• Citer

Popular, Unpopular: When First World War Museums Meet Facebook

par Bouko, Catherine
Référence Unpopular Culture, Taylor and Francis, page (277-290)
Publication Publié, 2025-01

Partie d'ouvrage collectif

• Détails
• Contenu

Résumé :

Let us start this paper with a simple question, which many cultural education managers are asking themselves as we commemorate the centenary of the First World War: how does one generate interest in this conflict among the younger generations when they feel so distant from it? For example, the British government plans to recreate the Christmas Day 1914 football match between the British and German troops. Here, popular culture meets historical reconstruction, as football star and pop-cultural icon David Beckham will be one of the players. Although widely accepted, the paradigm of ‘popular culture’ is nevertheless not always clear. In the opinion of Eric Maigret and Eric Macé, the expression ‘popular culture’ is one of those concepts that emerged after the concept of ‘mass culture’ and which clumsily glorify the cultural practices they purport to bring together without really emphasizing the new forms of relationship that these practices entail (cf. 10). As far as the media are concerned, the cultural practices are currently becoming more autonomous; their legitimacy no longer primarily depends on the domination of one social class over another. While the relationship between ‘popular’ and ‘unpopular’ media practices is less frequently subjected to these vertical social breakdowns, this does not necessarily mean that domination has disappeared; rather, it is apportioned in a different manner and also takes into account other important variables (such as age). Nowadays, what differences do we find between the popular and the unpopular? How do cultural media practices express these differences? This chapter aims at enhancing our understanding of the manner in which historical museums, as traditionally ‘sacred spaces’ of high culture, integrate the codes of popular culture to make the younger generations sensitive to themes they are likely to consider unattractive. In other words, I wish to examine how an institution nowadays often considered unpopular, associated with the values of the traditional, unfashionable, and old, invites the popular in its treatment of history.