Popular culture is the art of making do with what the system provides.
The old stories compete for our attention in a world wrapped in glass fibre, humans walking in space, ravers high on Ecstasy. In the postmodern age, there's something popular in all this mixing up of high and low culture. A time of mythical proportions. We seize the details of everyday life to make the popular. We carp about per diems while we workin for the man.