I spent last Friday night at a local night club in my hometown. I went out with a couple of my girlfriends and asked them to help me with this assignment. We had a good time observing the men for the sake of the assignment (all three of us are married….but come on, it was for educational purposes alright?)
The first thing to know is the layout of the space requires you to be in one of a few ‘zones.’ You can be near the bar, along a wall, on the dance floor, or in the netherworld between one of the general areas. That night there was a fun cover band playing. They were drinking all sorts of concoctions, but the most common were bottles of beer.
The demographics have a lot to do with how the observation turned out—most men in this bar were between 21 and 30 and were there primarily in groups. They wore all sorts of clothes—some in jeans and t-shirts, a few in jerseys, and some walking ads for Ambercrombie & Fitch. They were visually separated by these clothing groups for most of the night. The guys tended to stay in groups and interact with people in similar clothes. I can only assume that was because they came with each other and set the tone for the evening when they decided to go out. Throughout the night, there were several groups who just stood around. It was too loud to identify what they were talking about. Generally, they didn’t dance as a group or make any group-based movements. Some of the guys would peel off from the group to find a lady and go dance (either ask her to dance or see her and go dance with her…or try at least, ha).
We saw on more than one occasion a pair or small group of guys doing some observing of their own. Their movements were subtle to identify where they were talking about. They would use their chins or point their beer bottles in a certain direction then talk about what they saw. Again, too loud to know for certain what they were talking about, but usually it was a pretty woman on the other side of the nod, so it doesn’t take too much stretch of the imagination to see where they were going.
I didn’t see anything I hadn’t seen before, but it was fun to take it apart with my friends and see if we could figure them out when we had nothing on the line. Men seem to be more bar independent--and yet dependent in the way they kept returning to larger groups of ‘home base.’ I’ve had worse assignments, that’s for sure!
As a woman who does her best to avoid malls because I find them annoying, I now know why. The subtle set-up that we face when we enter the malls wasn’t ever really so subtle, but this article did a decent job talking about the psychology behind it. Unfortunately, I’ve been suckered by these tricks. The article talked about the mall/store’s goal of creating a ‘goal oriented shopper’ and turning her into an ‘aimless browser.’ Ugh! Yep, that’s happened to me; and here I thought I was smarter than that! I am not a Stepford Wife, however, and I resent the fact that Sears or anyone else might think they can market my life to me like that. Here’s to being made aware of those ‘tricks’ and working to combat them. I have very little patience for the people who believe their identity can be improved or defined by shopping at a certain store. We all face messages everyday that tell us what we are supposed to be and/or who we are supposed to be, but to believe that we can buy that is naive at best--shouldn't we be teaching that? Or would we be shot by the local mall owners?
While there are some truths in the article, I don’t think we need to go running for the hills in fear of the diabolical aspects of the American shopping mall. It is undeniable that there is a design to the mall layout—that’s just good business. In reflecting on my own mall experience, I see where the uncomfortable benches or randomly placed chair are purposeful decisions. They are not interested in people pausing or resting for ‘free.’ There isn’t any need to get down on the designers who are trying to increase business. If they are using psychological aspects as well as physical layout to increase the traffic in their stores and increase business, I say more power to you! I do have a problem with the exclusivity, however. As with any business, malls cater to a certain population but they shouldn’t do that to the exclusion of major segments of the population.
Build It and They Will Come
It was interesting to me to consider the socioeconomic aspects of the placement of malls as well as the target audience. I hate to admit it, but I hadn’t ever really realized that shopping malls are not built in the “rough” end of town. It seemed natural to me that they would be built in a ‘growing’ part of town because then they could be newer and better. It makes much more sense that the motivations would be less about the structure and more about accessibility for the people ‘with the money.’ I have a gut feeling there is a chicken/egg relationship here involving the downturn of neighborhood economics, but I don’t know enough about city planning and economics to really explore how that might happen. It is pretty clear that there is a message and a group of people that malls/stores are targeting, but the article contradicts itself. If the people who are ‘supposed to’ go to the mall are the only ones there, how is it possible that “90% of Americans go to a shopping mall once a month?” Clearly the majority of Americans visit a mall quite often whether or not they are ‘invited’ to do so or not. The messages that come out of the branding, placement, and hidden agenda of the malls is fascinating.
