The Positive Side of Modern Pop Culture and Society

I can’t speak for everyone, but when I was growing up I was continuously pummeled with the message the modern pop culture is killing society. Advancements in technology and entertainment have created a media that centers on ideals that most people don’t agree with. Pop culture is sucking the life out of America and polluting our youth. Viewing modern day popular culture as an evil is ignorant and wrong. As society advances, old ideals begin to crumble. The world is undergoing constant change and our ideas of what we believe and accept need to evolve as well.

            So why has the idea that pop culture may actually stimulate new types of learning that are advantageous and correlate with the way the modern world functions been subdued? Critical thinking and social skills are developed through many different and developing modern pop culture mediums. It is these mediums, however, that are the reason for the repression of such ideas.

            Those who think pop culture are harmful and “zombifies” children and adults employ the use of cultural mediums to back up their rhetoric. Video games, stigmatized for countless reasons, have been shown to increase critical thinking and problem solving skills, as well as improve the speed in which these skills happen. The dominant Market is actually the propagator of such ideas, and they use the available data of modern day music, movies, and video games are proving to be harmful. However, they fail to see any other side of the argument and blindly pursue their own agenda. The local market (I believe) would be those that value the changing social aspects of culture and are willing to accept them and try to find their value.  As Brown and Herndl state, culture is a “complex system of exchanges and value creation” (224). The people that believe popular culture is harmful use examples of pop culture that are negatively viewed by the majority of the educated public (Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, new MTV, the list could go forever) and use these as their examples to devalue the role that pop culture plays in present day social development. Stigmatizing one certain genre of a TV show or any pop culture medium and applying it to the entire theory of popular culture is a devastating blow to education, as well as development as a culture.

            Pop cultures incessant production and wide-ranging market makes it an extremely powerful force in the modern world capable of influencing and teaching the masses. Granted, I believe that there is some brands of popular culture that are definitely mind numbing and could be done without. I am arguing, however, that there is value in modern popular culture and people should not be advocating for the rejection of what is our present culture (a powerful word in this sense) as we know it. I think it’s wrong to not realize (or at least attempt to realize) the potential for education or development in everything that we as a society interact with. There is no denying that pop culture impacts and shapes society on a daily basis. So why should we refute pop culture altogether without realizing the potential for intellectual and societal growth hidden behind the XBOX controllers and TV remote?