Popular Culture and its Siginficant Elements in Politics (Essay Sample)

POLITICS AND POPULAR CULTURE
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Politics and Popular Culture
Introduction
Popular culture has increasingly become an important element in politics. Its covert and overt integration into politics has been necessitated by the realization of how it shapes ideologies and values in the society. Furthermore, complex communication channels involving the internet have resulted in popular culture’s easier integration into politics. Politicians are immersed in popular culture because it is perceived as the bond that ties the masses together (Street, Inthorn and Scott, 2015). It is argued that each individual in the society is aware of popular culture. Thus, politicians seek to skilfully utilize popular culture to enhance personal or political appeal to the public. This is due to the fact that the music, films or media stories relayed to the public through popular culture are an important fabric of the society. Popular culture seeks to reflect political realities and in some instances assist to shape these realities. Through films and music, popular culture mirrors the politics of the day and moulds political action. Artists and film makers embed political messages in popular culture in the attempt to reveal grave political issues and to trigger public response.
Today’s society is immersed in a culture of control and manipulation through various means. For instance, consumerism, which is entrenched through the media advocates for certain values and ideals that control and manipulate how consumers purchase goods and further influence how people accept these ideals as normal behaviour (Beer, 2013). Likewise, politicians attempt to align their messages with the popular culture. They effectively utilise the media to advance these messages to the masses. Therefore, while the masses harbour notions of freedom and liberty, in the real sense, they are deceived and manipulated. Largely, politicians make use of popular culture to influence people into following their ideologies or into taking certain courses of action that align with politicians’ political agenda.
Distribution of popular culture takes diverse forms and means. Although popular video games are unlike the common sources studied by people, such as policy statements, presidential statements or international agreements; it is normally characterised by micro politics, whereby political subjects, geopolitical and security threats visualisations, imaginary identities and communities are duplicated in a digital form (Hartley, 2017). Some of these games, such as call of duty, provide a clear idea about war like situations. They are developed in such a way that the simulation makes the player identify with a real battleground.
In the Counter Strike, an online gaming platform that offers the player with a choice between terrorist planting a bomb, and counter terrorist, who have the goal to diffuse the bomb or eliminate all terrorist prior to planting the bomb, players are offered with insights into war on terrorism. In the 1960s, movies were rife with conspiracy theories that revealed to the public the underhand deals and operations of several governments (Street et al., 2015). The conspiracy films began as early as the 1930s and culminated in the 1960s with films such as Seven Days in May, whose plotline revolved around a group of military men who had the objective to take over the US government. The 1967 Spy Spoof’s movie, The Presidential Analyst, depicted a similar plot, which involved a telephone firm. All the President’s Men attempted to examine the break in and cover-up of the Watergate scandal during President Nixon’s Administration. The movie provided a real life viewpoint of the political events that led to the scandal and how the cover up was planned and executed.
Popular culture is an important political tool since it illustrates and functions within the larger social political atmosphere and it can be used to transmit political ideologies. It shapes identities and institutions and creates rife contestations (Street et al., 2015). In this regard, many politicians and presidents are known for capitalizing on popular culture to garner support for their policies and for themselves. For example, former American President George W. Bush is known for alluding to the wild west mythology of Wanted: Dead or Alive, after the 2001 September, 11 bombing of the New York Twin Towers. Moreover, popular music was employed to bring about emotional healing to Americans, following the Twin Tower bombings. Earlier, in 1939,
Billie Holiday, a renowned blues singer of the day wrote and produced the song “strange