Semiotics and Iconography
The mall presents a very interesting place for students and teachers to STUDY the make up of branding as well as semiotics and iconography. From the article, I partially disagree that: “Citizens have neither a say in creating the ideologies communicated to them, nor do they always have the time to gain access to opposing ideologies.” This generation not only has a say but has the desire to create ideologies. However, the danger is that they are not critically analyzing what they are taking in or producing; additionally, people do not often TAKE the time to access opposing ideologies. This is where the one-sided brand-heavy market starts to feel like a one-size-fits-all mold that we are squeezed into. There are options; do we take the time to critically analyze where we are, how we got there and where we want to go next? Odd that such important things can be wrapped up in a little ol’ shopping mall.
Teachers can take advantage of the marketing and branding that occurs in malls to lead students on a journey of critical analysis of their world, its construction as well as how their identity is (or is not) defined by those products/messages. The mall is a shared experience among most youth, and would provide a great springboard for these discussions. They do not (and SHOULD NOT) be passive sponges for information or marketing. It is tremendously dangerous for them to accept whatever is thrown at them if the package is familiar and comfortable. Did we learn ANYTHING from the whole Trojan Horse episode all those centuries ago?
The scary article written by Kurt Andersen “Pop Culture in the Age of Obama” is a prime example of this danger. The creation of an idol out of a man simply because he’s able to make timely pop culture references and is able to utilize the communication modes and events of the day is a risky thing to do. The campaign and administration was/is able to harness the tools that are most comfortable to Generation Y and Z and share messages. The terrifying thing is that the people getting those messages do not have the tools or habits to deconstruct and consider the motivations behind those messages. There is where pop culture can be treacherous. We need to focus on content rather than presentation.
A prime example of this is explored in Bill Whittle’s examination of the Obama symbol.
It explores the strength and messages we are able to construct within seconds on a subconscious level when we see images. Iconography is very fascinating, and teachers and students should take time to see what pop culture is represented through these symbols. There will be MANY wildly popular aspects of pop culture that can be represented with a single symbol; why!? We need to discuss and explore these questions with our students.
Getting the Message?
When I shop at a mall, I am usually looking to invest my time while I consider investing my money. There is usually a secondary goal like socializing with a friend or ‘killing time’ by window shopping. Admittedly, I don’t do much of that kind of shopping, but that isn’t how it was in high school. For lots of reasons, I think the mall is a beacon for high school students. I think the article missed a major mark by only spending a sentence or two about how the young and the old are the bane of the mall planner’s existence. We are at a fork in the road. Malls today are still designed with Baby Boomers and Generation Y in mind. However, the tides are shifting and as Generation Y ages and the marketing designed with them in mind shifts from trendy clothes to house wares and the young-adult ‘needs’ of first homes and first babies, the malls need to recognize the shift. Malls are not enough for a generation who can find anything around the world with the click of a mouse and have it delivered to their door with a 16 digit code. Where the mall used to be a one-stop-shop, it is now far too limited. The coming Generation Z is a community of digital natives who have social networking in their blood and ‘gathering places’ that are not physical. This generation does not desire the same face to face contact that the generations before it did, and with the increase of two income families, there is money to be had and time to spend it. If the malls don’t retool to reach out to the changing Gen Y and the coming Gen Z, they will have big empty buildings where even the ‘old folks’ don’t make laps anymore.
In this post, I will be referring to three music videos: Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party,” Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” and Lil’ Kim’s “How Many Licks.” Each of these videos is embedded below along with other references as addressed below. To say that these videos are different does not begin to explore their relationship to one another. Each of them is from a distinctly different decade, mindset, use of medium, and intent. It is not reasonable to get a complete picture of the world through these brief videos, but they each have validity and merit through different lenses.
The thing that struck me most in Leslie Gore’s video was the conservative nature. It makes sense, of course, on the most obvious layers because things WERE more conservative in that time period. The women are dancing and the male-female partners are grooving with each other in a non bump-and-grind kind of way. But as I watched again, I got to thinking about the medium as well. Video during this time period was beginning to have greater entertainment focus, but it was primarily a one-way street. People put up a message for the audience to appreciate. The role of the music video was part of the approach to selling records, sure, but it wasn’t as commercialized or as branded as it is today. The simplicity of this video then is as much a representation of the times as it is the rigidity of the medium during that time.
