Popular culture

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Popular culture

• Popular Culture Regions
• Diffusion in Popular Culture
• The Ecology of Popular Culture
• Cultural Integration in Popular Culture
• Landscapes of Popular Culture

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Ecology of popular culture

• Popular culture may seem less directly tied to
  the physical environment than folk culture
• Cyberplace, Virtual ecology
• Adaptive strategies have enormous potential for
  producing ecological disasters

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Environmental influence

• The physical environment still can exert an
  influence on members of popular culture even
  with their loss of close ties to nature
• Some natural hazards are actually intensified
• Millions of city dwellers live astride the major
  earthquake zone in California
• Popularity of seaside residences greatly
  increases dwelling susceptible to hurricane
  destruction along the Gulf Coast
• Epidemic diseases can spread more rapidly along
  modern transportation networks

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Environmental influence

• How weather may affect a sports popularity
• Is greater popularity of basketball in the North
  partly because of cold winters?
• Does cold weather favor bowling and ice hockey,
  explaining their popularity in northern states
  and Canada?
• Is it mere chance that major college football
  bowl games are all played in Sunbelt States?
• Over 80 percent of the College Baseball World
  Series winners, in the past 50 years, have been
  teams from the Sunbelt

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Environmental influence

• Why climatic influence on different sports is
  waning
• Huge covered stadiums make it possible to play
  football and baseball indoors
• Artificial wave-making machines permit
  surfboarding in Arizonas desert

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Environmental influence

• Japans Seagaia Ocean Dome at Miyazaki on the
  island of Kyushu
• Three story structure offers indoor surfing
• Computer-controlled wave-making machine
• Temperature remains at 84F all year around
• Worlds largest retractable roof permits fresh
  air in perfect weather
• Has palm trees and sandy beaches
• Has an enormous waterslide and 17 restaurants

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Environmental influence

• La Laporte Ski Dome, near Tokyo, Japan
• Stands 25 stories high
• Provides year-round skiing for 2,000 customers at
  a time
• Ski runs are the length of five football fields

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Environmental influence

• The popular way of life has become a high-energy
  consuming culture
• Even devices of diffusion require large amounts
  of electricity and gasoline
• Labor-saving machines add to insatiable need for
  fossil fuels and other energy supplies
• If energy costs rise, we may reach a point where
  many aspects of popular culture can no longer be
  maintained

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Impact on the Environment

• Popular culture makes heavy demands on ecosystems
• Since World War II, leisure time and recreational
  activities have increased greatly in developed
  countries
• Much time is spent in some space-consuming time
  outside cities
• Demand for wilderness recreation zones has
  risen sharply in the last 25 years
• No end to the increase is in sight

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Environmental ImpactSan Felipe, Mexico

• Prior to the advent of dune buggies and
  all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), a rich variety of
  sea birds inhabited the beaches of this fishing
  community.

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Environmental ImpactSan Felipe, Mexico

• In the past decade, San Felipe has become a
  tourist mecca, especially popular with ATV
  enthusiasts.
• Driving through a pelican colony seems like great
  fun to these tourists.

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Impact on the Environment

• Massive presence of people in recreational areas
  results in damage to physical environment
• National parks suffer from traffic jams,
  residential congestion, litter, and noise
  pollution
• Off-road vehicles have caused soil loss and
  long-term soil deterioration
• As few as several hundred hikers can beat down
  trails
• Vegetation is altered
• Erosion is encouraged
• Wildlife diminished
• The more humans cluster in cities and suburbs,
  the greater their impact on open areas

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Impact on the Environment

• Reactions to the recreational tourist boom
• Some countries have made natural areas more
  accessible, causing them to become crowded, and
  damaged
• Others, including the United States, have drawn a
  distinction between national park tourism and
  wilderness areas
• Access to many wild districts is now restricted
• Some national parks restrict access by automobile
  and camper
• For most of the countryside, recreational assault
  continues
• Enormous demand for refuse dumps
• Generated by cities
• Refuse is altering the ecology of many rural areas

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Popular culture

• Popular Culture Regions
• Diffusion in Popular Culture
• The Ecology of Popular Culture
• Cultural Integration in Popular Culture
• Landscapes of Popular Culture

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The convergence hypothesis

• We are supposedly converging in our cultural
  makeup, becoming more alike
• In 1790 a more pronounced regionalization of
  peoples given names existed than in 1968

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Cultural IntegrationLane County, Pennsylvania

• Lane County is part of the Pennsylvania Dutch
  ethnic homeland.
• Even though some members of this community still
  reject modern phenomena such as electricity and
  automobiles, many have chosen to cater to
  increasing leisure demands of the larger society.

