Popular culture In motion: Dialectical games of power and subversion

Abstract

This paper discusses the challenges in defining popular culture and its dynamic character in different contexts and time periods. The main intention is to highlight the distinction from stereotypical views of popular culture as mass culture produced in entertainment industry, as well as low culture versus high culture. The work emphasizes that popular culture is actually shaped through contradictions and contrasting elements that fight for supremacy, such as control and resistance, power and subordination, elitism and populism, traditional and industrial, innovative and conformist, cohesion and stratification. The central issue of consideration has been the question of identity and identity politics in rethinking of popular culture and its role in challenging dominant narratives and inciting social changes. The paper has specifically examined the dialectical games of power and subversion in popular culture on the example of Eurovision as an arena of popular culture, as well as popularity of the song In Corpore Sano, applying the analytical framework of the critical paradigm of cultural studies in search of an answer to the question "what is the secret" of this music track.