Hi, I am Miranda, I am a senior at NDSU majoring in Journalism with a double minor in Animal Science and English (Writing Studies). Many would see that me taking a Critical Approaches to Pop Culture as a different take on Journalism, but it actually correlates to my interests a lot. As a journalist, I will become the media. I will be the one producing the information for the world, therefore knowing how the world works would help. Through this course I have been able to see how stereotypes play a main part in society (i.e. pop culture) and hope to use my journalistic abilities to end that continuous cycle.
Pop culture is everywhere from the moment you are born to the moment you die. It consumes you as a person by what you chose in clothing to what you happen to end up reading in a class, anything can be considered pop culture. It is a never-ending cycle of us creating pop culture and then pop culture creating us. From a young age I was consumed by clothing choices, music tastes, television shows, and movies. In a sense all of this consumption changed how I thought and acted towards others and myself. Through the course of Communication 435 I have been able to see that pop culture is surrounding us every day and controlling majority of our lives.
Pop culture affects us to the point of it being a stem to memories. For example, when I hear a Britney Spears song I think back to when I was a child and used to perform for my family on my fireplace. Or when I hear someone say, “son of a bitch” I think of one of my favorite television shows, Supernatural for it is Dean Winchesters (one of the main characters) “catchphrase.” Pop culture affects our everyday life by triggering a memory of something else.
Pop culture also gives us a form of expression through what we chose to absorb vs. what others chose. For example, everyone in my family has different music tastes, you would think since we are family that they would be similar, but we all chose different aspects of the culture that we enjoyed leaving us to different genres.
I have always loved the different things people chose to look at in pop culture whether it be music, clothing, television, film, video games, social media, etc. We have all absorbed some part of pop culture and continue to do so anytime we start our day. What I’m trying to say is that I never realized how much we were surrounded by pop culture, because everyone sees it as the media and that is it. When in reality, what we chose to wear, listen to, and research is pop culture in itself.
Pop culture creates who we are, who we want to be, and what we want to do. Through my experiences of seeing stereotypes I have wanted to end them which caused me to want to become a Journalism major. So, pop culture created the stereotypes, I consumed them, making me want to become a Journalist.
Learning how to critically analyze pop culture has affected the rest of my life, because although I already noticed things in the media that were not right, there were still aspects that I never noticed before this class. With this class I will be able to help my friends and family see how I see pop culture and how there are some things that shouldn’t be considered the “norm.” Once I achieve this I will move onto pointing that out as a journalist.
