Culture is active. Popular Culture is distractive.

For me, culture is anything that conveys life and in some way works to change or improve human behavior within the context of society of a whole, even if it’s just by reflecting its ugly truths.

For example, Maus is culture because it reflects an incident in history and by displaying that horrifying incident hopes to warn future generations

against complacency for minorities being exploited, showing ‘this could be you, or your father, or your mother.’ The thematic choice of turning the characters into anthromorphic mice is effective in that it removes more senses of racial, ethnic, or genderized visual based subconscious judgment calls. The cartooning style uses slips under our ‘otherness’ radar and makes the protagonist can be anyone even if the supporting speech bubbles say ‘he’ and ‘jew’.

However, Micky Mouse comics are pop culture because the messages are more based on reaffirming universals instead of trying to improve or change the way of liof life for the society it was generated for.

The basic messages such as ‘don’t lie’ ‘be nice to your friends’ are largely consensual values that it is assumed anyone would want their children knowing. It doesn’t attempt to change the culture or cause a societal shifts or reflection. They are done in this consensual way to draw the largest possible audience because their primary intent is economic, entertainment, and finally artistic. Note that I do not believe that just because something is popular culture instead of ‘culture’, it is not artistic. Oftentimes art is based on the craft itself and has no desire to carry a heavy social justice message.

However, subject matter itself is not the determining factor in whether or not I define something as culture versus popular culture.

For example, the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes and the Japanese

webcomic Hetalia both deal with World War II Nazis extensively. However, both of these are comedies, and the protagonists and antagonists simplified into silly archetypes that make any sort of motivational messages about human behavior lack authority. It is obvious from studying these media texts the intent was to entertain, although with Hogan’s Heroes there was also the commercial interest that kept it so upbeat.

Now, whether or not some seasons of M.A.S.H. are legitimate culture or popular culture is difficult for me to define, with its distinct overarching social message in select episodes and completely lack of commentary in others. Some segments of M.A.S.H. the sitcom do seem to desire to influence the audiences thoughts for a certain social stance on war, which would be cultural movement. On the other hand, it's a lot of silly jokes strung together.

In conclusion, culture leads you to think about the more important questions in life whether it be a classic musical composition that makes you contemplate the existence of a higher being such as a God, or a television show that suddenly kills off a character to illustrate some institutionalized unnecessary social brutality of the past that could happen again without societal vigilance. Culture entertains while stimulating you to consider those issues that are complicated. Popular culture, by contrast, may be artistic, witty, and reflective of the society that generated it, but its main intent is often to make you not think about more difficult questions, priming you to consume for the commercials. The reason why popular culture is important to study is this very non confrontational nature. When left unanalyzed, even those who did not hold the beliefs of some popular culture media texts will walk away assuming 'that's just how it is' for many societal expectations.

Culture as intentionally engaging society and Popular culture as intentionally being there to be passively enjoyed is an imperfect definition, and obviously many things fall in the middle. For example, sensationalistic news certainly has you think about a lot of difficult questions, but it’s motivated by commercials. Webcomics have no official sponsors, but often times use the same hegemonic ideology as a multimillion dollar movie that has to please thousands of sponsors before it can be released (ironically, that director may whine about having cut many challenging ideas in a film to please those sponsors the webcomic artist might have self censored). However, this is the best way I can think to define it without having there be more exceptions than inclusions. In general, this is how I define popular culture and why it's important to study.