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Cultural IntegrationLane County, Pennsylvania

• Motels, restaurants, shops, and activities such
  as buggy rides playing on the local heritage are
  increasingly common and are evidence of
  assimilation.
• The signs folk hex symbols are countered by the
  popular AAA (American Automobile Association).

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Cultural IntegrationLane County, Pennsylvania

• The AAA is an instrument of landscape change as
  it provides information, recommends destinations
  and routeways, and puts its seal of approval on
  accommodations for thousands of travelers
  nation-wide.

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Mapping personal preference

• Working against the convergence hypothesis is
  greater personal individualism
• Gone is the conformity of folk cultures
• Individualism, coupled with other factors, has
  the ability to create new regionalism
• Gives us the will and means to diverge rather
  than converge
• Free exercise of individual preferences each
  person doing his/her own thing
• Could create a new spatial order

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Mapping personal preference

• How new spatial restructuring can occur
• If people who pursue similar life-styles gather
  in close geographical proximity to each other
• We already have Sun City, Arizona, where only the
  elderly live
• There are residential concentrations of gay
  people in certain districts within cities such as
  San Francisco
• The media cater to and help promote restructuring
• The increasing desire of people for individual
  freedom may have begun to alter the spatial
  attributes of society and culture

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Place images

• The media often produces place images
• Place, portrayer, and medium interact to produce
  the image that colors our perception and
  cognition of places and regions we have never
  visited
• The images created may be inaccurate or
  misleading, but create a world in our minds

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Place images

• Example of Hawaii
• In the American mind a sort of earthly paradise
• Peopled by scantily clad, eternally happy,
  invariably good-looking swarthy natives
• A physical setting of unparalleled natural beauty
  and idyllic climate
• The interworkings of popular culture cause these
  images to proliferate and become more vivid, if
  not more accurate

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Social spatialization

• Geographer Rob Shields views
• Sees popular cultural integration from the
  core/periphery perspective
• Agrees we need to begin remapping the
  universalized and homogeneous spatialization of
  popular culture
• We need to reveal heterogeneous places
• Agrees place images are very powerful

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Social spatialization

• Geographer Rob Shields views
• Devotes attention to peripheral areas and locales
  left behind in the modern race for progress
• Because of remoteness
• Because they are sites of illicit or disdained
  activities
• Margins become signifiers of everything centers
  deny or repress
• Legalized prostitution in Nevada
• Legalized gambling casinos in Atlantic City, New
  Jersey
• English resort town of Brighton, where proper
  Londoners can spend a dirty weekend

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Social spatialization

• Geographer Rob Shields views
• Canadian North
• Arctic and Subarctic regions
• Native folk cultures survive at least in vestige
• Popular culture intrudes more weakly
• Southern Canadians mythologized the North as seat
  of the real Canada a counter-balance to the
  civilized world of the urbanized South
• Planetary culture is almost certainly illusory in
  the age of popular culture
• Popular culture and its integration work as much
  against homogenization as for it

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Popular culture

• Popular Culture Regions
• Diffusion in Popular Culture
• The Ecology of Popular Culture
• Cultural Integration in Popular Culture
• Landscapes of Popular Culture

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Elitist landscapes

• Development of social classes is a distinctive
  aspect of popular culture
• The top social class consists of persons of
  wealth, education, and tastethe elitist class
• Because of their wealth, desire to be together,
  distinctive tastes, and hedonistic lifestyles,
  they create distinctive cultural landscapes

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Elitist landscapes

• Example of the French Riviera
• A district of stunning natural beauty and idyllic
  climate
• French elite created an aesthetically pleasing
  cultural landscape
• Characterized by preservation of old buildings
  and town cores
• Building codes and height restrictions are
  rigorously enforced
• Land values have risen making the Riviera ever
  more elitist
• It is now far removed from the folk culture and
  poverty that prevailed there before 1850
• Farmers and fishermen have almost disappeared
  from the region

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Leisure LandscapeSouthern France

• This is an artificial beach, made by dumping sand
  on a rocky shore of the Mediterranean Sea near
  Spain.
• Increases in leisure time and disposable income
  create demand for recreational

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Leisure LandscapeSouthern France

• opportunities and many Northern Europeans
  head southward in
• Here, a natural environment has been
  constructed for leisure, and with an array of new
  hotels and services, evolves as a leisure
  landscape.

