However, if the explosion of experimental popular culture in the second half of the 20th century taught us anything, it’s that it’s possible to be popular without being populist. Conversely, it’s possible to be populist without being popular. Isn’t this, in fact, the formula for capitalist realist culture since Blairism? Blair wins election after election, but by the end he is widely detested – especially among those who have reluctantly voted for him. Exploitative reality TV continues to command large – if now waning – audiences, but many of the people who loathe the programmes are also those who avidly watch them. Similarly, many of those who protest the arrival of Tesco in their town also end up shopping in the stores when they arrive. To call this hypocrisy is to miss the eminently dialectical ambivalence of these entanglements. In watching the X Factor or shopping in Tesco, there is often some lingering desire for mass mediated technological modernity to be better than it is, whereas those who have retired into private space with their DVD box sets and ethically sourced goods have given up on this possibility, if they ever cared about it. 

 

brought back here:

https://k-punk.org/going-overground/ 

by this:

 https://www.calton-books.co.uk/books/the-melancholia-of-class-a-manifesto-for-the-working-class/