The raw nature of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” is undeniable. There is a sleekness in the music that keeps it moving forward, but as the story unfolds, it is easy to transition from a warped sense of pity to viewing her as if she’s like a train-wreck that you can’t tear your eyes from. All of the tight shots in this video are in stark contrast to the Gore video, but there are technological as well as stylistic leaps that have been made since that time, and comparing is not really fair or worthwhile. The cuts of her with the other people are all carefully scripted, and the careful control that is shown in the shots is indicative of the control she has over the story she is telling. You get the impression that you aren’t being told everything. That coupled with her sly smiles between the angst make it pretty clear that she only wants absolution from her most recent transgressions; if given the chance, she’d do it all again. After reading the critique of this video, I was glad to have the voyeurism identified because there was something about watching her that felt awkward.
It was hard not to be floored by Lil’ Kim’s video; I was shocked the first time I watched it. It is outside of my normal viewing comfort-zone, so it took a time or two for the rawness to wear off, so I could start to see a message beyond the language and sexual messages. The explicit way she talked about her sexual exploits is quite different from the way Apple showed hers. While Apple used innuendo and transparent symbolism, Kim went straight to it with words and images. The way the videos were shot mirrors this. Where Apple’s video had tight shots with plenty to hide, Kim’s video had wide shots and a variety of people involved suggesting she had nothing to hide and relished in the attention. On a side note, I could NEVER show something like this in class, and it was difficult to consider the text just as a self-journey with the lens I used when viewing the video.
These short reviews on the videos helped me come to the realization that these women are all very different but represent the women of their time. I will go one step further and suggest they simultaneously represent women of OUR time, and that is where some of the heat of pop culture is focused. If we can have women of Gore’s sensibilities, Apple’s conflictedness, and Kim’s sensuality—what does it mean to be a woman today? There are plenty of people who try to categorize us in these neat boxes and paint us in corners based on decades, color, dress, or class, but the joke is on them. Women today are all of these things, but that isn’t the only conclusion. The one that may be too big of a leap is this: there were Apples and Lil Kims in the 1960s, but they didn’t have the opportunity to speak to the world on this kind of a stage. Whether through limits with the technology or limits on what they were ‘supposed to be,’ women in the 1960s were told what they could be. Apple and Kim push the limits of what we can be in a way that we may not want to experience for ourselves; just knowing that boundary is out there is comforting should we ever want to push it.
I was reminded of a few other great videos while watching these. The biggest one that came to mind was “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdYQX8J-FFo (embedding not available). She used the same methods as Apple with tight shots, but she didn’t hide anything with these people. She brought the “fringe” into the light; I argue that she didn’t resolve anything with this video—it was just a passing spotlight on people who feel alone, but it was a start. A text worth considering when using the medium of music videos.
After reading the first three essays in Tooning In by Cameron White and Trenia Walker, I feel confused, frustrated, and decidedly not looking forward to reading any more of the text. While there were a few moments that caused me to reflect and question my current thoughts and practices, the thinly veiled attempt of the authors to shift, rather than change, the direction of classroom education was infuriating.
In the very first paragraph of the first chapter, a thought hit me: if popular culture ‘perpetuates the status quo and…hegemony,’ why are youth drawn to it? Later in the book there is talk about the general feeling of disenfranchisement felt by the majority of youth today, and how media and pop culture helps to bring them together. I suppose this could answer it partially, but there is also talk about the use of pop culture to challenge and change the power structure. Schools will always be artificial and power-filled institutions; the only way to change that is privatization. That aside, we can work to change the severity of the power structure, but by bringing in pop culture (which I’m not opposed to), we are bringing in the ‘weapon’ used by decades of youth to question and change a power structure. How can that happen without pop culture losing its edge of being ‘outside’ and therefore moldable and enticing to youth? If we are teaching them how to use a modality that is a ‘naturally occurring phenomenon’ are we not artificially using our “power” to change society in whatever twisted direction we see fit? I’m not sure where I stand on this one yet, but it seems to be contradictory.
