Pop Culture Freaks: Identity, Mass Media, and Society

by Dustin Kidd

Love it or hate it, popular culture permeates every aspect of contemporary society. In this accessibly written introduction to the sociology of popular culture, Dustin Kidd provides the tools to think critically about the cultural soup served daily by film, television, music, print media, and the internet. Utilizing each chapter to present core topical and timely examples, Kidd highlights the tension between inclusion and individuality that lies beneath mass media and commercial culture, using this tension as a point of entry to an otherwise expansive topic. He systematically considers several dimensions of identity (race, class, gender, sexuality, disability) to provide a broad overview of the field that encompasses classical and contemporary theory, original data, topical and timely examples, and a strong pedagogical focus on methods. Pop Culture Freaks encourages students to develop further research questions and projects from the material. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are brought to bear in Kidd's examination of the labor force for cultural production, the representations of identity in cultural objects, and the surprising differences in how various audiences consume and use mass culture in their everyday lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, School

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 11, 2014

About the author

Dustin Kidd is an associate professor of sociology at Temple University in Philadelphia. He teaches courses on social theory and popular culture. He has a BA in religious studies from James Madison University, an MA in English from the University of Virginia, and a PhD in sociology also from the University of Virginia.

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this deep dive into pop culture. This is also a sort of guide for studying all types of sociology which is my area of study. This book was published a few years ago so some of the references do feel a bit outdated such as all the talk about the show glee but all the information was still very valuable. Some sections were more engaging for me than others but a lot of that had to do with my own perspective. I liked all the graphs and charts included in this book because I am a bit of a visual learner. I have Kidd’s other book Social Media Freaks which was published more recently. I really liked his writing so I am excited to read that book soon.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

More sociological than historical based. I enjoyed the topics and the essays written by different authorities. Gave me a lot to think about regarding our culture and where it might be going.

[Bufo Calvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dustin Kidd's Pop Culture Freaks has some important ideas in it, and some interesting data.

Does who you are affect how you interpret pop culture? Does pop culture influence your image of yourself and how you think about where you fit in the world? Does the identity of people who create pop culture affect what is produced?

Yes, yes, and yes. ;)

At least, intuitively, that would all seem to be true.

It's especially true in fandom and for geeks like me, where a large part of someone's total identity can be defined by pop culture. When someone is a "gamer" or a "Trekkie" (or "Trekker"...let's not get started on that) or a "Browncoat", the implication is that it defines their lives in ways outside of when they are simply indulging in recreation.

The issue with a book like Pop Culture Freaks is that it needs to both make an assertion like that, prove it scientifically...and still be anecdotal enough to hold the reader's interest.

I would say that each of the sections of the book could have been ten times the length and served the topic better.

For example, in discussing race, analyses are done on the races of people based on their IMDb (Internet Movie Database) information. It's stated that there is some standard protocol for doing that, but I don't understand that at all.

If you have someone without a picture, you certainly can't reliably base it just on name, especially for people living in cultures where taking your partner's last name is common. We probably all work with people whose names are commonly associated with one race when they are of another.

What Kidd doesn't do is explain just how that is done...I would have liked to have seen that in detail, so I could judge for myself how reliable it was. If there were studies showing that using that technique identified people as well as: seeing photographs; self identification; and/or other's assessments (I suppose DNA could be included), that would have been wonderful.

For me, Kidd's work just doesn't strike that necessary balance between what we know and how we know it.

That said, I did enjoy reading it. Here are a few of the stories which intrigued me:

* Two groups of people (of specific types) both liking the same movie, but interpreting it very differently...one group thinking it was a realistic depiction of the past, and another thinking it was funny
* People of different social strata reacting to Lucy Ricardo very differently: intelligent pioneer, or dangerous deviant?
* The idea that the experience of superheroes may socially parallel that of people with "disabilities"
* The parallel of Harry Potter to the migrant worker experience (most of the year living in very difficult circumstances, then going somewhere which is supposed to be wonderful but from which you are still somewhat socially isolated because of your background), and how that helped teachers working with students who were learning English as a second language

A book full of anecdotes like that would be fascinating. A book explaining in depth why one of the anecdotes was true would be fascinating. Unfortunately, for me, Pop Culture Freaks was a hybrid that wasn't quite enough of either.

