Prerna Subramanian is the nerdy pop-culture professor we never knew we needed and thoroughly enjoy
Prerna Subramanian as @doctorofpopcutlure has become extremely popular with her acute observations on pop culture and impact on the psyche of the people consuming it
It’s always exciting to see a new figure online find their voice. For us, these days, it is Prerna Subramanian aka @doctorofpopculture, who is wowing us with her ability to draw comparisons between current events, pop culture thanks to her astute observational skills. Subramanian has a PhD in cultural studies from Queen University, Canada, and currently teaches law in a private university in NCR.
Despite joining Instagram only late last year, the 31-year-old professor has garnered 16,500 followers. Subramanian gives us a peek into her origins.
“I grew up in Korba, a small town in Chhattisgarh, and I think small towns teach you very early that the world is unevenly distributed. You learn that aspiration is never just ambition. It comes with your accent, language, polish, shame, and the feeling that somewhere else, someone is already a better option that you,” says Subramanian.
As a professor, she breaks down what are the underlying messages of movies and even popular debates that we tend to oversimplify. PICS/INSTAGRAM
@doctorofpopculture
“I did not start making Reels because I had some grand influencer plan. I started because my partner encouraged me, but also because I had too many thoughts for the academia space, and I wanted analysis to have speed, bite, and a public life. I wanted to talk about the things I was already obsessing over,” she says. Subramanian’s journey has also led her to the realisation that there is still an audience for studied nuance. “I think people come to my page because… I do not believe rigour has to be dead, dry, or joyless. I like weird reading, excessive reading, and ‘you-are-doing-too-much’ reading. Anti-intellectualism often hides behind the demand to be simple, normal, and ‘not-that-deep’. I have no interest in that.” Her words remind us of the battle that print journalism has been fighting with online misinformation for almost one-and-a-half decades.
Her takes range from “customer care feminism” to “audience capture theory on Arnab Goswami” to “media’s indexing theory”, to Om Shanti Om [2007] and AI correlation (as an exercise in pedagogy). Because they are cutting, but free flowing, we couldn’t help but ask the clichéd question — do you prep or is it extempore? “It is both,” she replies generously, “What looks extempore is usually a thought that has been marinating for a long time. I read constantly, teach constantly, and over analyse professionally, so by the time I speak into the camera, the Reel may sound spontaneous, but the framework has often been forming for months, sometimes years,” she says. And sometimes much like “kayanat” — we are doing our bit by throwing in an Om Shanti Om reference here — it all comes together like destiny. “Sometimes a pop culture moment suddenly gives me the perfect entry point into a concept I already know well. Other times, I script quite tightly,” she adds.
In this reel, for example, Subramanian talks about how women should return to places where their bodies were policed and unlearn hate for one’s body by just breathing and living in the same space
The pop culture doctor has also given us glimpses into her personal life, and her takes on the en masse policing of women’s bodies comimg from lived experiences. “I probably will make more personal Reels because, honestly, my politics comes from my life. I do not know how to separate the two. When GLP drugs enter this landscape, they are not entering some neutral medical space. They are entering a culture already primed to reward the disappearance of bodies like mine. That is why the language of ‘choice’ feels so slippery to me,” she adds.
She also believes that critiquing should be non-punitive in nature, “I call my page an ‘unhinged classroom’ very deliberately because I want it to feel like a classroom in the best sense: curious, lively, generous, thoughtful, a little chaotic, but not cruel,” she says. Finally she talks about her vision. “I hope to build through my Reels a space where people think harder, argue better, stay curious, and leave sharper — without becoming smaller,” she adds.
Ma’am, online classes lete ho kya?!
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