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Exploring Emancipatory Popular Culture:Browne and Kellner

This study examines two intellectuals' response to popular culture: Ray B. Browne and Douglas Kellner. They represent the changed attitude of a majority of American intellectuals towards popular culture since the 1960s. Browne, a folklorist and literary scholar, claims that popular culture is the voice of democracy in which the people express their everyday life in a creative way. He criticizes those as snobbish and elitist who look down at popular culture. He is a key figure in establishing popular culture as a legitimate field of study. Kellner, a Marxist philosopher, attempts to utilize popular culture as an instrument for progressive social transformation. He focuses on the oppositional moments in popular culture which challenge the institutions and way of life of the establishment. He urges left intellectuals to explore emancipatory popular culture and realize its potential to transform people's thought and behavior. This study also suggests that Browne and Kellner respond to something in the air, particularly the institutional theory of art and artworld which has contributed the thinning of the boundary between elite culture and popular culture.