Introduction

INTRODUCTION
Hello all, and welcome to this blog series on observing and investigating elements of popular culture and how they affect society and individual people. This introduction will briefly go over a few points this blog will make over the course of its entries, as well as a few depth topic discussions.

An important element of popular culture that affects society is products and marketing. Our society has become increasingly materialistic and seems to depend largely on skin, hair, weight, etc., type products to define what the ideal example of the “attractive” human figure is. If you look up a clip on youtube from the film “American Psycho” , (clip entitled "American psycho shower scene"), you will see how in this clip the main character is taking a shower and explains to us how he uses a plethora of skin/hair products to make himself look good, but reveals that underneath his mask there is little of interest. In regards to our popular culture, society has such a high value on physical beauty and looks that intelligence seems undervalued. I will be trying to see how society values the media and how the media itself influences the way we view pop culture and how it shapes our lives.

I am also interested in seeing how society works and how do individuals make up, define, and break down society. Oftentimes we try to place “labels” on things that have such a high value in the society setting, and yet if we take a step back and view things from an isolated perspective, we will realize that these labels are simply ways for humans to attempt at controlling society and people, as well as trying to understand how the universe operates. Such labels include marriage, religion (types), social and class rankings, and human rights. All of these things really don’t exist. They are labels created by society, and are used in defining popular culture and controlling society as a whole, and therefore controlling and labeling people. Marriage, for instance, has taken such a high place in society. You are seen as odd if you are not married, and it has become an expectation of young people to know who they are going to marry and announce it to a meddling group of nosy family members. There is the mistake that marriage equals love, and yet this is not the case. More and more people are getting a divorce, showing how people are being pressured to marry even if they do not love the other person. People should be able to love whoever they want without the need for this label. Society and popular culture puts such high expectations on marriage that it becomes a defining marker for people’s lives and worth. Religious conservatives also believe they can control the gay community by denying them the rights of marriage, but gay people can still love one another and have healthy relationships without the need for marriage. People should put more emphasis on the real relationships with one another and less on pleasing society’s expectations on getting married.

Religion is also largely a plethora of “nonsense labels” that popular culture concocts to understand the cosmic complexities of the universe and perpetuate pointless guilt and concepts into people. There are over one hundred different kinds of religions in the world, and each one considers only themselves the right ones, and all other ones are sinners, are wrong, going to hell, are outcastes, etc. How can this be the case? How can any of them be right or wrong then? This shows us exactly how controlling society is; how there is no such thing as religion, and how it is mainly labels of vague, fabricated concepts and make believe ideas to instill fear and guilt in society’s people. It is a powerful tool in controlling others and used as an excuse to hate and hurt as well.