Pop Culture Participation

I find myself at times both agreeing and disagreeing with Fiske's arguments. I think he is right to call pop cultural items as incomplete texts that live within a nexus of supplementary texts. The image of pop stars, fashion items, etc. are meaningless within themselves. When we use or interpret these texts we give them meaning.

However, I think Fiske overemphasizes the creative role of consumers of popular culture. I have to disagree with him when he says culture "cannot be imposed from within or above" (23). How many times have we heard people complain about the popularity of this or that cultural item, or get tired of hearing about Miley Cyrus or somebody? What I often see are popular culture items foisted on unwilling participants. Maybe I just run in different circles, but in my mind what most distinguishes pop culture from "high" culture or "cult" culture is the minimal effort to be aware of or participate in said culture. I'm not saying that there aren't enthusiastic participants in pop culture texts, and I certainly don't see anything inherently wrong with eager consumers who inevitably give back to that culture. I also think popular cultural texts are often edifying and beneficial. But the chief characteristic of popular culture texts is the ubiquitous dissemination of them, regardless of how they'll be used by tertiary texts.

I'm looking forward to any thoughts or disagreements on this topic in class or on this blog.

Thanks Everybody!    

Antepiphany!

Hello everybody!

Basically, I'm sitting next to Lloyd right now and he just said he was glad that nobody posted on the blog yet. So, I decided to post something to spite him. I'll keep it short, sweet, and helpful. While I was reading for this class I found myself struck with the feeling of near-insight. I would read something and it would almost make sense but then the author would skip off to another concept leaving me bereft. (Yeaaaah, look at me using some vocab) 

Anyway, this happened a lot to me and to my mother who I subjected to the reading as well. (Misery loves company) We came up with the word antepiphany. Logically, we should have made it hyphenated, ante-epiphany, but that doesn't roll out of the mouth as smoothly. 

This is our word for that unsure feeling. When you know you understand it but you also know you haven't fully grasped the concept at least not enough to explain it to someone.

I look forward to suffering from multiple antepiphanies with you all! (Now that just sounds like a severe illness...of the butt.)

Iris k. Foxx