Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Durkheim, the “Father of Sociology,” wrote several works that examine the tension between individual freedom and social regulation. In his seminal work, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, he developed a typology of suicide that explores the role that social forces play for individuals who commit suicide. The experience of “anomie” is one type of suicide whereby the individual experiences excessive freedom devoid of the necessary social regulation that not only governs our everyday lives, but actually serves to affirm our very identity by situating us within the social context. While Durkheim writes specifically about actual suicide, his work could be applied more broadly to social phenomena themselves, and pop culture is an excellent phenomenon for such analysis because it is both pervasive and relentless in its desire to tear down conventions. This paper examines the sociological functions of popular culture. While many of these functions serve society in the same way that art and myth serve our collective good, this paper argues that pop culture’s marriage to both technology and to consumer culture often catapult it into a frenzied state of absurdity and vulgarity. Far from examining, critiquing, or transgressing social norms for the sake of public debate or to keep authority in check, pop artists are themselves the culture makers, and, given that society is no longer pushing back, it is no wonder that the “boundary pushers” of today have nowhere to go. Their boundless freedom leads them to anomie and ultimately, their art to anomic suicide.