Critical Theories of Popular Culture

 Ears of Rebellion: How Piercings went from Punk to Pretty  The only thing I wanted for my thirteenth birthday was a second piercing. I was finally a teenager, and I fervently begged my hesitant mom to let me have another hole in each ear. Her worries: the second hole was too edgy, too rebellious, all leading to denying my request. But with calculated imploring and a short trip to the mall, I finally got pierced! My total of four piercings made me feel older, cooler, and ready to take on the challenges my teenage years would bring. Today, I pick out my earrings just like an outfit: with six piercings in total, I get to express myself through my ears. But where did this idea come from? That having holes and studs on my body would somehow have social currency or even just desire? Multiple piercings make us feel radical, but why? In my research to answer this question, I found that piercings were incorporated into the mainstream from punk subculture of the 1970s-1990s. Male and f...

 Sagging: Stolen Artifact or a New $1,200 trend The appropriation of black culture is especially prominent in the fashion industry, where products have been commercialized and brought into mainstream culture. This being said, a specific product that has recently been commercialized is sagging. Sagging is simply wearing your pants low enough to where parts of your underwear can be noticeably seen, and is especially prominent in lower income people of color communities. Sagging is merely a cool fashion statement for people in these communities. The origins of sagging are often debated one whether it came from slavery or prison. The slavery origin states that black men that were raped by their slave masters were forced to wear their sagging pants so their masters could then recognize them in the future and do it again (Stillman, n.d. as cited in Deveaux). The more known history of sagging is that it was created as a result of prisons banning belts and shoelaces because they were afrai...

 Spot the Difference: Music Video or Erotic Film? 3 attributes that can be used to sum up the mainstream hip-hop industry: materialistic rappers, misogynistic violence, and naked girls. Some of the most praised and respected rap songs are attached to videos that walk the tightrope between an acceptable music video and pornography. However, this very notion that women are seen as mere sexual objects is precisely how rappers make money and women get hurt in the process. You can scroll to any second-long moment in Tyga’s music video for his hit song, “Taste”, and it will undoubtedly be filled with naked girls twerking on each other and getting sprayed on with whipped cream. A prime example of the male gaze, this video is the definition of the objectification and oversexualization of women. Women are seen wearing nothing but small bikinis, dancing on the mansion’s balcony and in the pool, touching themselves and twerking into the camera. Even when the scene changes to the skate rink, t...

 “The Champions”: A Bleacher Report “Reality TV” Cartoon Show  Bleacher Report, a website that provides information about sports culture, is known for keeping the public informed on all things football (soccer), basketball, wrestling, and American football. They post information on player injuries, league controversy, and live updates on games and matches. Their YouTube channel has almost 2.5 million subscribers, with their most popular video, “The Champions: Season 1 in Full”, reaching 13 million views. “The Champions” consists of a series of episodes where fans can watch cartoon versions of their favorite Champions League players and managers living in a villa. The UEFA Champions League (UCL) is an annual football tournament where 32 of the best teams in the world play each other for the championship title. According to Statista, UCL has had at most 105 million viewers in 2017, and 48.7 million more recently in 2021. This means that the Bleacher Report YouTube channel has a ...

As a child from a low-income background, I never really had many options to be considered cool by my peers, especially with clothing. From elementary school to middle school, I was often ridiculed for the shoes I wore, particularly my sneakers. I remember my mother’s go-to outlet for my sneakers, and the occasional heels for church on Sundays; Payless. Every few months as I grew out of my sneakers, I got to pick out a new pair or two. Originally, I remember occasionally picking a pair of Twinkle Toes, but I would mostly go for the sneakers I could play in. For me, these would always be Champion sneakers. My Champion sneakers were often around $25-$30 USD each, and that was the best my mother could do at the time. Though, no matter how much I liked my sneakers, I would always get teased. Champion sneakers have inherently been perceived as low-class due to advertising, price, and style. More recently, Champion sneakers have been receiving a higher favor from the public due to their newer...

 Name Plated Jewelry: From the Margins to the Mainstream Today, nameplate jewelry can easily be found on any e-commerce site or platform for purchase and is worn by people across different cultures, races, and classes. However, there was a point in American history when nameplate jewelry was heavily associated with communities of color and people of the working class. What once was recognized as an artifact symbolizing responsibility and financial security, has become a trendy piece of jewelry that can easily be purchased with the click of a button.  In the journal essay, Say My Name: Nameplate Jewelry and the Politics of Taste, authors Isabel Flower and Marcel Rosa-Salas dive into the history of nameplate jewelry and how its cultural significance has shifted overtime. When searching for the origins of nameplate jewelry, the authors found that they had been historically connected to many different ethnic and racial groups in the East Coast and even in Texas and California. The...

This is America and Look What You Made Me Do: Using Aesthetics to Entertain and Educate Donald Glover, also known as Childish Gambino, is a writer, actor, comedian, and musician. He is especially well-known for his song, “This is America,” a chart-topping description of the racism and brutality faced by the Black community in the United States (Bauer, 2022). Taylor Swift is a commercially successful female singer-songwriter who has also experienced large amounts of scrutiny mainly based upon her gender (Ray, 2022). In Childish Gambino’s music video for “This is America,” he happily dances in the spotlight while the background gets increasingly hectic, including scenes of crowds of people being chased by the police. The only interruptions to this happy facade come when Gambino suddenly guns down various individuals.  Taylor Swift’s music video for her song, “Look What You Made Me Do,” includes portrayals of Swift singing and dancing directly to the camera, as well as constant switch...