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Elitist landscapes

• America also has its elitist landscapes
• Exclusive suburbs with rigidly-enforced
  architectural themes are common
• In Santa Fe the favored architectural style is
  pseudo-Pueblo Indian

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Elitist landscapes

• The gentleman farm agricultural unit operated
  for pleasure rather than profit
• Owned by affluent city people as an avocation
• Help to create or maintain high social standing
• Most notable found
• In the inner Bluegrass Basin of north Kentucky
• The Virginia Piedmont west of Washington, D.C.
• Eastern Long Island in New York
• Parts of southeastern Pennsylvania
• Engage in such activities as breeding fine
  cattle, racing horses, or fox hunting

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Elitist landscapes

• Gentleman farms in the Kentucky Bluegrass Basin
• Concentrations so great they constitute a
  dominant feature on the landscape
• Have black or white wooden fences
• A rural landscape created more for appearance
  than function
• Elaborate entrance gates with hand-painted sign
  giving name of farm and owner
• Network of surfaced, well-maintained driveways
  and pasture roads
• Elegant houses visible through a lawnlike
  parkland dotted with clumps of trees and maybe a
  pond or two
• Tourists think they are seeing the real rural
  America

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Landscapes of consumption

• Eye catching commercial strips along urban
  arterial streets
• Study of the evolution of such a strip in an
  Illinois college town
• Covered the period 1919 to 1979
• Street changed from single-family residential to
  a commercial focus

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Landscapes of consumption

• Researchers suggested a five-stage model of strip
  evolution
• Single-family residential period
• Introduction of gasoline stations
• Other businesses join growing number of filling
  stations,
• Multi-unit housing becomes common
• Absentee ownership increases
• Commercial function dominates
• Businesses catering to drive-in trade proliferate
• Residential use sharply declines
• Income levels of remaining inhabitants is low
• Residential function of the street disappears
• Totally commercial landscape prevails
• Business properties expand to provide off-street
  parking
• Often public outcry against the ugliness of the
  strip is raised

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Landscapes of consumption

• Represent popular aesthetic values, and may
  reveal social and cultural problems that need
  redress
• May be needed antidote to plastic artificiality
  of elitist landscapes
• Perception of strip creators
• See it differently than do visitors
• Owners or operators of businesses are proud of
  them and their role in the community
• Hard work and hope colors their perceptions

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Landscapes of consumption

• The grandest of the indoor shopping malls West
  Edmonton Mall
• Located in the Canadian province of Alberta
• Encloses 5.2 million square feet and completed in
  1986
• Employs 18,000 people in over 600 stores and
  services
• Earned 42 percent of dollars spent in local
  shopping centers in its first nine months of
  operation

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Landscapes of consumption

• The grandest of the indoor shopping malls West
  Edmonton Mall
• Boasts a water park, sea aquarium, and ice
  skating rink
• Also has mini-golf course, roller coaster, and 19
  movie theaters
• Has a 360 room motel
• Its streets feature motifs from exotic places
• Hopkins says this simulated landscape reveals
  growing intrusion of spectacle, fantasy, and
  escapism into the urban landscape

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Leisure landscapes

• West Edmonton Mall is more than a landscape of
  consumption being clearly designed as much for
  leisure as for shopping
• Leisure landscapes take many forms
• RV resort landscape of greater Phoenix where
  recreational nomads spend winter months
• In the United States alone golf courses occupy an
  area twice the size of the state of Delaware

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Leisure landscapes

• Leisure landscapes take many forms
• Kindred amenity landscapes Minnesota North Lake
  country
• In one area 40 percent of dwellings are weekend
  cottages or vacation homes
• Often rustic or humble in appearance

