highbrow Vs. lowbrow culture

Different forms of cultures are all around us, whether it is in music or films or even our everyday life. Recently I began to pay attention to how different classes are perceived in media, specifically in television series. Whether they are part of the highbrow or lowbrow class, the group of people are shown as being differently dressed and they behave in a different manner.

One major example of displaying class differences in films is James Cameron's Titanic where Rose, a girl coming from the upper class, falls in love with Jack, who is part of the lower class. They try to go beyond their class differences and become involved in activities that occur throughout both the highbrow and lowbrow cultures. The wealthy people are located on the upper decks and they enjoy lavish accommodations and dine in expensive clothing on a regular basis. While the "lower class" are not allowed to go into the upper decks and they are confined to their smaller, much more simple rooms. They still enjoy themselves as they dance and feast together.

Today's television shows still tend to show differences in cultures as well and it was not until I began to look for specific examples that i began to notice how low and high culture is represented.

I began to examine two very different television shows, Gossip girl and True Blood and I noticed that there were class differences in both television shows. Whether this was done intentionally or accidentally is of interest to me.

Gossip girl revolves around a group of young adults who go through different stages of their life as a mysterious person creates drama by sending out texts about the main protagonists. There are six main actors in this series and most of them are depicted as spoilt rich people who live in Manhattans upper east side. Most of their houses are either located on the pent house of some expensive building or in the hotels they own. Their houses are decorated with expensive furniture and several famous paintings are hung in the house. While most of the characters live in the upper east side, there are two characters who are siblings in the television show, who live in Brooklyn. They all go to the same private school in Manhattan but the characters that live in the Brooklyn are constantly mocked because of their much less extravagant lifestyle and because they don't live in the upper east side.

The other show I chose to study is True Blood which is a great vampire series that shows the struggles that vampires have to go through to get their rights. It could be argued that the vampires in this television show are representing the lower class in society who are trying to get their voice herd.

A Popular Culture within a Popular Culture

It is clearly obvious how music is becoming an essential tool in film production and in determining how appealing a movie would be for its audience in the last couple of decades. However, this doesn't mean that movies that play music in them are definitely successful, nor the movies that you barely hear music playing in them are extreme failures.

Lots of songs became famous simply because they were played in big movies. And again, not all songs in movies achieved such success, in which the ones that would achieve it were mainly theme songs of movies, or the song’s artist is someone who’s already famous in the music industry. For instance, all of us know how “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion became a huge romance hit once it was played in the movie Titanic. Till this day we listen to this song playing in retail spaces, especially the numerous instrumental versions of it in fancy restaurants.

[Above: the theatrical poster of the movie "Titanic"]

Apart from how movies can bring songs or artists to fame, the opposite process is not different. A song or an artist can bring a particular movie or a TV show into fame as well. Most of these motion pictures feature famous singers or famous bands having short scenes in movies in which they just appear in to sing. And if course, when fans know that their favorite artist/artists are featuring in a particular movie, they definitely watch the movie to anticipate the part in which their idol/ idols going to perform in. A lot of examples I can give to elaborate this practice. The movie “New York Minute”—starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen—featured the famous pop punk band Simple Plan performing an amazing song that didn’t feature in any of their albums till this day. The song is called “Vacation” and people can have it only if they would buy the soundtrack of the motion picture.

[Above: the Olsen twins and Simple Plan]

Another movie was “Hannah Montana: The Movie.” Although it was meant to be for kids, a lot of adults watched it along with their children because it features a young talented country singer that people are obsessed with: Taylor Swift. She is that singer who brought life to country music again and made it popular among young people too. She was featured in the movie singing a hit that isn't in any of her albums till this day as well. The song is called “Crazier.”

Below is a video I made that shows how second-marketing plays a big role in the popularity of some movies:

Click Here to Watch the video on YouTube

What does this tell us? It tells us that media companies often refer to secondary markets (in this case, being music and famous artists) to minimize the risks of grabbing audience toward their productions. To conclude, popular cultures often rely on one another to achieve success and obtain the validity and vitality of their productions.