This week in class we are learning about pop culture. We read a chapter from a book by Marcel Danesi and these are my takeaways. First, what is pop culture and is there a universal definition of pop culture? This article described that pop culture is a culture that makes no categorical distinctions, making it a nontraditional form of culture and hard to define. Although the "definition" of pop culture didn't come into play until the 1950's, pop culture essentially began in 1920, or what most people call "The Roaring 20's." As the article states this era came to be made of "burlesque and vaudeville theaters, speakeasies (night clubs), and dance halls cropped up in the 1920s to satisfy America's desire to freely express itself sexually." Before this milestone these things were not spoken about and attire was much more conservative. On a personal note, related to the roaring 20's, ever since The Great Gatsby (a 1920's themed movie) came out I have been intrigued and maybe a little bit obsessed with the 1920's and their party themed lifestyle, as well as their attire. I also went as a Flapper for Halloween, which I was pretty proud of. The 1920's were a time of great change in the United States and since then pop culture has changed more and more each decade.

Pop culture is something that is shown through music, fashion, and simply the way that people live. Pop culture era's get their names from social changes, such as the hippie era, the disco era, the punk era, or the hip-hop era. Each of these new era's brings some of the old era with it, or as we can see today many of these old era's have pieces of them come back to life with new and younger generations. For example, things that were fashionable 20 or more years ago are now in style again, such as bell bottom jeans, leather jackets, overalls, denim skirts, and crop tops. The article that we read had a "timeline of cultures" and it was really fun to see what things were in during certain time periods.

Here are some of the events and cultural turning points mentioned in the timeline:

1920s: The Big Five studios: Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, RKO and the Little Three studios; Columbia, Universal, United Artists are established

1933: FM radio is developed.

1954: Sports illustrated begins publication

1962: The first communications satellite, the first digital phone networks, and the first pagers are introduced.

1972: The first video game, Pong, is introduced.

1978: Cellular phone service begins. Nicholas Negroponte of MIT introduces the term convergence to describe the intersection of media.

1979-1980: Rap emerges out of hip-hop clubs in New York City.

1987: WFAN is launched as the first all-sports radio station.

1991: The Internet opens to commercial uses. The World Wide Web is launched.

1995: Amazon.com is established, turning its first profit in 2002.

1997: DVDs make their debut, offering more storage space than VHS.

2003: Apple Computer's iTunes music store makes its debut, making it possible to buy music on the Internet. VOD (video on demand) is introduced.

In today's world, pop culture is spread much more easily with the use of technology. Technology allows pop culture fashion and lifestyles to spread far and wide pretty quickly. With the use of things like TV commercials, billboards, and ads we can see common themes of American pop culture in different countries, even though actual culture in those countries tends to be much different than American culture. I don't think that technology is a bad thing for pop culture because it's something that people want to share and want to become popular. Many people want others to listen to the music they are listening to, wear the clothes, and live the lifestyle that they live. With new fads coming year by year, technology is a way to help spread them. As we have seen in the past and will see with years to come, pop culture will always have an influence on fashion and lifestyle trhoughout the world.

[The above photo is an example of how we bring previous pop culture era's back to life. Photo Source: This is a personal photo from Halloween, although, I wish I could dress like this all the time.]

Danesi, M. (2012). Popular culture. 2nd Ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.