The Business of Pop Culture
A popular culture artifact is something familiar to a large portion of the public, particularly the masses or “common” people. Popular cultural trends are always driving the entertainment sector, presenting businesses with an opportunity to benefit from them. Pop culture is always evolving. Often, a new trend emerges and captures the attention of millions of people.
Pop culture greatly impacts individuals because it makes them desire to live lifestyles similar to what they see on television (Manne et al., 2018). People appreciate pop culture superstars for their dress style and entire way of life. This paper aims to discuss how popular culture in the movie industry influences people’s attitudes, both positively and negatively, and the impact of the influence on people’s lifestyles.
Banshee Series
The term entertainment is associated with a variety of pastimes and entertainment, particularly among Westerners. In 2013, the banshee series first aired. People used the banshee to signify aggressiveness in the neighborhood. The majority of individuals that watch Banshee are thought to be idle, worthless, and incapable of affecting society.
Over time, the cinema business was able to control society and become a means of communication for people worldwide. Individuals that watch the series in the modern world use it to exhibit and advocate sexual violence and aggressiveness. Banshee has received widespread criticism, fueling the impression that the series has elements that are detrimental to society.
Caricature Stereotype Of Banshee
Sexually explicit material
The Banshee series is thought to have sexual material. As a result, there has been an upsurge in sexual abuse, such as rape instances. The bulk of the episodes contains sex and sexual violence, which has increased immorality among the community’s youth. Young people believe that to obtain popularity, one must wear clothes that disclose sexual appeal or exhibit a nude body, as well as have intercourse with the opposite gender.
Rape cases rise as a result of such situations. According to Teodorescu and Jacobsen (2019), the impact of mass media result in pornography, which has become prevalent throughout society. The internet has a plethora of pornographic materials with cultural significance.
Abuse of drugs and alcohol
The Banshee clearly depicts drug use in the community. The bulk of the events is thought to involve the usage of alcohol. As a result, the series as a whole has a terrible reputation. This causes young people to become involved in drug misuse to earn enormous popularity or to associate with movie stars who have achieved enormous fame. Drug and alcohol usage promotes crime and mortality in society.
Violence
Based on the setting of developing and executing the scenes, the series is thought to be related to violence. The young stars who are watching are generally involved in illegal activities, and they are the majority of the series’ admirers in society. Most parents are also concerned that their children would become involved in criminal activities. As a result, the series was perceived negatively.
Pop Culture’s Role In Spreading Negative Stereotypes
According to Manne et al. (2018), a white woman is significantly more vulnerable to aggression from a white guy than a black person, yet white women are prone to shut their doors or recoil at the sight of a black guy. Notwithstanding society’s adoption of egalitarian ideas, racial and ethnic prejudices remain prevalent.
As a result, a black guy is perceived as potentially dangerous, or his career is assumed to be that of an athlete or entertainer rather than that of a doctor, lawyer, or teacher. These preconceptions are seldom the product of experience; rather, they are prevalent beliefs that exist throughout media culture.
The media extends social coverage while also relaying a vast amount of information to individuals. Various people have different perspectives on communication. Sometimes the media presents the message in a way that leads to racial and ethnic prejudices (McFadden, 2018). The majority of the media portrays black people in the minority demographic as racially primitive.
With representation, the press, on the other hand, represents limited information. This has a harmful effect on black people. The media should also offer limited coverage of both the positives and negatives of racist individuals. This helps individuals by giving them precise information regarding other people.
For example, popular culture’s depictions of persons of color produce and perpetuate preconceptions about these groups. The persistence of these preconceptions in media is significant because they are harmful, restrictive, and incorrect, and also because racial and ethnic depictions in media get incorporated into consumers’ mental representations of these groups.
According to McFadden (2018), preconceptions play an essential part in how our brains perceive inputs. Brains have established visual and auditory categories for most of the images and sounds we see and hear due to socialization. Implicit social cognition refers to this mechanism. Human brains employ categories for both people and objects: we make instinctive judgments about what category a specific individual falls into based on visual and auditory clues, and we frequently act on those conclusions (Manne et al., 2018). People’s ethnicity, race, national origin, or gender categories evolve into generic preconceptions about them.
Methods For Correcting Stereotypic Beliefs On Pop Culture
The reductionist strategy is one way to use popular culture for social change: instead of depicting individuals negatively, popular culture should provide only positive characters. However, this negative/positive duality undermines the necessity of portraying individuals in their whole humanity. Instead, Kiamu and Musa (2021) propose using the notion of how distinct groups are framed as a stimulus to investigate how representation influences audiences’ long-term perceptions of social reality.