Brazilian Butt Lifts: Big Booty Lifestyle  From Kim K to Instagram-influencers, TikTok stars to performers, BBLs have become a core component of modern beauty standards in media. A BBL for the uninitiated is a cosmetic surgery that lifts and enlarges the recipient’s butt in order to look bigger. A BBL is both an item that is bought for the enjoyment of the recipient of the surgery, as well as a tool that is marketed on social media by influencers for clout and financial gain. While BBLs’ peak popularity has passed, the emergence of the surgery in mainstream media has left lasting negative impacts on black and brown women. BBLs were created in Brazil in 1960 by Dr. Ivo Pitanguy. Brazil, up until that point, had a very problematic history of cosmetic surgery. The Eugenics Society of São Paulo, which was created in 1918,  aimed to eliminate black and brown physical appearances with cosmetic surgery. Pitanguy’s work followed the theme of eugenics, with the original purpose of BBL ...

Alix Earle is a TikToker whose content falls under the category of lifestyle and beauty. As a 21 year old living in Miami for her last year of college, her social media presence attracts an audience of young women and girls who appeal to the image she's built off of having a fun time and trying to look good. Alix vlogs the monotony of her daily life through short “Spend a day with me” videos, “Get ready with me” videos, and “Help me get dressed” videos, most of which tend to feature a promoted cosmetic or clothing item. According to Crystal Abidin, Alix would be considered an influencer because she has accumulated “a relatively large following on [tik tok] through the textual and visual narration of [her] life” from which she “monetizes [her] following by integrating ‘advertorials’” into the posts and engaging with her audience online (Abidin, 2015, p.1). Alix Earle’s success as an influencer can be accredited to her ability to curate and capitalize on communicative intimacies with...

 Mulan: Downfalls of Cultural Accuracy Originating as a folk song, the Ballad of Hua Mulan is an anonymous poem that recounts the pseudo-historical personage of a young female soldier during the Northern Wei dynasty. This legend was later adapted into a children’s book, inspiring Walt Disney Animation Studios to release the Asian-centric film Mulan in 1998. The feature was well received by viewers, grossing over $304 million, and followed by the sequel Mulan II in 2004. In these animations, Disney explores female heroism and subversive expressions of gender, yet remains highly Americanized and idealizes patriarchal structures. However, in the 2020 live-action remake of the film, director Niki Caro centers on the historical accuracy of Hua Mulan with respect to recent cultural movements. These varying images of Mulan’s intersectionality reflect the historically contextual influences on production and reception within the film industry.  Following the recent success of Aladdin i...

 Addison Rae, A TikTok Sensation With over 88 million followers and 5.8 billion likes on TikTok, Addison Rae embodies the definition of an American social media personality and celebrity. She is a 22-year-old TikToker who first started posting content on TikTok back in July 2019, where her dance videos to trending songs rose in popularity. She has steadily grown in fame since, holding the record for the most followers on TikTok in 2021, and is currently the fourth most-followed individual on the platform. Before her rise to fame, Addison briefly attended Louisiana State University before dropping out and deciding to move to Los Angeles to pursue her Tiktok career further (National Today, 2022). Since then, she has signed with talent agency WME, launched her own cosmetics line, signed a deal with Netflix, and signed various endorsement deals with brands such as Reebok, Hollister, and American Eagle (National Today, 2022).  Addison Rae’s TikTok consists of her sharing dances to ...

 The Magnifying of Matcha It’s difficult to scroll through social media platforms such as Instagram or Tik Tok without encountering the rich, earthy, deep green colored beverage, matcha. While matcha is highly recognized as a trendy and aesthetic product of mainstream popular culture, many are unfamiliar with its origins and rich significance in Japanese society. How did this commodity find its way into Western mainstream pop culture? Ideas of John Storey, Gladwell and Powers, and Adorno and Horkheimer can be applied to explain how matcha became incorporated into mainstream markets and representative of the culture industry.  Matcha has a long history, with its origins dating back to the Tang Dynasty (7th-10th centuries) in China (“The History”). Its popularity rose roughly a century later (during the Song Dynasty) when Eisai, a Japanese Buddhist Monk studied in China and brought the ground green tea leaves back with him to Japan (“The History”). At its introduction to Japanes...

 HOW A HASHTAG BECAME A GLOBAL MOVEMENT WHAT IS #BLACKLIVESMATTER? It was the day that George Zimmerman was acquitted of his chargers for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin—an African American young man—that the hashtag #blacklivesmatter was born. Change and awareness were the things that Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi wanted to see when they first tweeted #blacklivesmatter; an awareness of the killings of black men at the hands of police and an awareness of the police brutality and systematic racism that continues to plague the Black community to this day. Take the fact that, according to Asmelash, “Police officers are almost four times as likely to use force on Black people than White people, Black people are jailed at a disproportionate rate, and Black Americans have lower access to health care and quality education” (Asmelash, 2020). #Blacklivesmatter was a plea for the nation to pay more attention to the discrimination happening in the United States. At ...

Resting in Peace? White Surveillance and the Co-optation of “Rest in Power” “Rest in Power” is a common phrase used to eulogize those who have made large impacts on their industries and communities (cupofwater03, 2022). It’s a popular play on “Rest in Peace,” a saying meant to wish the deceased eternal rest. However, compared to the now common usage of “Rest in Power,” the phrase has a history rooted in activism and Black suffering.  The first utilization of “Rest in Power” was in 2000, used in a newsgroup to honor Mike “Dream” Francisco, a graffiti artist and political critic from the Bay Area killed in a robbery (Hampton, 2019). In 2005, the phrase was used in Bay Area graffiti tributes that emerged after the death of 19-year-old Meleia Wills-Starbuck ((Hill & Yang, 2005). As Twitter emerged and tweets became a popular way to commemorate death, “Rest in Power” was used in connection with hip-hop and Black culture, but the phrase didn’t become mainstream until 2014, a year tha...