American Popular Culture and Advertisement

In this essay I will describe the impact that popular American culture has had on my personal decision making, by briefly describing popular American culture; identifying patterns in my list of popular culture artifacts from my inventory, describing which items are more common than others, identify which themes are prevalent, and describing some of the values being communicated by the items in my list. American popular culture can be describes as the ideas, attitudes, and perspectives within the current mainstream of the American population.

Popular culture here in American is heavily influenced by the mass media which saturates the lives of our society. This mass culture can been viewed as a commercial culture, mass produced for mass consumption and has expressed itself through almost every medium, like music, movies, politics and even sports like good old American Baseball; although it easily absorbs many others cultural traditions like soccer which originated from England, and yoga which is said to be as old as civilization itself.

Some of the patterns of the items in my list of artifacts are those of consumption, and there are other artifacts that are just to sell an idea or service. What is obvious in each of the themes in my list of artifacts is that they are designed to grab your attention, and those that are more common than others are the magazines, billboards, and television. They are all conveniently displayed while waiting for your appointment, getting gas for your car or just waiting at a stop light on the way to your destination.

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These artifacts entice, seduce and focus on pleasure or some type of social responsibility like the billboards asking anyone to assist the LAPD to identify the women who were murdered by the “grim sleeper. ” The extent to which I feel that the value of popular American culture has had on my personal decision making is great. I watch television to keep up with current events for socializing with others and feeling a part of, I listen to music for the same reason, and many of the decisions I make as an American is to feel a part of American culture.

I am very aware of the impact that the influence of this popular culture has on my decision making, how I am seduced to buy a product from an infomercial that states I can look younger, or remove any flaws I may have or lose excess pounds of weight, knowing that I will be billed for much more than they advertised. I am quite aware that I don’t need most of the items I find in the advertisements, but my vanity and wanting to be younger, better, thinner, or even have more money, the seduction draws me in and consciously fall into place with many who assimilate to this hegemonic culture feeling like I am doing what I am supposed to do.

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