Every day we witness as new products, trends, and genre types rise into the view of the public eye with the hopes of solidifying themselves as the “next big thing”. This constant game of attempting to be popular has impacted fashion trends, top music genres, social media and digital movements, etc. We may not think about it as often, but we are the ones that directly contribute to what becomes big. We are the ones that actively participate within consumerism, social media, and other real-life platforms that offer us a multitude of options for us to determine what is to our liking. So, whether you like it or not, we are the ones that have helped things such as pop sockets, scrunchies, low-rise waist fashion, and movie revivals rise to fame in pop culture. It’s kind of amazing when you think about how much we collectively contribute to the ever-changing state of pop culture.
In this blog post, I will be explaining the multiple types of cultural practices that help to define what is favored within society, and how this impacts cultural meanings within pop culture.
The 4 Types of Cultural Practices:
Think about what is popular currently. You probably thought about a wide array of different things. Off the top of my head as I asked myself that same question, I thought of things such as bucket hats, mini backpacks, horror movie revivals/continuations, and Squishmallows. Whether you thought about a list of items that resemble my own or a completely different list, notice how your list can be constructed by “new” things and “old” things that have now found themselves to be popular again (ex: the bucket hats and movie revivals from my list). It’s strange to consider that currently trending items can either be brand new or familiar items that have been revived into popularity.
To better consider the possibility of this, let’s consider the thought of Welsh writer, Raymond Williams. Williams described there to be four types of cultural practices that can be applied to things and the level of popularity that they experience: emergent, dominant, residual, and archaic.
Emergent: This type refers to what is, quite literally, the next big thing. These are the up-and-coming items and trends that are already proving themselves to be favorable amongst audiences. They haven’t confirmed themselves to be popular yet, but they are on their way to doing so. It can be harder to distinguish what falls into the emergent category since it’s not always as obvious what will be popular.
Dominant: These are the items and stuff that are currently popular. Some of the items that are in this category may find themselves staying here longer than other items. They may be current for only a short amount of time, while other items might have found a way to constantly remain current and popular.
Residual: This refers to stuff and trends that were once popular in an earlier time period, fell out of popularity over time, but are now currently popular once again. This is basically the recreation and revival of older items so that they can once again be accepted by the general public.
Archaic: These are the items and trends that are considered to be super old. They don’t receive much attention other than by the niche audience that still favors and/or admires them. When it comes to gaining mass attention by an abundant audience, they aren’t as fortunate.
Residual Culture:
Like I mentioned in the previous section, residual refers to older items that have found themselves back in the limelight once again in the current times. A number of residual items that are present today in current society and pop culture can include vinyl records, bucket hats, scrunchies, and revival and/or continuations of older films (ex: The Matrix, Jurassic Park, Lord of The Rings, Halloween, etc.).
In their book titled Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Media in a Networked Culture, Henry Jenkins, Joshua Green, and Sam Ford discuss residual culture. Residual culture basically refers to how older cultural practices find their way back into modern culture. This is often because the public gives these older items new meanings (whether that be continuously or uncontinuously).
Residual material has a high potential to become popular once again due to their nostalgic values and their ability to encourage conversations revolving around the past and the present.
In the book’s section discussing residual and retro culture, it brings up the topic of collectors. You can collect all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. The book points out that most traditional collectors of various items seek to collect items for nostalgic and sentimental value, not to re-establish their collected items into something new for the current state of culture. While media culture has the power to find new meanings in their collected media in order to create something new and meaningful for the present. More specifically, the book states that, “If traditional collectors erase use value almost entirely in favor of sentimental value, these retro media fans restore use value by discovering new uses for forgotten material.”
Let’s take me for an example for a second. I have collected a number of Star Wars figures from the 1990s for a while now. Although I’m still hunting for a few more figures, I do not search and collect these figures with the purpose of creating new meanings with them. I mainly collect them for, as the quote states best, sentimental value. As an adult who has grown up with Star Wars as being a present part of her life, these figures to me represent just how much value and admiration I hold towards the Star Wars franchise, when I was a child and now as an adult.
But it appears that Star Wars media has found itself finding new meanings multiple times since the initial release of the first movie in 1977. We have the initial trilogy that started it all (1977-1983), the prequel series that contributed to the Star Wars history that happened before the events of the original trilogy (1999-2005), and the latest trilogy that touched on the original Star Wars storyline by revisiting familiar faces and introducing new faces (2015-2019). Whether you like or dislike any of these trilogies, each one has helped to keep Star Wars present and meaningful within today's pop culture and society.
Even after the completion of all three trilogies, we are still receiving Star Wars related series such as (but not limited to) Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett. The Star Wars community is still expecting the release of other series such as the Obi-Wan Kenobi series and the Ahsoka series. Each new piece of Star Wars media is building upon the foundations contributed by the past trilogies, but also simultaneously builds upon the meaning of Star Wars by creating new stories.
