Pop Culture: Waste of Time or Populist Embrace of the World? Or, why poets should watch television

I’ve had percolating thoughts about this topic for some time, and with Comic Con in San Diego, and recently re-reading Harold Bloom and AS Byatt’s dismissals of Harry Potter books, I have started to think about why I don’t think of pop culture as “a waste of time.” You’ll notice pop culture plays a large part in the fiction and poetry I enjoy (Haruki Murakami and Denise Duhamel for instance) and in my own work. Popular Culture is an equalizing and freeing subject – just by including it you can make other people feel included in your universe, rather than excluded. I think mythology becomes much less remote and threatening to younger students, for example, when you can tie it into the latest comic book character or video game.To embrace your culture is to not look down on others – you can just hear the disapproving academic snootiness in Bloom and Byatt (whom I love, by the way, don’t get me wrong) when they talk about how Harry Potter is the worst sort of popular tripe, etc. I mean, I can recognize that Rowling’s prose stylings are somewhat less than impressive (repetitive paragraphs, lots of adverbs) but she has a great way with plot, and plot, along with a detailed imaginary universe, is what has driven the popularity of her books. Here’s what is worthwhile about reading the Harry Potter series – you can pick up a conversation almost anywhere with anyone, and they’ll have an opinion, and you’ll have common ground. I feel the same way about television – saying “I don’t watch television” is almost the same as saying: “I don’t want to take part in that human race thing.” (I kid, of course.) Television isn’t neccessarily a good thing, not something everyone HAS to do, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing either, on it’s own. Television is not the devil, although it is true that it contains more than enough terrible, inane, lazy programming. But there are also wonderful images, and characters, and bits of dialogue, that combination of music and image and direction that combine into transcendence (occasionally) that would inspire even the most high-minded. I’m not advocating game shows, but watching a few carefully chosen television shows is not going to pollute you.
I wish I could have attended this Comic Con. Why, you ask? I have been to a few smaller conventions, and it is quite interesting in terms of the characters you might run into, the spectacle, the single-minded devotion of people to their chosen – comic book, genre film, author, whatever. Sure, there’s a carnival-like weirdness to it, but on the whole, it’s a joy-laden celebration of the odd and the imaginative, and how can you not have respect for that? I think of the happiness I felt as a kid when I read Madeleine L’Engle’s Swiftly Tilting Planet, or Anne McCaffery’s Dragonsinger – the longed-for empowerment, the beauty of the alternate realities in which young women in difficult and trying situations could (through hard work and perseverance and creativity and love) and did make a difference. There was hope in these books, even a spiritual aspect which most contemporary literature does not touch. The best Science fiction and fantasy really does offer a lyric frame in which to view our worlds.
In short, popular culture allows for a dialogue across language, class, race and gender. Isn’t that something to be embraced?