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Leisure landscapes

• Historylands
• Collections of old structures relocated to fenced
  areas open only during certain seasons or hours
• If desired bit of visual history has perished,
  Americans and Canadians do not hesitate to
  rebuild it from scratch
• ExamplesJamestown, Virginia, or Louisbourg on
  Cape Breton Island
• People do not live in these parks
• Role-playing actors sometimes pretend to live in
  some past era

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The American scene

• Article written by David Lowenthal an overall
  evaluation of the visible impact of popular
  culture in the American countryside
• Some of the main characteristics of popular
  landscape as seen by Lowenthal
• Cult of bigness
• Tolerance of present ugliness to achieve a
  supposedly glorious future
• Emphasis on individual features at expense of
  aggregates, which produced a casual chaos
• Preeminence of function over form

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The American scene

• Fondness for massive structures is reflected in
  edifices such as
• The Empire State Building
• The Pentagon
• The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
• Salt Lake Citys Mormon Temple
• This fondness for largeness may reflect an effort
  to match the largeness of the physical
  environment -- Grand Canyon, redwoods,
  Yellowstone geysers

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The American scene

• Lowenthal says Americans tend to regard their
  cultural landscape as unfinished
• Tend to accept structures that are makeshift,
  flimsy, and transient
• Hardships of pioneer life may have preconditioned
  them toward valuing function over beauty
• State capitol grounds in Oklahoma City are
  adorned with working oil wells and their derricks

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The American scene

• Lowenthal says individual landscape features take
  precedence over groupings
• Five buildings or houses in a row may display
  five architectural styles
• Rarely is an attempt made to erect assemblages
  that belong together
• Each structure must be unique and eye-catching
• Architects vie with one another to produce
  attention-grabbing edifices
• Each fast-food chain requires it own outlandish
  style to gain instant visual recognition
• Australians share this fondness for unique
  designsSydneys opera house

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The American scene

• The traditional American front yard
• Since the early 1800s, the expanse of grassy lawn
  has prevailed
• Manicured lawns now occupy an area equal to the
  size of Pennsylvania!
• Neglect of front lawns or using the space for
  something functional can invite animosity and
  contempt of neighbors
• Lawn neglect can also lower property values or be
  in violation of building codes
• Most Americans accept the grass-covered front
  yard as a natural order of things in suburbia

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The American scene

• The traditional American front yard
• Migrating Anglos in the nineteenth century
  brought the front lawn into desert areas
• Irrigation was necessary to maintain the grass
• Anglo dwellings with their lawns stood in marked
  contrast to older Hispanic houses that either
  lacked yards or had bare-earth areas

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The American scene

• The traditional American front yard
• Decline of the grass front yard in favor of
  desert front yards
• Began to rise in the 1950s
• Gravel, crushed rock, desert plants, paving, or
  undisturbed desert
• Spurred by new urban immigrants who found the
  desert beautiful
• Acceptance occurred earliest in higher-priced
  subdivisions
• Spread gradually to middle-class districts

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The American scene

• The traditional American front yard
• Decline of the grass front yard in favor of
  desert front yards
• One half of all houses built in Tucson between
  1965 and 1975 had desert front yards
• Some yards covered with gravel dyed
  greensimulation of lawns and a classic example
  of a permeable barrier in cultural diffusion
• Decline of lawn tradition heralds emergence of a
  new distinct popular culture region
• Reflects an appreciation of Arizonas natural
  setting and Hispanic heritage
• Desert fronts have since diffused to neighboring
  states and beyond, such as Florida where plastic
  sheets are installed under gravel to prevent
  grass and weeds

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Landscapes of tragedy

• Geographer Kenneth Foote terms these landscapes
  shadowed ground
• Stigmatized sites where horrible events
  transpired
• Site of Martin Luther Kings assassination
• Schoolbook Depository from which President
  Kennedy was assassinated
• Gettysburg Battlefield from the Civil War
• Some sites are obliterated from the landscape

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Landscapes of tragedy

• Some sites are rectified, after repairs, and a
  plaque is placed as a reminder of the tragedy
  that occurred there
• Level of shame often helps determine the fate of
  shadowed ground
• Geographer Phil Hubbard speaks of immoral
  landscapesthose associated with prostitution
• Others have written about the landscape of the
  agedproduced when popular culture began to
  separate disabled older people residentially

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