Scroll up: Academics are giving pop culture the PhD treatment on Insta
Academics Are Turning Pop Culture Into a Doctoral Thesis on Instagram
Bharatmorningnews.com – How should we approach the enigma of Urvashi Rautela? She asserts herself as the inaugural Indian female to secure Miss India Universe honors on two occasions, and also claims to be the pioneering Indian actress who received praise from Leonardo DiCaprio. Both assertions carry some doubt. Yet her effortless boasting about these achievements generates endless memes and sustains her visibility. Interestingly, this same quality energizes Prerna Subramanian’s scholarly pursuits.
Currently serving as an assistant professor at OP Jindal Global University, Subramanian instructs students in interdisciplinary subjects covering mobility justice, feminist media, urban studies, and writing. Under her Instagram profile @DoctorOfPopCulture, she labels Rautela as the Tall Poppy of Indian entertainment. This expression originates from a classical Roman narrative where King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus removed the tallest poppies from his garden to demonstrate that even the most influential individuals remain vulnerable. In contemporary usage, the phrase describes how society tends to diminish those displaying excessive confidence.
She’s a “folk devil”.
Subramanian offers another interpretation for Rautela’s popularity. This concept, termed “folk devil,” was introduced by South African-British sociologist Stanley Cohen. It identifies the individual whom society collectively blames during chaotic moments—essentially the scapegoat. Through her Reels, Subramanian incorporates philosopher Michel Foucault’s perspectives on neoliberal individualistic society, illustrating how Rautela’s eagerness to distinguish herself merely reflects our collective fantasies.
Academic rigor certainly isn’t abandoned. Should Subramanian’s commentary appear both intellectual and somewhat eccentric, examine her widespread appeal: she has accumulated 62K Instagram followers and garnered more than 400 comments on a recent video analyzing Bollywood actors’ responses to student protests. She belongs to a growing Instagram community of scholars who are extracting Hegel, semiotics, and dialectics from dusty academic archives and placing them alongside Kim Kardashian. The question remains: how did pop culture acquire a PhD-level curriculum?
Intellectuals anticipated this development. During the mid-2010s, enthusiasts composed dissertations on Harry Potter, Supernatural, and The Hunger Games via Tumblr, examining elements ranging from queer undertones to class dynamics. YouTube had already become the destination for video essays exploring feminist themes in The Devil Wears Prada, released in 2006. TikTok condensed these insights into 60-second summaries before Instagram provided them with a polished, algorithm-optimized presentation. Genuine academics then joined to demonstrate that the internet doesn’t divert attention from culture—it constitutes culture itself.
Explore the fascinating @KardashianKolloquium account. American author and psychotherapist MJ Corey examines global phenomena through the lens of the Kardashian family. Corey integrates theories from French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, Jamaican-British sociologist Stuart Hall, and German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to articulate how this family achieved cultural dominance. Her forthcoming publication, Dekonstructing the Kardashians, seeks to reveal how Kim, Khloe, and their circle connect with our “fundamental human anxieties around race, sex and death.”
Subramanian applies similar analytical frameworks to Netflix’s Desi Bling. She contends that Satish Sanpal and Dyuti Parruck’s treatment of their spouses reflects conventional sexism found in WhatsApp jokes—the complaining wife paired with the confined husband. She also recommends supplementary reading: American philosopher Cornel West’s writings, which assert that “justice is what love looks like in public.” Within the comments section, one user, @Nandini_1978, suggests we must recall what genuine love resembles and observe how women perceive men’s behavior beyond societal pressures. Profound reflections, enhanced with Likes.
Maalvika Bhat, operating under @MaalvikaBhat, is pursuing a PhD in Computer Science and Communication at Northwestern University in the United States. She has been forging additional intellectual connections. “Pop culture is often dismissed as frivolous, but it can be very revealing of our moral preoccupations,” Bhat explains. In one of her Reels, which has attracted approximately 180K views, she discusses race, feminist theory, and Diljit Dosanjh. She analyzes how White women moderate their admiration for conventionally handsome men with a hint of embarrassment. According to Bhat, this behavior is “so revealing of their anxieties and fears about who they might be attracted to.” It represents a form of racism that casual viewers typically overlook.
In another Reel, Bhat utilizes Pull and Demand Inflation to clarify why you might currently have a crush on someone: During inflationary periods, “things aren’t getting better, but their price keeps increasing.”
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