One down side to being in an art school, I get attacked from time to time in a class full of art students when I admit I like popular culture. It seems like there’s something so appealing about being unique and rejecting the “popular” culture. Just this week, after making a comment about comic artist, Stan Lee’s death, someone in my class rudely shouted, “no one cares”. Yes, my fragile, sensitive heart was broken and deeply offended.
This interaction made me think about what makes some art students think we are better than ourselves by hating on poplar culture. In my opinion, being an art student is not an excuse for being disrespectful towards others who prefer mainstream culture, or something you’re not into in general. But before that, I’ll have to confess that deep down I still want to be unique and be like that person who was rude to me.
Rewinding back to 2009 when Justin Bieber first became famous world-wide, everyone in my school adored him. 5 years later, those same people would make fun of me for being a “Belieber” and I’d be afraid to bring up that name anymore. Of course, the wreckage of his reputation and his change in appearance had contributed to his unpopularity (yeah, I am aware that the guy is still at the world’s attention center).
After being made fun during my entire middle and high school, the anxiety for being a sucker of popular culture only increased when I came to an art school. Everyone seems so cool here. At the beginning, I tried to start conversations with my popular culture interests, the result was always awkward silence. From experiences, I’ve learned that a lot of people here are into Jazz, Indie, Folk and any kind of music but pop, and a lot of the students here simply despise pop music. With that being said, one time playing “Baby” by Justin Bieber as a joke at a party one time, everyone went wild.
I’ve had this conversation with one of my friends who no longer prefers pop music, were I found myself in shock as I realized she was once a fan girl as well. “I simply grew out of that music and found the music that I truly like,” is always the answer to my question, “why no longer?”
While using that mind set, I guess it is understandable that someone cannot bear pop music if that kind of music stimulates their memory of a less mature time. I will have to confess that in that case, I am guilty as well. I once made fun of someone who is into Japanese anime and aggressively expressed my loathing. To me, anime was something very triggering for me. I was a huge, HUGE fan of animes when I was younger and made a whole lot of mistakes that I would much rather not be reminded of by anime. As my friend said, I simply grew out of it.
Later on I found out that I wanted to move on from this period of my life so badly, because I didn’t enjoy it, that I neglected to acknowledge that a person could be into anime, and also neglected the entire anime industry.
So since when did everyone get the idea that being disrespectful to others would make us look better? And since when did it become such a sin to like what everyone else likes? The thing is, we are not going to have an answer to that, and there is no point in finding one either. But I can say that there will be less negativity if we just try and be a little more respectful to others. It’s impossible to ask the world to like your interests and it’s also impossible to like the whole world’s interests, but you can chose to either be a jerk about it, or be nice and respectful about it, which is what I’d like to do.