[Gabriela Ventura · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Tirei a madrugada para dar conta de leituras que não havia esquecido no Kindle*

Passei o último semestre lendo esse livro e fazendo a mediação de um grupo de estudos de cultura pop na UFRJ. [Momento Anuncie Aqui: meu contrato acabou de acabar e eu sou ótima, me chamem pra dar aulas!]

Não é exatamente um livro original; se você mora na internet e se interessa por cultura pop a partir de um viés de representação (ou da falta de representação de certos grupos) vai revisitar discussões conhecidas.

Mas é um ponto de partida interessante para alunos universitários interessados no assunto: explora questões estéticas, sociais e mercadológicas em diferentes mídias.

[Jessica Dudok · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is super controversial and talks about many things I morally disagree with. There is a huge bias. This book was for class and I stopped reading it because I was uninterested and I wasn’t getting anything out of it. The only things I liked was in the introduction he talked about how pop culture tells us that we need to fix ourselves (through makeup advertisements, protein supplements,etc.) and that the fun thing about pop culture is that we get to interpret it in our our way.

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sociological approach to popular culture is eye-opening and mind expanding. It led me to think differently about a great number of issues. One of the features of the book was its Methodology Moments in which different techniques of doing research were explained simply and clearly. There were also some useful video and book references The strength of the book, however, is in its ideas. The notion that popular culture provides the code by which we make judgments about the world is important. This book is conscious of class, race and gender, not to mention disability. At one point the author says that he won’t talk about domination, but privilege, because the idea of domination leads us to focus on the victims, whereas privilege leads us to look at those in power. Guess who that might be. Rich, white males. He does say we are all somewhat privileged. Being white gives us an advantage even if we are women. He gives statistics about the representation of people on television and it is not related to their percentage of the population. He notes that some splinter groups such as gays do get attention in the media because they are potential consumers. The poor are not represented because they don’t have money to buy things. He looks at a television program like The Jeffersons where George works hard and becomes rich. Programs like that are not in vogue anymore because focusing on hard work isn’t important as our the economy shifts overseas. The focus is on consumption. Therefore, we see programs where no matter what the professions are people live in homes that require more money than their jobs could generate. He looks at the make-up of the work force creating the programs and films. They are predominately white and male. Therefore, the image we have of women is a male’s image of women. Kidd weaves in a great deal of sociological theory, showing how Weber and Simmel’s ideas have relevance to the current social world. His chapters on disability and world- wide popular culture are most informative and make the point how popular culture is an important engine of and reflector of social structure. His final chapter on freaks justifies the title of the book and provides some sense of how to deal with the corporate matrix in which we live. He discusses Tod Browning’s film earlier in the book and in this chapter combines it with a discussion of the film The Matrix. The appendices include short histories of publishing, the music industry, film and television. He leaves the reader with much to think about and many more references to read.

[Tristan Bridges · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Dustin Kidd provides a really comprehensive framework for considering just about any element of popular culture you can imagine. He focuses primarily on issues of identity and inequality, with chapters on gender, race, sexuality, class, and disability. It's incredibly accessible and a lot of fun to read. He provides in depth explanations of theories governing the field, breaks down survey data, interview and ethnographic audience studies, and even textual analyses and cultural studies scholarship on popular culture. It's a great introduction to the field, but I'm sure experts will find new things to think about or ways of thinking about old things in new ways. Totally loved it!

[Dustin Kidd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Temple prof explores pop culture, ‘It’s Always Sunny,’ in new media book:
http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/p...

[Frank Ly · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn't bad. It flowed smoothly throughout, and the final chapter rocked.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a student of Kidd's at Temple University. His course is based off this book and they are both so great! Very insightful!