THE MULTIFACETS OF POP CULTURE: CULTURAL MEDIATIONS, SUBJECTIFICATION, AND RESISTANCE IN CONTEMPORANEITY

Abstract

This article analyzes the multifacets of Pop Culture in contemporaneity, investigating its role as a device for cultural mediation, production of subjectivities, and an arena for hegemonic disputes. Based on the premise that mass culture artifacts (cinema, digital platforms, comic books, and audiovisual narratives) go beyond mere passive entertainment to constitute highly persuasive cultural curricula, the study problematizes the dialectical tension between the market co-optation of difference and its potential for political resistance. The theoretical framework is guided by a dense critical dialogue among contemporary references in philosophy of culture, media anthropology, and critical theory: Michel Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman, Byung-Chul Han, Guy Debord, Gilles Deleuze, Paula Sibilia, Walter Benjamin, Vilém Flusser, and Slavoj Žižek. Organized into in-depth thematic sections, the work examines how the critical embrace of Pop Culture can dismantle normalization devices and build dissident and autonomous subjectivities. It concludes that contemporary mass culture constitutes a contingent terrain of struggle, in which the critique of the cultural industry must be mediated by restoring the political value of counter-narrative, algorithmic disobedience, and alterity.