The popular imaginary is contested within popular rather than high culture.

Evidence

What matters is where the popular imaginary gets itself expressed and how its meanings are struggled over, and it does not always get expressed in high culture. It gets expressed in the dirty, compromised, commercialized, overridden world of popular culture, which is never an uncontradictory space, never an uncontested space. So one must attend to it. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1135

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘popular imaginary’ as an expressive and contested space whose meanings are struggled over precisely because pop culture is contradictory — never monolithic.
• XREF: Directly relevant to how the Islamophobia field reads media representation of Muslims: popular media is a site of ideological struggle, not mere reflection.