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Essay #2: Popular Culture (Cause/Effect) Here we are at the gates of the great and powerful OZ! And we have come for your children! We are the real Politically Incorrect! Our lives are not Charmed! We work for a living! When was the last time [network television] admitted we even exist? Roseanne? Sanford and Son? Taxi? Jerry Springer! Our young people are not Teenage Witches! Nor are they Clueless! Fact is, they neither have nor want anything in common with Dawson's Creek, Popular or Spoiled White Rich Babies 90210! —Jello Biafra, “Become the Media” Jello Biafra, musician, spoken word artist, and the controversial ex-front man of the 1980s punk band the Dead Kennedys, has often been under the media spotlight for his blistering critiques on the state of our contemporary popular culture. The examples he provides in the quote above may be a little outdated (keep in mind this was that long ago time of the year 2000), and you don’t necessarily have to agree with his argument, but if we really think at what he’s responding to, we may see that he has a point. In Mirror on America (that’s our textbook), Joan T Mims and Elizabeth M. Nollen define popular culture as the “collection of objects, people, events, and places that serves to mirror society and its members and to reflect their values and preferences” (xvii-xviii). Since this is the definition we will be working with, we can see that Biafra’s aggression is aimed at those in charge of holding up the mirror to show us who we (as a nation, as a culture, as an individual) are. It is this metaphor of mirrors and identity that will serve as the impetus for your upcoming readings, exercises, and essay. Because saying that popular culture is a “mirror on America” and leaving it at that implies that there is one unified America to be reflected. And even if you think that’s the case, there is no way you can talk about popular culture and American identity in their entirety in one 4-5 page paper. Therefore, over the course of the next few weeks, we will break this mirror into fragments and carefully analyze a few of the ways that popular culture reflects us as well as how we in turn reflect it. Your job will be to take a close look at one concept of cultural identity and explore, in a cause/effect essay, how this concept is reflected. You will do so with the assistance of various readings from Mirror on America, other supplementary “texts,” and some of your own research. Here are the various exercises we will be undertaking during the next few weeks: Exercise 1: “Mirror on Myself” (Due March 16) Exercise 2: “Rhetorical Analysis of a Still Image” (Due March 16) Exercise 3: “Rhetorical Analysis of a Moving Image” (Due March 23) Paper Proposal (Due March 25) Rough Draft for Peer Review (Due April 1)
