Popular Culture, Folklore, and the Creative Industries: The Folkloresque as a Conceptual Link

Résumé

This article examines the relationship between the creative industries, popular culture, and folklore from the perspective of cultural studies through a critical reconsideration of the concept of the folkloresque. The folkloresque is a concept introduced during the second decade of the twenty-first century by Michael Dylan Foster and Jeffrey A. Tolbert to describe both the processes of creation and the products that emerge when popular culture appropriates or invents folkloric themes, settings, images, and other elements. The concept of the folkloresque not only problematizes the traditional/popular dichotomy but also enables an analysis of the transposition of folkloric elements into the worlds of popular culture, the creative industries, and the digital sphere. The article begins with a discussion of the genesis of the concept of popular culture from the perspective of cultural studies, with particular attention to its understanding as folk culture. Over time, this understanding underwent a degree of transformation and, under the influence of the theoretical work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, came to be conceived as a space of symbolic struggle over meaning and a site of negotiation between the dominant culture and the oppositional responses directed towards it. The article then introduces the concept of the folkloresque, its three interrelated meanings, as well as its three categories - integration, portrayal, and parody, and outlines the principal connections between the folkloresque and other concepts employed in folklore studies. The following section addresses the issue of authenticity and, through a critical examination of the folkloresque in relation to the concepts of fake folklore and folklorism, proposes an assessment of the significance of the folkloresque for understanding contemporary forms of popular culture. The concluding discussion underscores the fluid character of the concept of the folkloresque and raises questions concerning its adequacy in relation to the established terminology of folklore studies.