Monday, February 14, 2011

smells like pop culture

I loved the Britney article comparing and contrasting her with Kurt Cobain. he is awesome. they both came from such different backgrounds, she had a supportive, apparently religious family, and he barely had a family at all. it reinforced to me the fact that our pop culture is made of so many different extremes, a sort of microcosm that represents the different groups making up the rest of us "normal" un-famous people.

I also loved the spider-man article. honestly, this has been my favorite chapter. spider-man and nirvana? i couldn't ask for cooler subjects. i have definitely noticed the blatant parallels between Peter Parker's struggles as a nerdy teenager and the struggles of real-life nerdy teenagers, but the article went a lot deeper and pointed out some awesome observations. spider-man and the green goblin (in the movie, don't know much about the actual comic) act as foils in a way that i had never realized. where Peter is forced to grow up, knowing that 'with great power comes great responsibility,' Norman Osborn is basically being the opposite; angry at his board of trustees for cutting him loose, he becomes a psychotic murderer. in the words of the article he is 'an adult who hasn't grown up.' I really like the fact that our modern mythology, sometimes subliminally, incorporates these simple life lessons.

Pop culture definitely affects the behavior of people, the media especially. Who hasn’t ever put on a cape (keeping with the super-hero theme) and felt like lifting their parent’s car was not that impossible? I think the way the spider-man movie deals with a practical lesson about responsibility and adulthood is really important. It adds value to something that others could possibly call childish or non-beneficial.

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