Pop Culture And Academia Essay

Pop culture and academia—do they sound awkward in the same sentence? Depending on one’s interest, they will find either pop culture or academia a lot more entertaining and appealing over the other. However, just because they sound dreary together, this does not mean they actually are. Perhaps, only conducting an academic study on pop culture will provide an answer. After all, scholars studying a new topic, and pop culture getting extra attention is normal. Therefore, academically studying pop culture is not as strange as many thinks; in fact, the results of such studies indicate that they can predict the philosophical and moral values, and public opinion/social norm within and across cultures.

The merits of academic studies in pop culture vary depending on
This suggests studying pop culture (something that many of the population find worth consuming) can help indicate the social norm and common public opinion in a culture as a whole. For example: countless pop cultural interpretations of United State’s current President, Donald Trump—often negative—never fail to receive a massive amount of attention. Meryl Streep, one of Hollywood’s most influential actors criticized Trump for mocking a physically disabled reporter in her Golden Globes speech. (Brown) The statistic shows about 20 million people watched the show live, (Staff, Variety) but it is certainly possible that more people have watched the show, considering the striking rates of online streaming these days. Furthermore, a short clip of Streep’s speech on YouTube has received almost 830 000 views so far, with 23 000 “likes” and 4000 “dislikes”; remarkably lower compared to the number of likes. (MarkDice) Such phenomenon can possibly predict U.S. citizens’ public opinion towards their President Trump. After all, Trump is a product of our pop culture addiction in the first