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Petraca And Sorapure: The Role Of Popular Culture

702 Words3 Pages

Hunter Crawford
Prof. McDonald
ENG 107D
25 September 2015 The Role of Popular Culture
Are the commonly held beliefs about beauty and success in American society reliant upon what is portrayed to us a by the mass media? In the short excerpt “Why Study Popular Culture” Petracca and Sorapure make the claim that “We see reflected in pop culture certain standards and commonly held beliefs about beauty, success, love, or justice”. For this claim, I have no objection. I agree that popular culture reflects the commonly held beliefs of American society. However, who is doing the reflecting is another question. The commonly held beliefs in which many of us share are ones that I believe are not our own. These values in which Petracca and Sorapure claim to see reflected by Pop Culture are those value that the mass media has created and American Society merely emulates. This can be seen in most of the society 's ideal view of what beauty is. We find ourselves identifying beauty with the supermodels we see in magazines, online ads, and TV.
These commonly held beliefs, I feel are being dictated by the mass media are ones that attempt to greatly influence our core values and beliefs. I will analyze these collective beliefs and …show more content…

Popular culture is molded off of what 's popular or what 's considered cool by the majority in society at a given time. So if you had the power to instantly make something cool or trendy you could create your own target market in which to sell to. The mass media has this power through advertisements and the beauty market is just one of the many I believe to be greatly impacted by it. When searching for the word beauty on Google the top results feature makeup companies and sites to buy products to try and make you look and feel like the unrealistic conceptualization of beauty you see in the

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