Popular American Culture Paper
Robert Glover
SOC/150 Introduction to Popular American Culture
December 4, 2012
Hilary Hicks
Popular American Culture Paper
Culture is defined by Merriam Webster (2011), as the “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group” (para. 5). Popular culture comprises the most modern and current components in our lives that can frequently change quickly in the modern-day world of technology. “What, then, is pop culture? Although it’s notoriously difficult to define, some elements of a definition emerge from this discussion: pop culture is the shared knowledge and practices of a specific group at a specific time. Because of its commonality, popular culture both reflects and influences people’s way of life; because it is linked to a specific time and place, pop culture is transitory, subject to change, and often an initiator of change” (Petracca and Sorapure, 2007, p. 4). These properties are regularly continuous in our day-to-day situation as a product of the omnipresent mass media.
Popular American culture is what’s current now. It is the way people do things in America nowadays. It is the way we make choices in life. Established by the populace, popular American culture environs itself around technology, schools, books, food, music, places, people, the things we do. When things occur in the world, people adjust, the media reports constantly for America to interpret and have choices. People incline to follow the fads, trends, and the way that everyone else is running the world for us. The journaling activity that I recorded to form this paper began with in what way I perceived society, and what made it up. Fast foods, grocery stores, clothes, shoes, automobiles, and our homes are many products that culture and societies are built upon.
The first major trend in popular culture around the world is the movie series Twilight, based on the novels by author Stephenie Meyer. Twilight...