Comm 211

Alek Nyberg

Reflection #4

Pop culture has always been an important part of modern society.  In my opinion, pop culture is the foundation from which one builds off their own means of entertainment and expression, be it through the acceptance or denial of pop culture itself.   Pop culture seems to be the initial, primary means of enjoying culture.  It is often easily digestible, highly impressionable, and pervasive through nearly all of a given society.  As the book said, pop culture is another name for low culture, and it does seem to be the case; culture where one can turn off the mind and just soak in the message without truly thinking about what that message is.  This is where the intercultural issues come about.  

As was stated in the book, pop culture can often reinforce stereotypes, be it good or bad, but it is the bad stereotypes that are remembered the most.  Nowadays, we have shows that portray people of different ethnicities in subservient or stereotypical positions, an ever growing pop/rap music fad which further enhances negative racial stereotypes, and so much more.  This is very problematic, for this is culture that is meant to be digested without much thought.  By exposing ourselves to this without initially thinking about its validity, we may be slowly creating negative stereotypes towards these groups for ourselves.  The danger lies in ignorance.

Another very striking issue in this chapter was that of cultural imperialism.  The human population is naturally very diverse, and because of this, there are going to be a great many means of expressing oneself, creating many different cultures.  It would be impossible for everyone to function under one culture, yet this is slowly becoming the case.  There seems to be a sort of “Americanization” of the world, in which a large number of television shows are in English, American movies sell well in foreign countries, as well as the westernization and capitalization of folk cultures.  This is very dangerous, for there are steps being made into making the world one, homogenous, Western culture, which would deprive the world of much of its richness and knowledge.  The issue is that because of the prominence of American pop culture, various other countries think that they must keep up with modern American culture, so they incorporate it into their own, which can be detrimental to the host culture.  Pop culture is an important part of all of our lives, but it should not control it.