Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.

They were unironic enthusiasts for all the mass pleasures the culture offered: television, NASCAR, cruises, Disney World, sports, celebrity gossip, and local politics. Szabo often wished that he could be as well adjusted as Melinda's family, but he would have had to be medicated to pursue her list of pleasures.

Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.

I'm interested in youth culture and popular culture.

Like 'Twin Peaks,' '24,' 'Mad Men,' and 'The Sopranos' before it, 'Downton Abbey' enriches the iconography and collective lore of pop culture. It replenishes the stream.

Fashion is simply a guideline for style-less people to appear stylish.