Children are under attack! But this assault is not coming from terrorists within or outside the borders. It is not coming from disturbed or mentally unstable people in a community. This onslaught is coming from our own American popular culture. This assault is ever-present, intense, and unrelenting, also disguised; most parents cannot sense the harm that pop culture is inflicting on their children any more than a fish can sense that their ocean is becoming ever more polluted. In both cases, the attack is slow but steady, seemingly unnoticed. Many seem to have been fooled into believing that popular culture cares about our children, when the truth is precisely the opposite. Pop culture cares about only a few things: money, gossip, and who is on their way to becoming ruined -and it will say and do anything to make more money, to get more gossip, and to get more information. When the first generation of Americans was growing up, pop culture was fine- they had a handful of television and radio stations that were regulated in “the public interest” and offered a variety of mostly positive programming. Today, kids have hundreds of television and radio stations that offer entertainment that celebrates greed, blatant sexuality, and violence, the internet, video games, cell phones, often inappropriate celebrities on the social media, and magazines lining the newsstands filled with scandals and gossip. The attack of pop culture on society is evident, and all should be made aware of its influential presence. But how can people do this if they do not know how to identify it?
Popular culture, by definition, is “a contemporary lifestyle that is generally accepted by a large population of people.” However, it has a more common definition. It is ...
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...! However, the American public has already been brainwashed and are most likely completely unaware of the dangers that Hollywood poses to citizens.
If all this is publicized, which it is, then America’s next generation of teens and children will be exposed and influenced by this from childbirth. It is excruciatingly similar to the propaganda exploited to the Hitler Youth during World War II- except pop culture is always around them, 24-7, especially with the convenience that mobile devices provide. Soon, they will become celebrities through their actions, addictions, and life choices, which might be entirely the wrong ones. They will see how the celebrities spend their money- rash and constant- and this will become what they do each time a paycheck is delivered. They hear the gossip and see the things that celebrities do on television. Children are under attack!
Popular culture refers to information or an event that briefly hold the interest of the public. These events and information are mostly heard or broadcasted on mass media such as radio, television, newspapers and the internet. It is one of the cultures that is easily accessible and considered much more entertaining by the greater part of the population in the world. It has helped in the enhancement of human relationships and socialization in our modern world. As a Haitian, below I try to outline some of the popular cultures I can think of.
This brings about another issue: children’s protection from this kind of content. More needs to be done to protect children’s eyes from inappropriate things on the TV, billboards, music, and other forms of media. Unfortunately, because society has gone as far as it has today, it will be very difficult to take a step back and re examine the effects violent media will have on children. People seem to care less and less about what children see. The need for protection from this type of content relies solely on the parents. Parents must take it upon themselves to guard their children against things on the media that they should not be seeing. Parents should be given different options with technology to help monitor the content their kids are allowed to see and what they are
Strasburger, V., M.D. (2010). Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Seven Key Issues. Pediatric Annals, 39(9), 556-64. Doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3928/00904481-20100825-06
Strasburger, V., & Donnerstein, E. (1999). Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Issues and Solutions. Pediatrics, 103(1), 129-139.
The media, including television programming, cartoons, film, the news, as well as literature and magazines, is a very powerful and pervasive medium for expression. It can reach a large number of people and convey ideas, cultural norms, stereotypic roles, power relationships, ethics, and values. Through these messages, the mass media may have a strong influence on individual behavior, views, and values, as well as in shaping national character and culture. Although there is a great potential for the media to have a positive and affirming effect on the public and society at large, there may be important negative consequences when the messages conveyed are harmful, destructive, or violent.
