Reality TV

For a while, I kept thinking that “reality” TV couldn’t possibly get any worse, given our current selection of programming. On any given day, you can choose from watching a spoiled 16 year old girl’s birthday party (hilariously parodied on South Park, I might add), a group of 7 or 8 stereotyped caricatures living in the “real world”, a bunch of D-list celebrities living together in a house, the same D-list celebrities getting the crap scared out of them in a supposedly haunted house, or a has-been rapper picking out a new girlfriend. Apparently it doesn’t matter whether the shows are in fact “reality”- the only prerequisite now seems to be entertainment.

However, I was reading the news online the other day, and stumbled across this gem. It could be worse, I guess- we could be subjected to what they put on TV in the Netherlands. Yikes.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/05/television.dutch.reut/index.html

Video Games

On the topic of pop culture as it relates to video games- I’ve noticed the trend seems to be towards activities you could actually get out and do, but choose not to because apparently simulating them with a game controller is so much more fun. I thought a lot about games such as the Sims and the website Second Life, but these are actually interesting in that they allow you to change your identity and “interact” with others in ways that you wouldn’t necessarily do so otherwise.

The games that I was mostly thinking about for this entry simulate activities you could easily do without a controller and game console. Obviously, Dance Dance Revolution is the first example that comes to mind, but it at least has merit in the fact that you get a workout while you’re doing it. The activities simulated in other games have gotten increasingly ridiculous, though, especially with the new Nintendo Wii remote that allows you to simulate swinging a baseball bat, tennis racket, or golf club. I guess this is far more amusing than actually going outside and playing a game of baseball or tennis or going golfing with your friends.

Perhaps the best example, though, is the Guitar Hero game for PlayStation, which I heard about over Thanksgiving from one of my friends. Apparently you “play” by pressing buttons on a controller that looks like a guitar, and can do competing “guitar solos” with your friends, among other activities.

Or hey, you could always be old-fashioned and just take guitar lessons like people used to do back in the good old days…

iPOd's

While sitting on the metro on my way back from a job interview at 4 PM on a Friday, I noticed a five men walk on together. Each man had those distinctive white headphones on, but continued their conversation with each other. Was their music really that important, or has the ipod become so popular that it has become OK to engage in conversation while listening to your ipod.

On that same metro ride, in my car alone, I saw 16 people, in five stops with an ipod. These people ranged from kids coming home from school, to young professionals, and even to people in their 40's and 50's. Why is the ipod so appealing? Why are people willing to pay anywhere from $150-$350 in order to obtain one, when they can purchase a different mp3 player for less than half of that price. Granted, ipods are very user friendly, but it does say alot about our society and what "is in" and what "people have to have".

The Election

And the front page of USA Today featured the breakup of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. I wish I still had the copy, but it’s true. It just shows how pervasive celebrity and entertainment is in our society. If USA Today has that on their front page and they reach millions of readers, then I imagine that it means that they believed people would be more interested in reading about Britney Spears’s divorce than the early results of the midterm election. We seem to value entertainment above the general news.

The top TV ratings from Neilsen’s shows something about the way we watch TV. For the week of November 20, you see that the top two shows on Broadcast television were Desperate Housewives and CSI:Miami.

Nielsen’s Top TV Ratings Nov. 20:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.43afce2fac27e890311ba0a347a062a0/?show=%2FFilters%2FPublic%2Ftop_tv_ratings%2Fbroadcast_tv&selOneIndex=0&vgnextoid=9e4df9669fa14010VgnVCM100000880a260aRCRD

Another observation I made that may fit into this arena is the Mark Foley scandal. Foley got caught sending elicit e-mails to young male pages in the White House. It will forever go down in infamy as one of huge things that brought down the Republican rule in the House and Senate. Most exit polls showed that the greatest percentage of people voted based on their views of “corruption and scandals.” Foley’s scandal and Webb’s macaca statement both got a lot of press and were all over the web. There were two American Forums this year devoted to the future of the news and what the internet and sites such as YouTube have to do with it. The overexposure of both elements on the internet was probably the end for the Republicans and the beginning of a new era of people directly interacting with pop culture.

