Protect Popular Culture

Popular culture; television shows, movies, comic books, video games, theatre, jazz - rock - punk - rap - heavy metal - industrial - house music, cartoons, japanimation, role-playing games, pro wrestling, extreme sports, the internet, adult movies and magazines, modern and commercial art, poetry, short stories and novels. This is Pop Culture. This is our culture. Whether you grew up with Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Disco, Punk, Rap, or Grunge, this is your culture.

Pop culture is under constant attack from moralizing crusaders on both the right and the left. It has become the favorite whipping boy and scapegoat for every cause. Yet, consider this; there are approximately 275 million people living in North America, and 99% of them are decent, caring, hard working people, even though the vast majority of them were raised on popular culture. The popular culture has championed civil rights, international peace movements and disarmament, environmentalism, and many other causes. North America is more prosperous than ever before, and the engine that drives our prosperity is the popular culture.

Since the earliest days, the greatest enemy of Pop culture has been a tiny group of religious conservatives. Over the years, these people have condemned rock and roll music, heavy metal, role-playing games and many other facets of our culture as a satanic conspiracy to corrupt youth. They have condemned ET as the anti-christ, the Smurfs as demonic, the Teletubbies as gay. They have whined that popular culture is too sexual, too violent, too ethically neutral. And they have lobbied relentlessly for censorship, age restrictions, school and public library banned book lists, control of the internet, etc, etc. These people have their own music, books, movies, vacation theme parks, ISPs, private schools, and television and radio companies. They don't even consume popular culture products at all! Yet, they demand the right to control what all the rest of us can have access to, and through very well financed and organized lobbying they have suckered many members of state and federal congresses to support their attacks on our culture. They have also, through threats of boycotts and lawsuits, pressured retail outlets and even large entertainment corporations to place restrictions on the freedom of expression of artists, photographers, writers, musicians, and game designers.

Well, we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore!

We represent the 90% of the population who do consume popular culture products. We are proud of our culture, which is sought after and emulated all over the world. Heck, the iron curtain fell largely because the people in those countries demanded access to our culture! We are not going to stand for any more attempts to control or restrict or censor or ban aspects of our culture. We say;

HANDS OFF OUR CULTURE!
This page is dedicated to protecting pop culture from all those who attack it, whether they are in government or members of anti-popular culture lobby groups. We stand for solidarity with the creative geniuses who produce pop culture, and support their right to unrestricted expression of their creativity. We stand for unrestricted access to popular culture for all citizens, subject only to the controls which individual parents choose for their own children.
On this page, you will learn about the enemies of popular culture and how you can oppose them. You will also learn about groups that have similar objectives to ours or who support freedom of expression. You will learn how to lobby as an individual or as a group, and how you can set up a PROTECT POPULAR CULTURE lobby group in your community.
We will also be providing ways to network with other people who wish to help. Join us today!

THE PRINCIPLE OF SOLIDARITY

One of the ways that the enemies of Pop culture make progress in their agenda is to use a form of divide and conquer. They exploit the human tendency to protect our own interests first and worry about others later. They try to get fans of erotic film to support restricting violent film. They try to get fans of violent films to support restricting erotic films. They try to get fans of classical music , jazz, and rock, to support restrictions on heavy metal and rap. They try to get movie fans to support restrictions on video games, and theatre fans to support restrictions on television shows.
We must remember, that the consumer's right to choose entertainments that are best for them must be paramount. We must not support efforts to restrict entertainments that we are uninterested in or find tasteless or even offensive, because our choices may be next on the hit list. We must support freedom of expression for all.

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
--- Said by Rev. Martin J. Niemoller in 1945

How we differ

from other freedom of expression activists, is primarily a matter of the emphasis we give to culture. The principle and right of free expression is something we hold very dear, and support.
We also advocate the right of the consumer to unfettered access to Popular Culture and it's products.
However, our emphasis lies in making policy makers aware that Pop Culture is not just products, it is our chosen and inherited culture. Think about the cultural icons from around the globe; bagpipes and kilts and Robbie Burns poetry, the kama sutra - reincarnation - statues of buddha, beer halls - lederhosen - great philosophers. Every cultural group has its own icons, and would fight to the death against organized efforts to suppress them or depict them as morally corrupting. Well, when we attend a concert, like lollapalooza, edgefest, lillith fair or woodstock, we are not just going to a show. We are participating in a mass celebration of our culture, with no less significance than a Billy Graham rally has for other folks.

We are our own culture, whether our ancestors came from England, Sweden, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Korea, China, India, Indonesia or anywhere else on the globe - we now have our own culture, and its icons are fast food restaurants, skateboards, movies, television shows, video games, roleplaying games and wargames, horror novels, internet chat rooms, and a host of other things

. These are not just entertainments or diversions, they are our way of life, our culture, and we have every right to demand that our way of life not be interfered with by moralizing crusaders from outside our culture who have no understanding of it.