From: Carrol Cox

Peter Montgomery wrote:
> Popular culture was anything the lower classes could
> afford. The alternative was what the alternative
> classes could afford.

I don't think this will work. After all, in public places the rich as
well as the poor pissed in urinals. They were "low" (in social terms) --
but after all scatology (for this and other contrasts) is an old
tradition in all literatures (high and low) -- see Dante, Pope, & Swift.

At this point I got stuck, beginning and cancelling several sentences --
so I huddled with two volumes of the OED for awhile, reading the entries
on "popular" and "culture." I can't begin to pull out the right strands
and weave them together, but I don't think your definition (though it's
clearly an occasional flavor) is adequate.
===============================================
It is a toughie of a dilemma.
Last time I was in a airport of ay size,
it had an executove lounge replete with everything
from places to sleep, to place to plug in, &c &c.
One needed a special, expensive card to get in.

The matter is somewhat deliberated by Pound in HSMauberley.
The put down of the business/mass production/cheap
imitation business -- itslack of depth and meaning.

The irony is that only the rich ca afford the Picassos,
which is what makes them different from po. cult. unless,
of course, one is dealing with a copy.

It really is business that makes pop. cult.
The move is to get people to rethink their
self-definitions into being consumers rather than
even just customers. To consume means to
waste and destroy (old name for TB). That
is simply another name for capitalism.

The difference between aconsumer and a customer
is that while the customer retains a certain
degrees on consciousness, the consumer is completely
unconscious. It is the transformation from being
undone in The Fire Sermon to being drowned in
Death by Water where one sees the vestiges of
individuality completely dissolved -- matches
Pound in HSM quite well.

Cheers,
Peter