The Journal of Kitsch, Camp and Mass Culture

Volume 1 / 2017

EDITORIAL
Jozef Kovalčik and Max Ryynänen

Slovak Arts Council, jozef.kovalcik@fpu.sk
Aalto University, max.ryynanen@aalto.fi

Introduction

EDITORIAL
Jozef Kovalčik and Max Ryynänen

Dear reader of Popular Inquiry: The Journal of the Aesthetics of Kitsch, Camp and Mass Culture, you are reading the first issue of our journal, i.e. Spring 2017. All the texts have alreadybeen published in blog format (popularinquiry.com). With the blog we hope to reach unexpected audiences as it is easy to read with smart phones, and even more important, as it is easy
to share texts which are in blog format. If anything, sharing in social media is one of the central
tenets of today’s everyday aesthetics and its use of popular culture. This PDF closes the process
and contains everything that we have published during the first half of 2017.
Our journal was born out of a need to create a more open-minded publication venue fortheoretical texts on popular culture. Most of us who share a philosophical interest in kitsch,
camp and mass culture have encountered many glass ceilings, which are partly due to the arrogant attitude many old school scholars of art still have towards the ‘new arts’ and partly due tothe non-theoretical nature of most popular culture scholars.
We hope to foster a more developed, theoretical and even non-academic intellectual
discussion on issues as varied as rap music, sport, malls, popular painting, toys and internet
culture – without forgetting the fact that we also feel the need to study critically ‘high culture’,‘highbrow’ and aesthetic hierarchies. Texts on these topics are more than welcome here. We
also invite you to work on taking back the popular from the highbrows who appropriated it.
Shakespeare was once theater for the people. The audience of Greek tragedies behaved like webehave in today’s sport events. And everywhere in the world, folk dance has been made cultural heritage in a stif way, which has killed the pop in it, i.e. liveliness. We hope you will also
write to us about popular culture in your cultural context, whatever that context might be. We
would love this journal to be both global and glocal.
The first issue contains three research articles and one review. Ossi Naukkarinen’s“Aesthetics of Popular Culture as Environmental Aesthetics” discusses popular ways of dealingwith the built environment. Adam Andrzejewski’s “Beauty Revealed in Silence” studies TV series, more precisely Hannibal, and everyday aesthetics. And Heidi Kosonen’s and Susanne
Ylönen’s “Between Mourning and Ridicule” discusses meme culture, here also connected to TV1

Jozef Kovalčik and Max Ryynänen

series (Game of Thrones). As our first review we publish Pauls Daija’s text “The Forgotten
Popular Culture of Latvia”, which presents an exhibition project on the history of popular culture, which the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia conducted at
the National Library in Riga.
Please follow us on Facebook (Popular Inquiry) and Twitter (@PopularInquiry) to get
the latest news and articles. Authors, take a look at our requirements (Submissions). Do nothesitate to write the way which is best for your discourse (we are methodologically openminded), and do not hesitate to contact us.

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