Popular Culture. Please Help! :) (1 Viewer)

laurencawdell

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Okay, so i'm in s&c and I have to do an assignment on a Popular Culture. it can be anything, Video games, Pop Music, Coke, etc. But I am sort of stuck on what exactly to do. It has to be a speech and have a slideshow to go with it. I've got abut three options, harry potter, soap operas, or the beatles. I was thinking maybe the beatles seeing they have been around for so long, and they are still popular to this day, but I do need someone else's advice. So are you guys able to lead me in the right direction?

thanks :)
 

JesseMatheson

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you need to really follow the concepts they teach you.
The assignment should state what you need to do, always look back to the assignment sheet.

Ok so lets begin with the 4 main concepts of Pop culture:

It has to be related to a consumerist product - Consumerism
How is it accessed and to what limit - Access
The growth of the product from Local - National - Global - Growth
How has the product evolved - Evoloution of product


Ok so if you were to focus on The Beatles, you wouldnt be talking about 'The Beatles' but instead would be focusing on 'The beatles - the product', like the tangible product of The Beatles....confusing I know.

It would probably be easier to focus on Harry Potter because the whole thing is a tangible product and a culture has evolved from it.

Consumerism - The book, the movies, the toys etc

Access - easily accessable, just go to a bookstore, library, school library, cinema, television, Dvd's

Growth -(This could be tricky) Local would be where the book was initially released, National would be when it was a major book in britian and Global would be when it became a worldwide phenomenon

Evoloution - The books and movies become darker and more mature as time goes on

thats pretty much all I can do unless I know everything about the assignment.

good luck.
 

JesseMatheson

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you need to really follow the concepts they teach you.
The assignment should state what you need to do, always look back to the assignment sheet.

Ok so lets begin with the 4 main concepts of Pop culture:

It has to be related to a consumerist product - Consumerism
How is it accessed and to what limit - Access
The growth of the product from Local - National - Global - Growth
How has the product evolved - Evoloution of product


Ok so if you were to focus on The Beatles, you wouldnt be talking about 'The Beatles' but instead would be focusing on 'The beatles - the product', like the tangible product of The Beatles....confusing I know.

It would probably be easier to focus on Harry Potter because the whole thing is a tangible product and a culture has evolved from it.

Consumerism - The book, the movies, the toys etc

Access - easily accessable, just go to a bookstore, library, school library, cinema, television, Dvd's

Growth -(This could be tricky) Local would be where the book was initially released, National would be when it was a major book in britian and Global would be when it became a worldwide phenomenon

Evoloution - The books and movies become darker and more mature as time goes on

thats pretty much all I can do unless I know everything about the assignment.

good luck.
 

myonlyhope90

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I prefer this model when analysing popular culture (i.e. a film, cultural artifact, sub-culture, etc.) - The Circuit of Culture.

The Circuit of Culture is concerned with these FIVE concepts:

  • Representation (How is the artefact represented?)
  • Identity (What identities are associated with it?)
  • Production (How is the artefact produced?)
  • Consumption (How is the artefact consumed?)
  • Regulation (What mechanisms regulate its distribution and use?)
Attached is a PowerPoint presentation outlining the Circuit of Culture model using the Sony Walkman as the cultural artefact that I found at the following website: The Circuit of Culture, Discourse Analysis and

For further reading see if you can get a copy of:

Du Gay, et al (1997). Doing cultural studies : the story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications

Hope this helps in some way. It offers a more complex way to analyse culture, but once understood, is worth it.

Good Luck.
 

JustinRylewski

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I see that you on this aswell, were doing continuity and change at the moment, popular culture is next for us.
 

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