Photo by Thao Le Hoang on Unsplash
One of the most fascinating aspects of pop culture (and by extension pop culture magic) is how pop culture reinvents and refreshes itself. The most recent example that comes to mind is the show Cobra Kai, which was recently acquired by Netflix. This show takes place 30 years after the Karate Kid movie series and is an update on that series, which focuses on the characters from the first film (initially). I watched the entire series myself recently and like many other people got caught up in the Karate Kid saga again.
There’s two factors that make a given pop culture relevant for people who practice pop culture magic. One factor is the personal relevance you attribute to a given pop culture. People who are die hard fans of a pop culture will be so invested in that pop culture that it won’t matter if it is or isn’t relevant to other people.
The second factor though is the factor of communal popularity, where a show, book, or whatever else becomes popular to lots of people. In that time of communal popularity, that pop culture is boosted to the awareness of more and more people and for that time it captures the imagination of the people who are partaking of the pop culture. We’ve seen this with the Harry Potter series, and we see it with Cobra Kai. For the aspiring pop culture magician, the latter factor can be useful for short term, one off pop culture workings or it can be the introduction to a pop culture that becomes personally relevant to the magician.
When I watched Cobra Kai recently, I did so when I was going through a personal crisis in my life. Watching the struggles of Johnny Lawrence became highly personal for me, because while my struggles weren’t the same I could identify with his fall from grace and how that fall had impacted him, as well as how he was struggling to rise back up. So it was no surprise to me that as I watched the show I also felt that pop culture spirit reach out and connect with me and give me some advice that helped me work through some of the issues I was dealing with. It was delivered with Cobra Kai style.
What that interaction demonstrated to me is how a given pop culture can reach out and connect with you on many different levels, provided you are receptive to it. Whether I end up working with Johnny Lawrence further or not, in that moment, when I needed some help there he was, because of how I connected with the series and got caught up in its modern day mythos.
When a given pop culture is reinvented or renewed with new pop culture there’s always the chance it will bomb, but there’s also the chance it will stand out and grab your attention. When it does, you have a choice as to what you’ll do with how the pop culture engages you. Do you just enjoy it (nothing wrong with doing that) or do you see if there’s the potential for pop culture magic? And what do you do if the pop culture mythos reaches out to you? Whatever your answers are, remember that pop culture magic is always happening around you and can speak to you, even if it isn’t personally relevant. Sometimes the moment of popularity is enough to grab the attention and devotion of all the people caught up in it, and when that happens the pop culture magician can ride that wave and work with that pop culture if they choose to seize the moment.
