched* in (5) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling on fence posts to communicate the receptivity of the townspeople to future travellers. During the 1940s the exterior walls of (6) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling in Hispanic communities in post-war Los Angeles were increasingly decorated with a kind of marking subsequently called ‘old school.’ Before the advent of spray paint, these black-and-white drawings were drawn in marker to communicate the (7) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling of neighbourhoods controlled by rival gangs.
Although graffiti (8) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling during the 1960s, it was not until the 1970s that it started attracting public attention as a serious social problem. The visibility of graffiti had steadily been increasing, as graffiti artists started using spray paint to cover larger areas more (9) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling than was previously possible. By the mid-1970s the main target of graffiti artists had become the (10) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling of the New York City subway system. Throughout the decade, the city of New York fought a battle with enterprising artists. Even as the transit authorities struggled to remove the colourful paintings, New York graffiti was achieving international recognition as part of a hip-hop culture that included rap music and break dancing. Several films (11) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling this period, including Wild Style (1982) and Beat Street (1984).
Eventually, a coating* was developed that inhibited* the application of spray paint onto the surfaces of trains, and in the 1980s a booming* art market (12) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling an interest in graffiti marketed as an art form. Several galleries in Manhattan began specializing in graffiti art, and former graffiti artists such as Keith Haring, who got his start doing quick marker (13) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling in his characteristic outline style, and Jean-Michel Basquiat became instant celebrities, with works selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The public fascination with graffiti faded by the end of the decade, as graffiti became increasingly (14) -- select -- colourfully immortalize developed paintings railways associated drawings buildings boundaries development continued trains chalk scribbling with the activity of urban gangs.