Literature and Popular Culture: A Study of Crime Fiction
This study examines the interconnectedness between popular culture and literature
using crime fiction as a study. Popular culture is the set of practices, beliefs, and
objects that embody the most broadly shared meanings of a social system or of a
particular set of people in a given society. It includes media objects, entertainment
and leisure, fashion and trends, and linguistic conventions, among other things. The
difficulties with developing a non-biased definition of popular culture are legendary
in academia (Fedorak, 2018). It is a divergent member of the ‘culture’ family:
contradictory and often inconsistent. It is a term that is hard to explain and a subject
that is hard to teach.
Classic and contemporary scholarly attempts to define popular culture often
emphasize its links to the capitalist market economy of modern societies, largely
considering it a highly commercial, homogenized culture which is mass produced for
mass consumption. One of the distinctive features of popular culture is the dynamic
diversity. The dynamism is driven by the advancement of new technology, while its
diversity lies within the deeper nature of the phenomenon. It is quite challenging to
explain popular culture without fragmenting it, and most attempts to subsume it under
one category proved futile (Malinowska & Lebek, 2016). It is in fact a very broad
conceptual category. Many people intuitively understand what popular culture means,
yet there is no one widely accepted definition. The multifaceted nature of popular
culture raises more questions than it answers. As Storey (2009) reflects, "to study
, popular culture we must first confront the difficulty posed by the term itself".
Before making any attempts to define popular culture, it seems necessary to first
examine the term ‘culture’. As with popular culture, the term culture has been the
subject of numerous elaborate and abstract definitions. One of the earliest definitions
of culture, and one still used today, was offered by British Anthropologist Sir Edward
Burnett Tylor. Sir Edward Tylor (1871) offered a broad definition, stating that culture
in its wide ethnographic sense is “that complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society”. Years went by and the term culture evolved into something
bigger than a set of standards, customs and beliefs. It added symbolism to its pool of
meaning. An explanation provided by Geertz (1973) described culture as “a system of
inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men
communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward
life”. This explanation takes us a step closer to the modern interpretation of the term.
According to Samovar, Porter, and McDaniel (1999), the contemporary definitions of
culture commonly mention shared values, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, norms,
material objects, and symbolic resources. In their work they propose a simplified
explanation of culture, stating that culture is the “rules for living and functioning in
society". As with culture, the term popular culture is not static. It evolves and changes
as centuries go by, absorbing new meanings and discarding old ones. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, the debate persists even today as to the exact meaning of this term. No
matter what source is used, a dictionary or an academic work, neither can offer a
This study examines the interconnectedness between popular culture and literature
using crime fiction as a study. Popular culture is the set of practices, beliefs, and
objects that embody the most broadly shared meanings of a social system or of a
particular set of people in a given society. It includes media objects, entertainment
and leisure, fashion and trends, and linguistic conventions, among other things. The
difficulties with developing a non-biased definition of popular culture are legendary
in academia (Fedorak, 2018). It is a divergent member of the ‘culture’ family:
contradictory and often inconsistent. It is a term that is hard to explain and a subject
that is hard to teach.
Classic and contemporary scholarly attempts to define popular culture often
emphasize its links to the capitalist market economy of modern societies, largely
considering it a highly commercial, homogenized culture which is mass produced for
mass consumption. One of the distinctive features of popular culture is the dynamic
diversity. The dynamism is driven by the advancement of new technology, while its
diversity lies within the deeper nature of the phenomenon. It is quite challenging to
explain popular culture without fragmenting it, and most attempts to subsume it under
one category proved futile (Malinowska & Lebek, 2016). It is in fact a very broad
conceptual category. Many people intuitively understand what popular culture means,
yet there is no one widely accepted definition. The multifaceted nature of popular
culture raises more questions than it answers. As Storey (2009) reflects, "to study
, popular culture we must first confront the difficulty posed by the term itself".
Before making any attempts to define popular culture, it seems necessary to first
examine the term ‘culture’. As with popular culture, the term culture has been the
subject of numerous elaborate and abstract definitions. One of the earliest definitions
of culture, and one still used today, was offered by British Anthropologist Sir Edward
Burnett Tylor. Sir Edward Tylor (1871) offered a broad definition, stating that culture
in its wide ethnographic sense is “that complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society”. Years went by and the term culture evolved into something
bigger than a set of standards, customs and beliefs. It added symbolism to its pool of
meaning. An explanation provided by Geertz (1973) described culture as “a system of
inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men
communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward
life”. This explanation takes us a step closer to the modern interpretation of the term.
According to Samovar, Porter, and McDaniel (1999), the contemporary definitions of
culture commonly mention shared values, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, norms,
material objects, and symbolic resources. In their work they propose a simplified
explanation of culture, stating that culture is the “rules for living and functioning in
society". As with culture, the term popular culture is not static. It evolves and changes
as centuries go by, absorbing new meanings and discarding old ones. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, the debate persists even today as to the exact meaning of this term. No
matter what source is used, a dictionary or an academic work, neither can offer a
