Pop culture didn't exist Commonly referenced culture among ordinary people existed, sure That doesn't mean it actually literally was the same thing as pop culture like we have now Living in a different time period does, in fact, fundamentally change the kind of person you are
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Replying to @arthur_affect @LizardOrman
When using language to try and describe something we are always going to be off the mark. Presentism the way you seem to be describing it basically destroys the modern human ability to understand something from the past or even another culture.
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Saying something "is like" isn't the same thing as saying "it is exactly this." Same as with your comparison of wage Slavery and chattel slavery being different but still part of the system of oppression. It's not about diminishing but communicating, the alternative is...
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..treating all things as disconnected, and impossible to understand or describe in a way someone can have as close to an understanding as possible without direct experience.
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Replying to @Lithobolos @LizardOrman
I understand that, which is why I made my tongue in cheek comment about the "mythology" comparison being formerly useful but now past its sell-by date I think continuing to use this comparison to defend the "legitimacy" of pop culture begins to obscure more than it reveals
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In particular, I think the people who own Spider-Man *want* us to think of Spider-Man as something that "just exists" in American culture the way Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill and John Henry just exist -- that it's an organic tradition and not a commercial product
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And I think blurring that distinction is dangerous, it makes us uncritical of things we really ought to be critical of, given how powerful the IP holders behind the superhero media machine have become
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Spider-Man really isn't just folklore that's out there that's a part of your hometown culture based on the shared experiences of your community going back generations He was made up by someone in order to deliberately sell you something
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So was The Aeneid.
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I mean "sell you something" as in literally, "I bet a bunch of people will buy this because it entertains them" Which isn't how ancient texts were written because the capacity to distribute and sell them in that matter didn't exist
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I don't mean the metaphorical sense of "selling you on an idea", of course all narratives try to do that
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I mean, so was The Aeneid. It just so happened that it sold one copy, and that paid really well.
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Replying to @Teknogrot @arthur_affect and
Anyway, reducing this to a matter of simple commercial viability of media is both over-simplification and probably pretty insulting to the creators who put genuine work into telling stories that resonate in modern media. It's rather similar to indie snobbery in games.
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