That leads me to my primary frustration with this text so far. Page after page there are jabs at the negative effects of the current accountability movements. I am generally not in support of standardized testing as a means of measuring the progress of students, but ACCOUNTABILITY is not a bad thing. Accountability for teaching and learning is not synonymous with standardization of teaching and learning. If teachers and students aren’t accountable for whatever they are teaching/learning, what’s the point of school (and funding streams for that matter)? This text seeks not to change accountability or standardization but to impose a different standard through catchy and ‘relevant’ means. If we should bring pop culture into the classroom in an attempt to teach critical thinking, we have to be mindful of teaching critical thinking rather than just shifting a lens to match what we like better. If we are teaching students to look at something “this way” as opposed to “that way,” we are NOT teaching critical thinking—we are imposing a standard.
I found myself a bit confused about using media artifacts. There seems to be a fuzzy line of media artifacts that were pop culture and current pop culture. We can use media artifacts to establish a more engaging classroom and use them to a more complete extent, but how is that ‘pop culture?’ The text goes on to say that using these to support teaching rather than teaching them as media texts is a thinly veiled attempt at progressivism and relevance. I don’t disagree, but using something that was pop culture when it happened to investigate a time period as a whole will only be effective if we connect it to our current world. Maybe that’s what they were getting at but didn’t quite get to. I’ve used media artifacts in my English classrooms repeatedly because I teach very visual learners, and I’ve also done units teaching media in and of itself. Students are able to gain much more from the media artifacts after we’ve studied the genre of media itself first.
I love the idea of incorportating pop culture aspects as a means of unit-based/thematic instruction. Being able to bring things to life that will live with students outside of the classroom is very powerful and what every teacher desires. I want my students to generalize what we're working on in class and be able to use those processes in an effort to change their world. That's the power of pop culture in the classroom--making it real and relevant to the individual not just in the way "I" see it.
Reflecting on my stance as a teacher, I am most connected to the demystification type right now. I’m thinking that might change a bit, but generally, when I taught media, I taught it in a way that was helping students to see what they bring to the table as viewers/users and to recognize what the media was ‘going for.’
In the end of all this, I am feeling a bit less willing to use pop culture in the classroom with the motives these authors suggest. I still want to use it, but I want to teach critical thinking PERIOD. Not critical thinking with a social justice lens. Students who are taught to think can think in whatever direction they want—I should not groom them in either direction. I disagree with the author’s claim that the role of the school is to ‘enhance…values development for our children.’ The author spends 33 pages talking about how we need to get away from certain directions in the classroom and bring in pop culture in an effort (as stated on page 34) to go another way. Indeed, the author claims, don’t ‘mill’ children…unless you mill them this way.
As I’m re-reading this post, it is a bit negative/rant-like. Despite it all, I DO still have an open mind to pop culture in the classroom, but I now feel defensive and the need to tread forward very carefully with the ideas from this text. Disappointing start.
Thanks for stopping by. This is the site for my thoughts on pop culture and its use in teaching. I'm sure I'll have plenty to say throughout the semester, but for now...I'll just add a little about myself.
I have always been a Minnesotan, but I moved to Iowa in June. I don't have a job yet, but I hope that will change next Tuesday with an itinerant position here in Iowa! My background is Deaf Education. I worked at the MN State Academy for the Deaf in Faribault for 5 years and will miss my team and my students! Since moving to Iowa, I have learned a lot of things: everyone here asks 'Debit or Credit?' when you try to buy something--not sure why they do that, plastic and glass bottles cost an extra 5 cents and you only that money back by bringing them to an approved recycling center--no one told me this, so who knows how many nickles I threw away my first three months here, and the ENTIRE state stops what they are doing for the Iowa State Vs U of Iowa games. Other than that, it seems like a pretty great place!
I will be finished with my M. Ed. in December when I finish this class and another online class I'm taking at the same time. It's going to be a crazy fall, but the light at the end of the tunnel is a pretty great motivator!
I'm looking forward to thinking about the use of pop culture in the classroom and finding practical ways to use it that are 'sell-able' to the average administrator.
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