Sure, this could be Disney cashing in on the residual economic and cultural values that Star Wars offers, but Star Wars still remains present and meaningful today because we as viewers have demonstrated that we favor the franchise and what it continuously still has to offer.
The Uncertainty of Product Success:
So now that we know that either new and/or old things can find themselves to be popular, let’s consider how we determine what will be popular and/or shared amongst audience members.
Jenkins, Green, and Ford explain later on in their book that despite us always constantly seeing the “next big things”, it can be hard for creators to determine whether what they create will be successful. There are a few strategies and methods that they can consider that can potentially better the likelihood of their content becoming popular. However, even if they consider everything, there is no guarantee that they will receive the outcome they so desire. But that doesn’t mean they can’t reference back to different types of content that have already proven themselves to be popular and shareable amongst audience members. Some of these types of content include:
Shared Fantasies: This can refer to types of creations that are commonly enjoyed by multiple types of viewers and subgroups. This can include fan-created works (art, writing, video edits, etc.) that are created for specific types of movies, shows, books, fandoms, etc. It can also include media that induces nostalgia for a certain generation such as old commercials.
Humor: This is exactly what this is. Material that makes you laugh. It can help to connect people that understand or want to share in a particular joke.
Parody and Reference: Parody is a term that helps to define pieces of material that have value because they have the ability to express shared experiences. Common shared experiences that parodies can reference can include topics of nostalgia and referring to shared history.
Unfinished Content: This content leaves their material to be open ended. This helps to encourage audience members to contribute their own thoughts and/or something new. This can also cause audiences to think twice about what they say because it was shocking to an extent.
Mystery: This type of content leaves viewers guessing. It can leave them uncertain as to what the rhetorical goal behind the content is, or even who created and or produced the content. It basically makes it to where the material's unclear motives excite and interest viewers.
Timely Controversy: The timing in which this content comes out plays a crucial role in how popular this type of content is. The timing this comes out often strikes up conversation and intense attention. This is difficult to do since cultural relevance is constantly changing. It is important to know that this type of content can even work or backfire, so be careful.
Rumors: I think it’s safe to say we are all familiar with rumors. They can be damaging but can also garner a lot of attention.
So, with those listed out, let’s go back to the topic of Star Wars. I’m going to potentially ruffle some feathers with this one, but for this example, let’s look at the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer ( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbxmsDFVnE ). It is the first movie that kicked off the third Star Wars trilogy, 10 years after the release of the last movie from the prequel series. Disney had a legacy to carry on and high expectations for them to reach, so they had to make sure that their first introduction to their new trilogy was received well by viewers. The trailer alone gained 108 million views on YouTube, 114,847 comments on YouTube, and for the exact same trailer on Facebook it was shared 432 thousand times. Needless to say, the trailer gained a lot of attention.
Now let's consider the types of content strategies and themes that Disney utilized in order to get this trailer off the ground. These are the ones I would argue that this trailer played on:
Shared Fantasies: This was already one that the Star Wars franchise has right off the bat. Star Wars has acquired a large community of fans since its start in 1977. It is a franchise that many undoubtable know and enjoy. Fans have created fan-art, video edits, fanfiction, and cosplay related to Star Wars. Needless to say, this content plays on shared fantasies.
Parody and Reference: The original story of Star Wars already gave Disney a lot to reference. As we get visuals of well-known droid and ship types, stormtrooper silhouettes, the remnants of Darth Vader’s helmet, current age Han Solo, General Leia, and Chewbacca. The trailer references a lot to gain the attention of older fans that are familiar with the start of this franchise.
Unfinished Content: A trailer in itself is unfinished content. It only gives you a general snippet of what the next Star Wars centered story will be and will explore. This left viewers wanting to contribute their own thoughts and theories as to what was to come within this next trilogy.
Mystery: The trailer makes it clear that this is a Star Wars-based story, but as to what the focus of this story will be is not totally clear. We get snippets of new faces and visuals that potentially give us ideas, but that’s all the trailer leaves us with: ideas. It left a lot of us guessing as to what this next trilogy was going to be about and how they were going to kick off this next story.
Whether you liked or disliked the latest Star Wars franchise, it is undeniable that the content in which Disney made for this film was considered to be popular and current at some point. Which helped to contribute towards keeping Star Wars popular in pop culture. I mean, let’s be honest, Star Wars has always been pop culturally relevant and well known. The franchise solidified itself as being iconic. But the new stories that are added to it in the current years gives it new meaning for new generations that enter into the Star Wars fandom. It also helped for new Star Wars series and stories to be continuously created and shared.
Conclusion:
We help to determine what is popular and the “next big things” by being active members of social media and society in general. This can help to determine if new things will be made popular, or if old things will return to popularity. This post focused mainly on the topic of Star Wars for its examples, but these findings can be applied to multiple trends, genres, and items found with pop culture. Overall, we are the active factors that help to determine the state of our ever changing digital and physical societies.
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