Intertextuality

Now that I know what the definition of intertextuality is, I realize it is something that is big in popular culture. When I think about this, the movie Thor comes to mind. I was watching the movie on Netflix not to long along ago and once it was over something else popped up called Thor and I was thinking it was the second part, was I very wrong. It looked like a "bootleg" version of the actual movie and yes I was upset. Moving on, from the movie has come several things, like comics, toys, games, and clothing / costumes.




Another intertextuality I have encountered would be all these Adidas ads that they have out there, weather its on TV, billboards or just pictures you see on the Internet. Adidas is a popular shoe that many people spend their money on. Most of the Adidas commercials now have me thinking of basketball or associating it with some type of sport. Like if people talk about they want some new running shoes or some shoes for the gym, these automatically come to mind.

Half way through: Popular Culture

Looking back on the first semester of class I have learned a lot about popular culture. How we engage in it everyday as we go on about our lives. The media plays a huge role in popular culture and sometimes dictates how we feel about ourselves. They have false images that we can never live up to because the people themselves look nothing like that. Popular culture has us spending money on things we feel at the time makes us happy and in actuality it might not in the long run but we buy it anyway because it is what is in at that time. The thing I also learned about popular culture is that it changes over time, it is never the same. Although trends might come back out, it is never persistent throughout your life. I learned about how advertisements objectify women and how you can never be to skinny.

What I've also got out of class is how people compare their own lives to what they see on TV and will never truly be happy because they can't compare to what isn't real. A reading we did in class by Chuck Klosterman "This is Emo" would be a great example of how he told us of Hollywood making it impossible to be in love. How we measure our relationships on the prospect of fake love. We let these "couples" on TV tell us what love is supposed to look and feel like and in real life it isn't necessarily like that so we think we aren't in love or were unhappy. Once people start to realize these people are acting while they themselves are in the real world and stop trying to compare themselves to what they see on TV then they might actually be happy because how they feel is real and they won't be looking for actors to tell them how to feel.

People always compare themselves to others and what others have instead of being happy with what they have. It seems everyone always wants to either fit in or stand out by being overly popular. Popular culture had made it to were woman are expected to be sexy and guys are meant to be athletic. It defines who we are as a people and what our values are as a whole. I've learned that popular culture can be such a negative thing. Instead of living our own lives we are so influenced by what we see on TV and the things around us. We always compare ourselves to others instead of being happy within ourselves. We deny or don't want to think that we are brainwashed and have become so accustomed to the values of popular culture that it has become "normal" to us. People focus on these celebrity figures and look up to them when they don't even know them but yet want to be them. This is a crazy world we live in and everything has a label.

Masculinity and Violence

From a very young age boys are taught that they are not supposed to show any emotion. "Only babies cry" and to just shake it off if they hurt themselves or are upset, to just get over it. Society has came up with this idea that in order to be a man, in order to be masculine you need to be strong, aggressive, bold and you must never cry. If a boy cries, he is seen as being weak. If he listens to you and understands, he is seen as being sensitive which is usually a word used to describe women.

Training boys to be societies perception on "masculine" in my eyes is a bad thing. Having them believe that if they cry then they are seen as weak or soft and telling them they need to be hard all the time. I have a son and I don't want him to feel like he can't express his feelings becasuse he will be seen as soft but unfortunately thats what society has come to. Growing up he must win fights, he must play contact sports, he must act like he doesn's care and can stand on his own two feet, he must be buff and work out in order to be catogorized as masculine or he wont be worthy.

The media doesn't help with this either. You have so many shows, movies and music portraying violence so graphically and making it seem like its something cool. Cartoons even portray violence with the bad guys and the good guys fighting it out and to boys this is so "cool". The APA feels like there is to much violence on TV and that it is impacting youth to the extent that they are becoming more violent themselves. You have kids playing video games and wanting to see what would happen when they do that in real life, when in actuality they are taking a life. The APA try to help people on a mental health aspect and want the violence to be cut out on TV. I don't think all violence should be cut out, but at least limit the age of the audience available to watch. Then again, just because a movie is rated R doesn't mean all parents won't allow their kids to watch.
The ACLU begs to differ and believes violence in the media doesn't impact kids. I feel its on the individual and what they have been through in life. Is a movie, cartoon, video game going to be the icing on the cake that will push them off the edge to do mimic what they see?