ABSTRACT
Histories of civilizations tend to concentrate on political and military leaders, and thinkers. Popular culture is both an elusive and an unpredictable quarry. No one knows when an unexpected event will capture the world’s attention: when the assassin’s bullet will strike or when the ship will sink, causing an outburst of popular interest. In March 1993 the outburst centered on a seventy-eight-acre compound outside Waco, Texas, occupied by the Branch Davidian cult. It was a global question. Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt and Algeria went on rampages. The death of Britain’s Princess Diana in an automobile speeding through a Paris traffic tunnel turned out to be, in some quarters, the event of the year in 1997. Good-bye to any simplistic definition of popular culture. The much-heralded worldwide “popular culture explosion” has produced thousands of books, films, TV programs, and monographs but no widely accepted definition.
