It's perhaps a pointless truism to point out that ever since there has been politics, popular culture has been inextricably linked to it. All the way back in Ancient Greek, where an inchoate form of our current political structures existed, the plays written by the likes of Sophocles and Aristophanes have borne explicitly political themes, Antigone asked rather direct questions about statehood, sovereignty and patriotism and the Lysistrata was an openly anti-war comedy. Politicians and governments have long sought to use this fact to their advantage, leaning to employ popular culture as one of the tools by which they alter public opinion. During the Second World War, the US Department of War actually set up a "War Films" division within their department to back films deemed to help in the war effort, and such backing in turn produced the likes of such classics as Casablanca (1942). More recently, films such as Top Gun (1986) and 13 Hours (2016) have also received support in the form of access to military facilities for the use of sets and so on. For this and other investments of theirs, the US military has benefitted from an increase in militaristic and patriotic sentiments from their populace, bolstering domestic support for the various endeavours.
It isn't just the military that has enjoyed the effects of pop culture upon politics. Progressive movements have also benefited from major boosts to their cause as a result of certain film's impacts. The LGBTQ+ movement has since seen an increase in awareness while homosexuals specifically have experienced surges in social acceptance as a result of the 1993 film Philadelphia, which was about a gay lawyer who is fired from his law firm after discovering he has AIDs. As HIV advocate Gary Bell describes it, "It got people talking about HIV in a way that they really weren't, because it was always that thing that we really didn't want to talk about."
The effect is not only limited to the West and the US. In Poland, Kryzsztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing helped to bring about the abolition of the death penalty in Poland with its depiction of the execution of a convicted murderer in Post-Cold War Poland.
Giving the matter a little thought, one would be able to draw out the relationship quite easily. Films and other forms of media, if made well that is, have the ability to stir up powerful emotions in the viewer, to make the audience cry, laugh, breathe a sigh of relief or explode with rage. Certain characters can inspire empathy from the audience like nothing else, as can they inspire the most savage hatred, depending on how they are framed by the filmmakers. If the characters are then made into representatives of certain causes or a certain type of person that one sees in society, then the emotions that one feels for the characters very often end up getting transferred to the causes they represent as well. In this way, US movies have managed to promote war by casting US soldiers as valiant action heros, or criticised war by creating empathies for the scores of injured veterans that they create.
Artists too have this ability to sway political currents. As on-screen and greatly admired talents, their words have a great deal of influence. Many have large fanbases who hang on to their every word and who make decisions on politics partially based on celebrity opinions. One sees this through the role that celebrity endorsements play in politics, with US politicians, both Republican and Democratic, frequently inviting singers and actors to appear at their party conventions to endorse their campaigns.
In this way, music has become a vessel to emphasize the message of political campaigns, and a means through which politicians can catch the populist fan appeal in their net. Senator Fred Harris integrated the warm croons of Harry Chapin’s dust-bowl folk music into his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, giving his campaign a congenial presence during the New Deal era. Even more recently, in a 2008 democratic primary speech, Obama brushed his shoulders with his hand, referencing Jay-Z’s Dirt Off Your Shoulders. Paralleling this, rapper will.i.am composed Yes We Can, with reference to Obama’s inaugural speech scattered between the lines to instantiate themes of slavery. Throughout history, examples of the borrowing of pop culture to promote politics and the borrowing of political news to be infused into pop culture have been ubiquitous. Such a pivot towards ‘purposeful-pop’ has been years in the making– it is yet another unavoidable phenomenon.
Whether the result is a garish show of populism or a rousing display of patriotism and a promise to address social inequality, politicians use popular music to legitimise their campaigns, and tie themselves to this ‘teen spirit’. Yet, in recent years, alarming contentions have surfaced. Our definition of pop culture has changed– information and fan gatherings used to be disseminated through radio and television, which older generations also participated in. The ascent of media and digital penetration has been ushered in as accompaniment to an age of digitalism. Following this, younger audiences are increasingly able to join in the mass movements on social media, catalysed by pop culture. They flock to the ranks of cult-like stans, a portmanteau of ‘stalker’ and ‘fan’ coined by Eminem in 2000, and become personally and para-socially invested in political and social issues as a result of the conflation of pop culture and politics. A type of niche consumer culture has ensued, accompanied by demands that artists have to ‘appear authentic through carefully curated social media personas’– the modern audience’s idea of ‘authenticity’ lies in the discussion of social issues, which are often linked to political ones. When the herd moves, it moves. Such stan culture is reactionary and capricious– it launches diatribes against whoever they deem as perpetrators of social issues, expects artists to provide social commentaries on politics, but yet ‘cancels’ artists if they stray from the typically liberal viewpoint.
