Pop Culture Papers

Popular Culture, also known as Pop Culture, affects everyone. For teens especially, the media bombards them with new images and trends. Pop Culture tells us what the trends are, what people should be wearing, what they should listen to, how they should act, and what they should like or dislike. Clothing, social media, and music are things teens talk about on a daily basis. However, Pop Culture can affect us in a negative way. But first, we will go over what Pop Culture is, it’s history, and the different sources of Pop Culture.

In order to truly understand Pop Culture, you need to know what it is in the general sense. Firstly, lets define culture. “Culture can be defined as a means of organizing and stabilizing communal life through specific

Throughout the course of human history, people were influenced by folk culture. In earlier years, most people were living in small cities and rural areas, which were not beneficial to the formation of Pop Culture. (Delaney) When the Industrial era began, people moved out of their small cities and rural areas and migrated to cities. This lead to the urbanization of most Western societies. (Delaney) Urbanization is key in the formation of Pop Culture. The people who once lived in small villages or farms found themselves in busy cities marked by great cultural diversity. These diverse people would come to see themselves as a ‘collectivity’ as a result of common, or ‘popular’ forms of expression. Many scholars trace the beginning of the popular culture phenomenon to the rise of the middle class brought on by the Industrial Revolution. (Delaney) Industrialization brought developments in transportation, advancements in building technology, increased literacy, improvements in education and public health, and the arrival of efficient forms of commercial printing. (Delaney) All these factors contributed to the development of Pop Culture. By the start of the twentieth century, the print industry mass-produced illustrated newspapers and periodicals, as well as serialized novels and deductive stories. Newspapers served as the best source of information for a public with a growing interest in social and economic affairs.

Fashion is greatly influenced by Pop Culture. We believe that we are accepted by the way we dress before anything else. Patrizia Calefato says, “Fashion has turned the body into a discourse, a sign, a thing. A body permeated by discourse, which clothes and objects are intrinsic part, is a body exposed to transformations, to grotesque openings toward the world; a body that will feel and taste all that the world feels and tastes, if it simple lets itself open up.” (Hancock) We commonly think that fashion consists of skinny models walking down a runway. However, it is much more than that. Fashion is also one of the primary ways one expresses themselves, but it may not apply to everyone. Therefore, fashion pertains to almost everything someone does; the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they dress, of course, the way they spend their money, and the music they listen to. Teenagers are in a time of their lives where they are experimenting with new modes of expression, fashion, and trying to ‘fit in’. This brings us to the topic of Pop Culture in