To the Left, To the Left

TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT
Over Thanksgiving break, while members of my family were starting to eat the food laid out before them, someone asked where the roast beef was. At least four people responded, “To the left, to the left.”

At a store once again over Thanksgiving break, I overheard other people engaging in a similar type of conversation. A young woman asked her friend where the shoes were, and her friend responded, “To the right, to the right.”

This is the first lyric heard in Beyonce Knowles’s song “Irreplaceable,” and it is just as addictive to people as “SexyBack.”

Starbucks

In many ways Starbucks is the embodiment of a new sort of culture permeating our society. It at once stands for the many attributes marking the defining characteristics of pop-culture and continually seeks out the boundaries for a new understanding of this. In a way Starbucks promotes, and, ideally represents a democratic accessibility to coffee and thus opens itself to the masses. Given its rather generous payment and benefits package it attracts a variety of workers from across the demographic landscape. But the essence of Starbucks- more than its brand, or coffee, or dense population- is the aesthetic landscape painted on the interior of every store. One begins to feel, upon entering, that an experience is occurring and this is precisely what is so interesting about Starbucks: while waiting for their coffee, patrons can relax to Bob Marley or A Charlie Brown Christmas or read up on Starbucks latest efforts at corporate responsibility. One gets the sense that at Starbucks something is occurring between the patron and the store, and that conversation speaks volumes about what Starbucks aims to get out its consumer and what consumers are willing to accept from Starbucks. It is a relationship that fuels the other, and a mutual acceptance on both sides to nurture this evolution.

This is evident in the proliferation of CD’s strategically placed within Starbucks. In front of the register, in a rack directly behind the register, on the stand where one picks up drinks and over the speakers, there is always music in Starbucks. It is loud enough to be noticed, but not so loud that it is distracting. Sometimes it is hip and on the cutting edge, sometimes it is low-key and marked by a sensibility that appeals to both the 20 year old would be poet and the early 60’s management boss who fondly remembers the day when this was cutting edge and avant-garde. Both though,can appreciate in Starbucks a quality one looks for in a coffee-house: a non-offensive space where ideas are embraced and a collective in formed. But most importantly Starbucks represents a space where one can feign a sway into the alternative without ever having to be alternative. Leafing through the CD’s on display the defining feature, more so than the fact that most CD’s are compilations of some sort, is that Nonesuch is the most common label for non-compilation CD’s. Nonesuch is a subsidiary of Time-Warner and is most notorious for its coup in landing the band alt-country/rock band Wilco and for also housing avant-garde stalwarts Kronos Quartet and Steve Reich. Nonesuch is a label that is purposefully appealed to a certain demographic and Starbucks does as much to reinforce that demographic. And this relationship is indicative of the kind of relationship Starbucks promotes in its stores, where patrons are representing a particular culture and embracing a particular culture and ultimately reinterpreting that culture.

So the next time you visit Starbucks keep an eye, or ear, open for the cultural conversation. What is Starbucks saying about our culture? And what does our willingness to join such conversation say about us as a people?

Facebook

In a previous post, I had mentioned the new internet age of pop culture. Being a college student in 2006, there is one thing that stands out more than anything else, facebook (and myspace for that matter too). Sitting in the Anderson Computer Lab, I have full sight of multiple computers, 13 to be exact. As soon as I sit down, I see a girl in the front row perusing facebook. Facebook is a program that allows you to “friend” people online, view pictures of them, as well as various information about them.

Anyway, this one girl is on the site, looking around. Another girl, who apparently is her friend is sitting next to her, doing something else. The girl searching facebook all of a sudden turns to her friend, and says in a load enough voice, at least so I can hear, “Look who he hooked up with last night”, in reference to a guy that they knew. Neither could believe that the two hooked up, and started a search for more evidence, or pictures. This is called facebook stalking.

The facebook website has become a pop phenomenon. People will be out at bars, and see someone who they have never met, yet they are facebook friends with. Facebook lingo has even entered mainstream college culture. It is pop to go “facebooking”, or as the girl the computer lab’s case, facebook stalking.