How can popular culture influence society’s perceptions of religion, race, gender, sexuality and morality? Share specific examples from pop culture to support your argument. What is popular culture’s role in emphasizing or minimizing stereotypes? Does pop culture reinforce popular stereotypes or break them down? Share examples to support your position. Share a unique example from pop culture of a counter-dominant portrayal of a gender, race, or religion (one that has not already been shared by a classmate).
Discussion
Popular Culture Influencing Perceptions
Instructions:
Please complete the following steps for your discussion post.
After you have completed the Unit 4 material and have considered the ways that religion, gender, race, sexuality, and morality are portrayed in popular culture, consider following questions:
- How can popular culture influence society’s perceptions of religion, race, gender, sexuality and morality? Share specific examples from pop culture to support your argument.
- What is popular culture’s role in emphasizing or minimizing stereotypes? Does pop culture reinforce popular stereotypes or break them down? Share examples to support your position.
- Share a unique example from pop culture of a counter-dominant portrayal of a gender, race, or religion (one that has not already been shared by a classmate).
Please be sure to validate your opinions and ideas with citations and references in APA format.
Popular Culture Influencing Perceptions
Instructions:
Please post 2 peer responses.
In the response post, include the following:
- Respectfully share your own perspectives and ideas with classmates you may disagree with.
- Add new ideas to the discussion instead of just agreeing that something in the reading was interesting or reiterating what others said in the discussion.
- Find an additional source online or in the library that adds a new perspective to what has already been said.
- Offer an opposing viewpoint that is supported by fact and research.
Please be sure to validate your opinions and ideas with citations and references in APA format.
Response One: Vick
Popular culture can influence sexuality and gender in media and print ads by often using tall, skinny, beautiful model looking women in certain ads. This can negatively influence a young woman’s perception of what they are supposed to look like. This has a damaging effect on young girls and women who can feel “less than”, if they don’t look like these women in the advertisements. These young girls don’t understand that this is a job for these models and at times comes at a high price. (News, n.d.)
Current print ads show girls and women’s natural beauty, flaws and all. There are many ads today including Target, Athlete and Express that show models ranging from size 2-16, moving the focus to a more realistic female of all shapes, sizes and colors. Dove has a pro age advertisement which has a focus on women’s beauty with the slogan “Beauty has no limit”. This campaign is a positive influence on thoughts of what beauty looks like. Social media can be damaging to the self esteem of young people. In this way popular culture can influence perceptions of sexuality and beauty. (News, n.d.)
Dove is also doing a great counter dominant portrayal of real Dad’s taking care of their kids and working and holding down a household. These ads have men showing their emotions and crying when they find out they are going to be fathers. One observation since the Pandemic is seeing more father’s out and about with their children, riding bikes or simply walking with their babies in strollers. (DoveMenCareUS, 2015)
When thinking about popular culture and how it influences society’s perception of religion, a little cartoon called Veggie Tales comes to mind. This is a cartoon with vegetables as main characters that use silly catchy songs to attract young audiences into learning about religion, teaching biblical truths as well as sharing stories that teach lessons on building moral character.
References
DoveMenCareUS. (2015). Dove Men+Care shares your first fatherhood moments this Father’s Day. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0-5HORRXU0
News, A. B. C. (n.d.). French Model Isabelle Caro’s Death Highlights Tough Personal Battles Against Anorexia. ABC News. Retrieved May 30, 2021, from https://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/anti-anorexic-model-isabelle-caro-dies/story?id=12509780
Response Two: Whitney
- How can popular culture influence society’s perceptions of religion, race, gender, sexuality and morality? Share specific examples from pop culture to support your argument.
- Often with popular culture, we imagine the images, stories, and products that represent
our culture: what is “trending” online, the biggest hit songs, or the television shows that everyone is talking
Popular culture is more than just these cultural products—it is a phenomenon that reflects our values and arises from our active engagement with it (Godsil, R. 2016). For example, people who have social media accounts may follow the popular Kardashian sisters and see all of the plastic surgery they all have had and think in order for them to be a certain way, they need to look and do as they have done.
- Often with popular culture, we imagine the images, stories, and products that represent
- What is popular culture’s role in emphasizing or minimizing stereotypes? Does pop culture reinforce popular stereotypes or break them down? Share examples to support your position.
- Contemporary scholarship is rife with broad, distorted generalizations about “culture” that play into stereotypes and threaten to obscure the powerful influences that individuality, resistance, and power play in development, said psychology professor Per Gjerde, who contributed the invited lead article to the journal’s issue focused on “The Study of Diversity: Human Development in Culture (McNulty, J. 2004).” Popular culture plays a role with stereotypes by emphasizing certain aspects of it, such as making someone seem better than they are. For example, photoshop makes people appear to be perfect, flawless, and nothing wrong. When in fact if all the filters and corrections were uncorrected you would see wrinkles, cellulate and imperfections.
- Share a unique example from pop culture of a counter-dominant portrayal of a gender, race, or religion (one that has not already been shared by a classmate).
- On example of counter-dominant portrayal is Wonder Woman. Once princess of the Amazons on a sheltered island paradise who was being trained to become an undefeatable warrior, her life is suddenly turned on its head. When an American pilot crash-lands on her island and warns her of the destruction happening in the outside world, Wonder Woman leaves the island the fight for the pursuit of justice.
References
Godsil, R., MacFarlane, J., & Sheppard, B. (2016). Pop Culture, Perceptions, and Social Change. https://perception.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/PopJustice-Volume-3_Research-Review.pdf (Links to an external site.).
McNulty, J. (2004, July 26). Emphasis on ‘culture’ in psychology fuels stereotypes, scholar says. https://news.ucsc.edu/2004/07/531.html (Links to an external site.).
