Usage of Pop Culture in Modern Fiction

I think pop culture references can be useful if you're trying to evoke a particular time and place. If you're trying to create a mood, however, or reveal character, I think you run the risk that the effort will be wasted on readers who don't know the reference, or who have different associations than you do. My parents, for example, think of most rock music as noise.

MTF

I try to avoid any reference to pop culture. It does automatically date your work, and I think some might raise the issue of your work standing alone without relying on other works. In historical fiction, you run the risk of going overboard, resulting in a confused reader or a reader who sees right through you setting up a fake set.

Well, I write mainstream/contemporary. It's almost impossible for me to avoid any reference to pop culture: literature, music, movies, tv, etc. Of course, I can always make things up, but that makes my stories less "real." I have to accept that you can always pin a time period on any stories, be it 1940s, 1970s, or 1870s... it doesn't make a "timeless" story any less timeless. It doesn't make "A Christmas Carol" or "A Tale of Two Cities" or "War of the Worlds" less enjoyable. I think it's okay if you want to make your story as time-generic as possible, but sooner or later, your story is going to be "dated" anyway. It's a matter of degree... You might not be able to get away with "Six Million Dollar Man" but 100 years from now, you may not get away with "the New York Yankees" either.

There are two kinds of pop-culture references: Ones that are just for flavor and ones that are vital to the plot.

The flavor is nice -- just don't overdo it. The ones that are vital to the plot you'll have to countersink a bit. Provide other clues in the text to your meaning so that folks who don't know the lyrics to a particular song, or all the details of the Great Boston Molasses Flood, will still understand what you're talking about.

I use pop culture references, too. As a matter of fact, the series of books that I am working on is about people in the music business, so it was hard not to. But the story is not about the music business, that's just part of the setting.

I like to add a bit of popular culture, but I'm careful to make it broad rather than narrow. A mention of a Beatles or Rolling Stones song, vintage M*A*S*H or Cheers episodes aired in syndication, or other references to pop culture that was already considered old when the work is set seems more workable, simply because people will still be familiar with the oldies in 20 years, or 40.

I hope.

Maryn, who has also noted Stephen King's dated-ness

Good idea for a thread.

When I read something like Bridget Jones Diary or a book by Judy Blume or what have you, references to culture, pop or otherwise are important. I didn't get all the references in Bridget b/c it is in England, but I liked that because I learned stuff. Then, when the novel ages, like Bridget being a window into England, it becomes a window to that time.

But some books should stay far away from cultural references. I think part of why Orson Scott Card's Ender series are seemless even though he wrote them over so many years is that it is set so far in the future, any reference he makes to culture still sounds believable. That's true of other books of his, too. One book, Songmaster, ends on earth, and he peppers it with places like Eastamerica and Westamerica, but again it is so far in the future it remains readable.

One book, and I'll be kind by not saying who wrote it, was set on a moonbase divided in two, half American half Russian. I couldn't get past the first chapter because it was so obviously late 70's.

I'm rambling a bit so I'll stop.

Maryn said:

A mention of a Beatles or Rolling Stones song, vintage M*A*S*H or Cheers episodes aired in syndication, or other references to pop culture that was already considered old when the work is set seems more workable

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I was considering amending my original post to say "Unless it's a M*A*S*H reference."

I recently read a Dick Francis mystery written in the 70s and was struck by how dated the technology was - no fax, no cell phone. In fact, absence of phone turned out to affect the plot. So even without specific pop culture references, fiction can be dated.

Tish Davidson said:

I recently read a Dick Francis mystery written in the 70s and was struck by how dated the technology was - no fax, no cell phone. In fact, absence of phone turned out to affect the plot. So even without specific pop culture references, fiction can be dated.

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But did the dated technology take you out of the story, or was it just interesting to you that the technology lack existed?

My plot is actually about pop culture. It's set in the early 90's, but it involves the whole 20th century, and part of the late 19th.

A vital plot point centers around the fact that one of the main characters lives in a house that's been in his family since it was built in 1860. The desolate downtown of his city is full of gorgous buildings from the 30's which have fallen into decay.

Characters of various ages argue over the supremacy of Sinatra over Elvis and The Beatles, while another main character is hopelessly in love with Kurt Cobain, the most famous man alive at the time of the story.

At the same time it foreshadows the future to come. People complain about bulky cell phones, and struggling to understand "The Information Superhighway". I even have a bit character who's dream is to one day marry porn with computers, and everybody thinks he's a nut.

But the main theme of the story is "The Death of Rock and Roll".

