Saturday 27 July 2013

Week 1 - Introductions

As an LIS major, this class is one of only two electives I have in my degree - and I've been looking forward to it.
So Youth, Popular Culture and Texts... I'm 22 so I'm still young at heart and I still have connections with the current popular culture (we'll worry about the "texts" part of this class later). 
There were questions in the introductory lecture about what is popular culture? who decides what's popular? and why do young people need/have it? I don't really know all the answers to these questions but I can give it a go.
Every generation has had their sub-cultures and what they think is cool; not every person within that age and sex demographic but "popular culture" can be considered what the herd thinks is fashionable. 
Popular culture and the various "sub-cultures entertainment" are communicated through various mediums - you only need to look at fanfiction.com to realise that stories like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Twilight and being used to "act out" and demonstrate moral dilemmas, issues like sex, drugs and relationships along with ideas of heroes and villains. 
It also helps reflect societal notions of a range of topics such as sexuality, censorship and racism. A rise in post-appocolyptic fiction could be a possible reflection of how people are worried about the state of their society and could be used as a way to help process real-world issues in a safe forum. 
Bring on week 2!

(RANDOM NOTE: "cool" is the only slang word that has not gone out of fashion, it became popularised by jazz bands in the 1930s and has enjoyed a steady usage ever since while other terms like "groovy" and "sick" have fallen by the wayside).