ABSTRACT
Proponents of the "popular culture as junk" position claim that it is, for the most part, mechanical, mass-produced, subliterary "schlock," manufactured to please the lowest common denominator. For most people, who lead lives of "quiet desperation," life is the interruptions, the momentary pleasures, the lost moments — and not any kind of grand undertaking. Popular culturists lack an academic identity. The problem with most of the work done in popular culture is that the sociologists have neglected aesthetic considerations and the literary scholars have neglected sociological considerations. Popular culture has been an easy target or people with any one of a number of biases. Paradigms are, of course, artificial constructions and subject to all kinds of difficulties. Entertainment, however — whether via television or not — may unobtrusively convey ideas, information, sentiments, and values to the members of a society.
