​An Analysis of John Storey's Popular Culture in Friends 

     John Storey analyzes popular culture through 6 main definitions- culture liked by many, not high culture, mass culture, from the people, hegemony (Gramsci) and postmodernism. Popular culture is a culture which is widely favored or well liked by many people. Within Storey’s definition of popular culture he explains mass culture and folk culture. For this part of the analysis for the episode series of Friends, I will discuss how Friends is viewed as a form of popular culture.

First I will examine each part of Storey’s definition of popular culture and then in the next slide exemplify how each definition correlates to the first episode of Friends.

     When Storey speaks about a ‘culture liked by many’ he means that when we examine popular culture we must look at the text through a quantitative index. In essence, the ‘popular’ of popular culture demands a quantitative index. The more popular something is the more it fits into popular culture. The second definition is that popular culture is ‘not high culture.’ Rather, popular culture fits into a residual category accommodating texts and practices which fail to meet the required standards to qualify as high culture (popular culture as inferior culture). The third definition of popular culture is that it is a mass culture. The texts are mass produced for mass consumption, its audience is a mass of non-discriminating consumers, the culture itself is formulaic and mass culture is an imported American culture.

     The second portion of the definition contains the other three essential pieces to the definition. The fourth definition is that popular culture is ‘from the people.’ This is popular culture as a folk culture (a culture of the people for the people). The problem with this definition is that it evades the ‘commercial’ nature of much of the resources from which popular culture is made (discussion in next slide). The fifth definition is taken from Gramsci in which there is hegemony or a site of struggle. The word ‘hegemony’ refers to the way in which dominant groups in society seek to win the consent of subordinate groups in society. From this is the idea that popular culture are really theories about the constitution of ‘the people.’ The final definition is that popular culture is postmodern. Storey claims that postmodern culture is a culture which no longer recognizes the distinction between high and popular culture.