Of course Rock will never Die, but neither will Jazz, Blues, or Folk. But every popular form is eventually supplanted by a newer mode, and the story looks as that process as it happens to Rock, which is falling off the throne to be replaced by Hip Hop.

sassandgroove said:

But did the dated technology take you out of the story, or was it just interesting to you that the technology lack existed?

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It actually did take me out of the story briefly, but then I adjusted and thought nothing more about it.

James D. Macdonald said:

The flavor is nice -- just don't overdo it. The ones that are vital to the plot you'll have to countersink a bit. Provide other clues in the text to your meaning so that folks who don't know the lyrics to a particular song, or all the details of the Great Boston Molasses Flood, will still understand what you're talking about.

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Speaking of - I've heard that quoting lyrics in a novel is prohibitively expensive - does anyone have any idea exactly how expensive - say, two or three lines?

Depends on the artist and the song, whether the song has other commercial value (like has been used in a commercial). It can easily run to hundreds of dollars or more if you can even get permission and the paperwork for permissions is a pain and you may well need an attorney. Don't bother. It isn't worth it. Plus, for all the readers who don't know the song it won't have the same emotional impact that it does for you.

I think people can deal with pop culture in the books they read. I use it. I like reading books that use it. What is really talented, or I guess just a sign of good research, is when a writer writes a book today set in another time frame. I just read THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE by JONATHAN LETHAM. His use of 70s pop culture was extraordinary...I found myself back in that time.

I don't like it and I've never used it.

I may be different, but throwing in pop culture items throws me way off. Styles of clothing is one thing, but to name a popular band or a movie that isn't really considered a classic just drives me way out of a story.

That's probably just me though. I won't use pop culture in my books. I like timeless stories so I write what I read. An editor who read some of my works says he does like the way I can write that has so much detail, but people still can imagine it being whatever year they want.

So no Pop Culture for me, please.

but to name a popular band or a movie that isn't really considered a classic just drives me way out of a story.

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Good point, Button. When I come across something like this, the only thing it does is tell me what the author thinks about it. For that I don't particularly care.

Tish Davidson said:

It actually did take me out of the story briefly, but then I adjusted and thought nothing more about it.

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Sometimes it's weird, though. I'm a big fan of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mysteries. The series takes place in the 1980s, according to the author herself. But Kinsey's character is timeless, and there aren't any pop culture references, so I forget that it's the 80s. There are times when it drives me batty because she's LOOKING FOR A PAY PHONE so she can make some really important call, and I just want to scream "Use your cell phone!!"

And then I remember she can't have one, and I read on.

PattiTheWicked said:

Sometimes it's weird, though. I'm a big fan of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mysteries. The series takes place in the 1980s, according to the author herself. But Kinsey's character is timeless, and there aren't any pop culture references, so I forget that it's the 80s. There are times when it drives me batty because she's LOOKING FOR A PAY PHONE so she can make some really important call, and I just want to scream "Use your cell phone!!"

And then I remember she can't have one, and I read on.

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Yup, that was exactly the reaction I had when reading the Dick Francis book.

Using pop culture in a novel? Hmm....

Well, I can only remember one example, which I read when I was rather young. The book was entitled Nothing's Fair in Fourth Grade. The pop culture reference to watching an episode of Mork & Mindy kind of throws me off nowadays when I read the story....even though I think the book is tremendously entertaining.

On the same token, I wouldn't be so thrown if the reference were to a re-run of, say, I Love Lucy. Mork & Mindy was popular then, yes, but I have a hard time remembering the show much--and I loved watching it.

This, I think, is a major problem with using pop culture in a novel. Some things come across as 'dated,' while others that took place in exactly the same period of time, don't. And when you're writing present-day pop culture into a novel, it's virtually impossible to say "All right, this will be 'dated' when read twenty years from now, and that over there won't, so let's put that over there into the book." Or, for that matter, even to say, "This won't be 'dated' when read tomorrow," is also very difficult to predict.

For this reason, I personally prefer that if pop culture is used in a novel, that it be used in novels dealing with the past and the pop culture of that particular time. Things that people lived with twenty years ago, though they might be obscure, will more readily pop up in many readers' minds when mentioned nowadays; than things that are pop culture today would if mentioned today.

And also, if the novel is meant to speak to the people 'right now,' with the pop culture of today, it might not speak to readers twenty years from now, simply because it was written twenty years before their time.

Further, try to remember too, that publishers take sometimes a couple years to get an accepted manuscript to press. A lot can change in pop culture in just a couple years. That's another thing you might want to take into account when using pop culture in your novel. Just because it's pop culture when you write it down, doesn't mean it will still be pop culture when it goes to press.