Popular culture can be defined as the “widespread, prevalent, and current trends or fads; arts, customs, beliefs, and all other products of human thought made by and favoured by large numbers of people in a society” It is something that is constantly changing and developing it is anything but static.
Films both cause and effect popular culture as it is often through this medium that trends manifest themselves. Lets take a look at Rock music in films sociologist Peter Berger describes the popular culture of rock music;” It’s attraction is not just due to a particular preference for loud, rhythmic sound and dangerously athletic dancing. Rock music also symbolizes a whole cluster of cultural values—concerning self-expression, spontaneity, released sexuality, and perhaps most importantly, defiance of the alleged stodginess of tradition.”
So how did the rise of rock music occur in through films. And how did films change the culture of rock music.
In Back to the Future not only is rock and roll is pivotal to the movie showing that culture is a lot better basically with Rock music. It also enjoys cameos by Huey Lewis – who also wrote an number of song for the movie. His music would from here become entrenched further in 80′s popular culture as an effect of the movie.
Popular culture of rock and roll is also seen in the movie the Boat that Rocked, it is about how people rebelled against the goverment as rock and roll became a trend among the majority of people. Rather then cause further change in culture this movie came about as an affect of popular culture as in the 2000′s we started as a majority to look back at 80′s trends and fashions; The film purpose is to look at how popular culture became eminent, and how rock and roll was apart of that rise. It is a product of the popular culture revival from the 50′s to Now.
Popular culture is always changing; to me its something that is difficult to understand because of this. It has no real defined cause, we can only truly track its effects; through film the phenomenon can change (like how Back to The Future influence the style of rock and roll in popular culture) and how it effects what we see in films and also how popular they become (The Boat That Rocked)
