In the article, “What Monkeys Eat: A Few Thoughts About Pop Culture Writing” Linda Holmes is trying to explain that we should focus the study of pop culture from what we ought to watch, read, or listen to, to what we actually watch, read, or listen to. What we take in to entertain ourselves is what drives the conversations we have on a daily basis. “What monkeys eat” is referring to us as the monkeys, and what we eat to our forms of entertainment. The shows we watch an the celebrities we follow are all what “we eat.” These influential factors are what we mostly write about, instead of the more important topics such as, war or how the economy will look in the future.
“How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives” claims American author Annie Dillard, and in today’s world, nothing is more prevalent in our lives than media. Currently, we have access to more amounts of content than ever before. With the world at your fingertips, it is hard to resist the allure of easy entertainment, and many people struggle with addiction. While you might only spend a few hours a day watching or reading, the media you consume contributes extensively to your values, interests, and thoughts, which can ultimately have a negative effect. Ray Bradbury satirizes our overuse of media in his novel Fahrenheit 451, which is set in a dystopian Chicago that struggles with a widespread addiction to shallow and unfulfilling
Along with a cross-cultural perspective with contributing authors from around the globe and entries on the media in Europe and Asia. Such entries involved the covering of television, film, video games, the Internet, magazines, music. And complex and difficult topics such as violence, sex, rating systems and warning labels, attention deficit disorder, body image and eating disorders, popular music lyrics, advertising, digital music downloading, parental involvement, policymaking, child development, and much more in the involvement of the development of
Culture, the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively, can be defined by music, clothes, paintings, drawings, TV shows, etc. Joyce Carol Oates in her short story Where are you Going, Where Have you Been? explores the effects of music on an American teen. By making allusions to the church and utilizing music as a motif she explores the moral poverty of American pop culture and the ways it makes people vulnerable. Moral poverty of American pop culture means that in pop songs there really aren’t songs with meaning, that they create idealistic situations.
The arrival of the ‘teen drama’ genre is relatively recent and portrays the idealized aspects of what a teenage life should look like. It adds dramatic storylines that are designed to keep the viewers excited and guessing about what is going to happen next. Shows like Pretty Little Liars, Gilmore Girls, The O.C, One Tree Hill, and Gossip Girl demonstrates that teens who view them can connect to the lives of the main characters at a deeper level. These shows can impact a teen by changing their views on fashion, music, and sexual attitudes. This paper will display the types of problems and troubles teenagers face when shown violence, drug and alcohol use, sexual involvement, and family issues.
Every television station has a personalized set of morals and values depending on the range of viewers chosen. MTV, Disney Channel, Lifetime, and The Hallmark Channel all appease different viewers depending on the age and assumed values of the station. Disney Channel appeals to the 6 to 18-year-old division and its values are highly respective and installs good morals. MTV appeals to the 18 to 26-year-old division by installing irresponsible and outrageous behavior and disregards all morals. Those are just two of the many examples of how television can change or suggest the change of a person’s
Baseball is what many call “America’s Pastime”. It is the game that never fails to bring me from the highest highs to the lowest lows. The second that you think you are the best, the game will humble you. When you are at a loss for confidence, you will do something amazing that will turn your game around. Nothing beats the smell of the spring air, the dirty pants, the laughs with teammates and the glory of winning.
Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, so I 'm Browns, Cavs and Indians fan by default. I moved to Los Angeles a day before 2012 to start my journey as a film maker at the Art Institute of California: Los Angeles. Typing this is actually hard because I don 't know much about me... But I live to work, grow and for the media, despite the fact that the Kardashians are always trending.
The American experience is not unfamiliar to me, I have been visiting America since I was a child and as a child I always wanted to move to America. My first visit here I fell in love with the culture specifically the freedom of expression. However the opportunity did not emerge for me to move to America legitimately and as promising young child, I did not want to damage my future by moving to a country illegally where I could not live to my full potential. I stayed in Jamaica and I completed my University education as a registered nurse and had become comfortable with my life in Jamaica. I started working the spring of 2013 and upon receival of my first paycheck, I was reminded that this is not the place I wanted to be.
It was early in the morning when the Alarm clock went off, Johnson got out of bed and got ready for the day ahead. After finishing his shower he went downstairs to enjoy breakfast with his family, his wife was feeding the baby when he sat down and began to enjoy the meal. The radio was on and on the news they were talking about the recent events in the war between the U.S and the USSR. Upon finishing her breakfast she told the husband she was going to take the baby to the doctor and that she would be back at noon, she said “have a good day” and then proceeded to walk out the door. The husband was cleaning the table when the phone began to ring,
Pop Culture in Academia One may ask, is studying pop culture in academia worthwhile? In the 21st century, people are completely immersed in pop culture. According to Dictionary.com, popular culture is defined as “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people” and it has become a norm in daily life (Popular culture, 2018). Due to pop culture’s massive influence, most of what we do is shaped by pop culture in some way; therefore, studying pop culture with all the same importance of any other subject would be beneficial in many ways. Studying pop culture may allow us to understand trends in culture that can aid in other careers, as well as study societal and power constructs with greater precision.
As technology has advanced throughout history, it has had a greater impact on peoples’ lives as time passed, especially for America in the late 20th and early 21st century. As television grew to become a staple in the households of every modern family, the influence it brought spread out to affect the ideas and views people have about society. Depending on categorizations such as gender, race, class, age, and ability/disability, the media teaches spectators of its production how to behave and what to expect based on where the individual falls in each category, notably for young watchers in their formative years. In television shows such as Saved by the Bell, an early 1990’s slice of life romantic comedy centering on a group of high school students, messages regarding these classifications can be found along with their purpose.
When I was three years old my mother decided it would be best for us to move to America so we could have better and safer lives. Before I started school, I was sheltered from American culture. I could barely speak English, I only knew hispanic songs, and I only ate “Mexican food.” By the time school started, I felt like an outsider, everyone was speaking in a foreign language and eating odd foods, I felt out of place. It wasn’t until third grade when I began to feel like I was part of my classmates.
Slowly, dreadfully, I tried to buy time by making a scene on the my first day of kindergarten. For 30 minutes, I grabbed onto my mom’s blouse until the teacher separated us; the action that created a barrier between society and me. Usually, my days preceded with sleeping in, and then spending the rest of it at my grandparents’ house, instead I was now glued to a chair, where everyone was watching me with judgemental eyes. As my American teacher introduced me to the class, I felt everyone’s eyes upon me; I knew minimal English because the main language spoken at home was vietnamese and my preschool consisted of chinese speaking teachers.
The pieces of popular culture that I chose to write about today are a 2018 film called Love, Simon and a 2013 film called The Help. On page 57 in The Essential Guide to Intercultural Communication, Jennifer Willis-Rivera uses a definition for the term “popular culture,” stating it as, “the range of media products, art forms, and artifacts disseminated broadly in American Society” (Laforse & Drake, 1981). Love, Simon is a 2018 drama/ romance movie about a senior in high school that struggles with his sexual identity. This movie not only shows the struggles of being a closeted gay student in high school, but the overall challenges that he has to face in a modern-day high school setting. The intended audience for this movie is teenagers/ high