For example, minority-ethnic consumers who are systematically excluded other than in monotonous and limiting news scenarios, or majority-ethnic audiences who have only surface-level work contact with people of color at best and draw their perspectives on themselves and people of color largely from these frames.
Comprehensive coverage of information refers to when the media, such as radio and television, give frequent information on any subject and thus provide individuals with enough knowledge to assist them in making decisions and reaching conclusions. Producing informed material guarantees that the information is useful to people and reduces negative attitudes among them (Kiamu & Musa, 2021). The informed material promotes peace and stability among people and gives guardians confidence that their children are ready to listen and watch.
Rewriting The Artifacts
People should examine the film business from both an investment and educational standpoint. The film business influences an individual’s clothing style and represents many people. This caused a significant boom in the fashion sector (Dale et al., 2020). This has contributed to an upsurge in work possibilities throughout the world. The film may also be used to help people build and strengthen their will.
This benefits the performers by giving them a platform to share their ideas and opinions with the community. However, movies are no longer seen as a kind of amusement but a means of increasing social consciousness. The series is also capable of developing social interaction and learning methods that aid in the reduction of stereotypes.
Conclusion
According to social cognition theory, education media and popular culture, in general, may be effective instruments for social change because, once again, it involves the viewers via affiliation and provides opportunities for indirect participation. Actors serve as behavioral transformation social models; the more the public recognizes and connects to these models, the more probable they will hear and interact with the material’s themes. Furthermore, the interpersonal interactions of the performers serve as a sort of indirect involvement for the observer.
References
Banshee: Season 2. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/banshee/s02
Dale, K. R., Janicke-Bowles, S. H., Raney, A. A., Oliver, M. B., Huse, L.-K., Lopez, J., Reed, A., Seibert, J., & Zhao, D. (2020). Awe and stereotypes: Examining awe as an intervention against stereotypical media portrayals of African Americans. Communication Studies, 71(4), 699–707. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2020.1754264
Kiamu, B. N., & Musa, B. A. (2021). Theorizing the communication of digital religion as popular culture in Africa: The case for alternative epistemological models. The Howard Journal of Communications, 32(2), 139–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2021.1871871
Manne, L., Ortiz, L., Godsil, R. D., Macfarlane, J., Sheppard, B., Chattoo, C. B., Frasz, A., Gil, M., Lafrance, S., Mcgill, A., Powell, J. A., Schneider, E., Tethong, D., Thomas, L., & Wong, T. (2018). The #PopJustice series of reports was produced by Liz Manne Strategy with generous support from Unbound Philanthropy and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Revolutions Per Minute served as the project’s fiscal sponsor. Perception.org. https://perception.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/PopJustice-Volume-3_Research-Review.pdf
McFadden, J. B. (2018). Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. Palomar.edu. https://www2.palomar.edu/users/lpayn/115/GC115-Understanding-Media-and-Culture-An-Introduction-to-Mass-Communication.pdf
Teodorescu, A., & Jacobsen, M. H. (Eds.). (2019). Death in contemporary popular culture. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429197024
The Business of Pop Culture Assignment Description:
Instructions
Analyze: Artifact of Popular Culture
Evaluation Title: The Business of Pop Culture
We have seen throughout this course how popular culture influences our attitudes, both positively and negatively. In this final paper, you will examine an artifact in pop culture to determine its message and effect.
For this assignment, select an artifact that, in your opinion, unfairly creates a negative bias or promotes a negative stereotype about one population of society. The pop culture artifact can be a media source (song, movie, television program), a product or other tangible associated with pop culture. Provide a link to this artifact (or an image). Explain why you have selected this artifact, and why you feel that this creates a negative bias. Describe how you would re-design or re-write the script of this artifact to change the way others would view this population.
In your paper:
Provide a specific link to pop culture artifact used for this paper or an image of the artifact.
Discuss the artifact in depth. Explain the stereotypes or biases that you see being perpetuated in the artifact.
Discuss the role of popular culture in communicating harmful or incorrect stereotypes or biases. Using the concepts, terminology, and ideas within Units 1-7, recommendations for how people can identify and correct views that are incorrect or harmful.
Re-design or re-write this artifact to change the way others could view this population without the negative bias. Be sure to support this revised artifact with factual examples of the culture.
Specifications:
Submit a 1200-1500 word essay addressing the questions above.
In your essay:
Be sure to structure your essay with an introduction paragraph that includes a thesis statement, well-organized supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion that reiterates the main points of your argument.
Your argument should be supported by reputable research cited in APA format both in the body of the paper and in your references section.