Leslie Edwards (Matthew Perry), a clumsy aristocrat, and the hilarious Bartholomew Hunt (Chris Farley) are competing against the famous Lewis & Clark to be the first to chart and make it across the United States to the Pacific Ocean. In the beginning of the film, Edwards has high hopes to head the first expedition to make it across the U.S., but while he has the want and the money, he is a sheltered man who knows nothing of the wilderness. To aid in his journey, he hires the services of a supposedly knowledgeable wilderness-man and tracker, Hunt, who, once they get underway, turns out to be less than advertised (too good to be true haha). Aided by a crew of various rugged frontiersmen, they are also joined by their group's version of Sacagawea, a young Indian woman by the name Shaquinna (incredible), who plays a big part in helping them find their way across the dangerous and unknown land ahead, as well as, eventually becoming Edwards' love interest.…
Fowles, Jib. Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Popular Culture. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Pp. 60-77. 1998. Print.…
There has been objections to studying popular culture because folk culture was seen as ‘authentic’ while mass culture was seen as ‘inauthentic’ and ‘commercial’…
Popular culture tends to walk a very fine line between invention and convention and this is perhaps the reason why a genre can be successful in conveying an author’s message…
Cited: Ruzich, Constance M. "The Journal of Popular Culture." Journal of Popular Culture. 41.3 (2008): 428–442. Print.…
The pop stars and the people in the headlines hold the power of styles and trends. Why follow what everyone else does? Do we follow just to fit in? Well in our century, being an outcast is frowned about because you with not be included and “fit in”. Christopher Hitchens states that this is…
Last week, I wrote about what I thought about the word “culture”, what it meant to me, and how it related of coming of age. I discussed on how culture to me meant the customs and beliefs of your past generation passed on to you and creating that to your image. This week I’ve now realized there are many other factors of culture that influence our way of life. Pop culture plays a big role if not more on who we are and how we behave. I discovered that many aspects like television and social media affect culture and change it frequently. In Tim Delaney’s ‘Pop Culture: An Overview’ he mentioned “popular culture encompasses the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives. These aspects are often subject to rapid change, especially in a highly…
There is no doubt that the mass media is omnipresent, mediating every aspect of our lives. How one relates to and interprets the world is largely colored by how the media informs us. In the world today, media has become as necessary as food and clothing. It is considered as the “mirror” of the modern society. It informs people about current affairs and entertains through the latest gossip and fashion. The role of media has become one way of trading and marketing of products and prejudice. Communities and individuals are bombarded constantly with messages from a multitude of sources including TV, billboard and magazines, to name a few. These messages promote not only products but moods, attitudes and a sense of what is and is not important. Mass media makes possible the concept of celebrity: without the ability of movies, magazines, music and news media to reach across thousands of miles, people could not become famous. (Chandler 2000) emphasizes the role of mass media in the reproduction of status quo.…
The central idea discussed in Popular is what the true definition of being "popular" is and how to…
Pop Art came to fruition at the wake of the Second World War eventually peaking at the prime of capitalism; the movement was distinguished by their portrayal of any and all characteristics of popular culture that had a powerful influence on contemporary society. Themes of consumerism such as advertisements, comic strips, film stars and products led to the blurring of boundaries between higher and lower cultures of that era, through the use of these received notions, pop art became a western sociological phenomenon, developing into a mirror of their epoch. The movement walked a tight rope of social commentary, “either honouring the accomplishments of industry and fashion or responding with sarcasm and concern to the nation’s consumer society”1.…
Throughout the years many media sources use social constructs to make their audience conform to an ideal. This essay uses three media sources to show that making the audience conform to a set ideal can be detrimental to people and their culture. The first source, Minik: The Lost Eskimo, expresses how conforming too much to surroundings can make a person become the other in society and could lead to the objectification of that person. The second source, The Stranger, expresses how conforming to people’s expectations and seeking their approval and acceptance, leads to dependency, abuse of influence, and creates a person viewed as different. The last source, Things Fall Apart, expresses how not conforming leads to a person becoming an outsider to their own world. A trend found within all three sources is that with conformity and…
Excerpt from Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Popular Culture. Ed. Michael Petracca, Madeleine Sorapure. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1998.…
Some contemporary critics, however, propose that popular culture cannot defined as something commercial or even “popular”, and claim that in its subjective nature, it has evolved…
The television has also helped in creating a “community of consumption” in which possession of the same popular bands and styles is what binds us together as people (Belk and Pollay). Individuals want more and are in favor of what has been advertised as “new and improved”. We are defining ourselves by what brand of clothes we wear, to the music we listen to, to the kind of car we drive. The television portrays our ideal self image, presents detailed instruction on how to live, and strengthens the desirability of the material life depicted.…
Social labels cannot be a component of a free society because they prevent universal safety. The terms popular and unpopular place people in usually fixed social classes. P!nk, a famous pop artist, underlines the importance of social acceptance in her…