Artists just can’t seem to catch a break nowadays– they face heavy backlash by their audience when remaining silent on political issues that the internet is very passionate about, but also risk being cancelled when they take a “wrong” stand. Global pop star Taylor Swift is a great example of this. Once an apolitical artist for the majority of her career, she shocked many fans when she openly supported 2 Democratic candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections. She explained how "Due to several events in (her) life and in the world in the past two years, (she) now feels compelled to make (her) views public”, and goes as far as offering endorsements in both the races for the Senate and House of Representatives she'll be voting on in her home state, Tennessee.
However, her decision to speak out sparked as much controversy as her political silence. Her actions angered many Republicans, and incited many of them to publicly express their disapproval. Charlie Kirk, president of conservative group Turning Point USA, tweeted: “You just endorsed a Democrat in the Tennessee Senate race with a ridiculous statement saying Marsha Blackburn, a woman, is against women. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.” The frustration translated online as well, with one netizen saying that she “just ended her entire career”.
In the age of cancel culture, it seems as though speaking out on political issues is an obligation of every artist. However, we need to stop seeing things in a black and white dichotomy. In fear of being cancelled when they don’t agree with the majority of netizens online, can we really trust that the views shared by artists are representative of their own? If not, it defeats the whole purpose of artists advocating for what they think is right and expressing their support for an issue– rather, it heralds the new age of performative, virtue-signalling pop culture.
Furthermore, being apolitical may not be such a bad thing. Taylor Swift, 23 at that time, once explained her rationale for remaining silent on politics for so long, telling Time Magazine how “(she doesn't) talk about politics because it might influence other people, and (she doesn't) think that (she) knows enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.” This begets the question - should artists be involved in politics when they are too young to understand the complexity of the issue?
A more recent example would be Olivia Rodrigo. At the tender age of 19, her music career is already heavily intertwined with politics. In 2021, she was invited to the White House to give a speech urging youths to get vaccinated. In 2022, she publicly voiced her disapproval towards the possible overturn of Roe V. Wade to the crowd during her Sour Tour in Washington, DC, with her strong statement ‘Our bodies should never be in the hands of politicians’. For such a young artist whose music career has only lasted 2 years, she has certainly done a lot.
Perhaps the distinction of whether or not an artist should speak up about political issues lies in two facets– their identity as tied to the political issue that they are speaking out about, as well as their audience. Artists are increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place: As a woman who would be personally affected by the legislation, Rodrigo does have an intrinsic right to speak out about Roe V Wade. How can we place a piece of tape over the mouth of an artist, invalidating their commentaries, if the ethos of their works is rooted in very real social issues that they themselves are impacted by?
Yet at the same time, it may seem perilous to expose young audiences to such complex issues at an impressionable age. The majority of people participating in “stan culture” are young and impressionable teenagers. Given the skewed abundance of information on the Internet, even if such teenagers are able to practise critical thinking and emotional maturity, they are often unable to. Hence, seeing their favourite artists openly express their opinions on politics may influence them to think that that is the only valid one to have. Eventually, herd mentality increases the emotional saliency of information on the internet to youths– because they put pop culture artists on a pedestal and are so regularly bombarded with ever present notifications on their social media feeds from a multitude of different people, they interpret this information as being important to them, and hence interpret its saliency more obviously.
The dilemma that artists face about whether or not to speak out about political issues is one based on an increasingly fickle and mercurial audience. Oftentimes, the consumer of such popular culture would have little idea of whether the views an artist presents accurately reflects their actual thoughts, or are simply a result of social pandering and cancel culture; of whether an artist is staying silent because they truly do not believe in the matter, or simply want to fight for it privately rather than under the scrutiny of millions.
While the phenomenon of the amalgamation of pop culture and politics heads towards our society like a bulldozer, the responsibility for synthesising pop culture framed with political messages and ideology has to be shifted more towards the consumer. Perhaps instead of openly campaigning for their views, an artist’s responsibility would be more appropriate if shifted towards educating the masses on the various political perspectives present in the world today. Only with a critical response would the audience be able to break out of this herd culture, and interpret cryptic tweets such as Lana del Rey’s comment of Kanye West supporting Donald Trump as a ‘loss for the culture’ with an open, evaluative mind.
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Written by: Yee Yean Teng Shanice (22S68), Khoo Kia Song Kendrick (22A14), Ng Chen Fong (22S63)
Edited by: Emily Wenqi Perera (22A15)
Ultracrepidarian.
There are no facts, only interpretations.