On an individual basis, popular culture helps establish and mold the subjective self. It influences the way individuals think, act and respond, and this becomes part of how people develop their personalities, preferences, beliefs, and their overall identity. For example, most people idolize certain fashion statements or fads which determines their preference of clothing. This process of self-formation coincides with both elements of personal choice and the responses and attitudes of others. Furthermore, the identity that an individual asserts is influenced by and helps determine the development of social relationships; it influences the communities and groups to which an individual will identify with and how that identification is processed. In the establishment of communal bonding, mass culture helps with, as Leavis describes, a “leveling down of society” (35). The lines of class distinction have been blurred which, to Leavis is not a good thing, but it unites us nonetheless. Popular culture also promotes unity in that it “blurs age lines” (29). As stated earlier, the products of popular culture are targeted towards a variety of audiences; adults read comic books, children watch adult films, etc. (Macdonald 29). Similarly, teenagers and young adults are brought together through night clubs, fashion, and music; college students come together to enjoy campus events; book fans wait in line hours for new releases, etc. Each of these instances produce feelings of belonging, acceptance and connection with members of society over a common
Popular Culture. Ed. John Woodward, Farmington Hills, MI: Thompson Gale, 2005. 138-140.
The term ‘popular culture’ is a particularly difficult one to define. The word ‘culture’ alone is, according to Ray Williams, “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (Storey; 2006, 1). Popular culture must also be a term that is equally hard to define. Popular culture is an ambiguous phrase in cultural theory. In its simplest form: popular culture can be seen as the culture of the working class and minority cultures such as; folk and youth culture.(Brooker; 2003).
A media panic, or often referred to as a moral panic, is a term that describes how the media is formulating issues amongst our society. Over time, our culture has shifted and caused many conclusions regarding media panics and the relationship between youth and the media culture. Based upon previous knowledge and course readings, I have drawn a very disturbing conclusion; this being that no matter what age, children are willing or non-willingly now under surveillance to determine what kind of role media is playing in their lives. With what I have gathered from the readings and class lectures, most authors strongly believe that different forms of media directly influence children's thinking or perception. What authors and researchers continue to imply is that there is a direct correlation to what youth today see in different forms of media and their behaviours.
Popular culture embodies the beliefs, ideas, perspectives, attitudes, and images of various cultures. Popular culture is heavily influenced by mass media, key celebrity figures, movies and related entertainment, as well as sports and news. However, in the past decade, the Internet and social media has come to be a significant influence on pop culture.
But lets focus on a more specific facet of sensationalism. Where do the children of celebrities stand in this issue...
There are many ways to define popular culture. Many individuals have grappled with the question what is popular culture? And how to critically analyze and deconstruct the meanings. Looking at the root words of popular culture is where to begin. Raymond Williams states ‘popular’ means: “well liked by many people" or “culture actually made for the people themselves (Storey, p.5). This is part with the word ‘culture’ combine to look at how the two words have been connect by theoretical work within social and historical context. John Storey approaches popular culture in six categories, they are as followed: “Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favoured or well liked by many people”, Popular culture is “the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture”, Popular culture is “mass culture”, “Popular culture is the culture that originates from ‘the people.” and “Popular culture as a site of struggle
In the beginning, the relationship between everyday culture and mass media culture are closed but there are some difference between popular culture and traditional culture. The traditional culture is known as ‘high culture’ which refer to literature, art, music etc. However, popular culture is the produced by mass media, may know it as low culture. People used to entertainment or relaxation. It shared and spread rapidly in groups, communities, societies and so on. Some people may say popular culture help us to understand more about the world because of the globalization factor.
Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change” (John Podhoretz). It encompasses the advertisements we see on T.V, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, and it’s the reason Leonardo DiCaprio has not won an Oscar yet. It defines and dictates the desires and fears of the mainstream members of society and it is so ingrained into our lives that it has become as natural as breathing. Moreover, adults never even bat an eyelash at all the pop culture and advertising that surrounds them since it has become just another part of everyday life. Pop culture is still somewhat seen as entertainment enjoyed by the lower class members of society but pop culture standards change over time.
What popular culture and mass culture are, their significance to society and how they are consumed are very multifaceted questions that have been subject to wide debate is the fields of Sociology and Cultural Studies. Many theorists have chimed in on the debate to answer these questions. Two notable theories on this topic are that of Dwight MacDonald in his work “A Theory of Mass Culture” and John Fiske in his work “Popular Culture”. MacDonald argues that mass culture is a phenomenon that is detrimental to society. He believes that although mass culture is something that produced “by and for human beings” that is ultimately is what leads to the loss of individuality and individual thought and expression in favor