Popular Culture Essay

For this week’s discussion board, click on one of the threaded topics provided by me and then post a semi-formal essay response with a thesis statement, evidence, and significance explained clearly. There is not word-count requirement because students write with different degrees of efficiency. But you need to demonstrate your knowledge of the concepts and readings.

You are then expected to respond to the instructor’s feedback and to post on at least one or two other discussion boards. While there is not a specific quantity required, your grade will reflect the depth and breadth of your participation.

Grading: all posts will be evaluated based on the consistency, quality, substance, and logical integrity of your contributions.  This includes a constructive engagement with other students’ comments or the instructor’s comments.

Your posts must be in accordance with the University’s Threaded Discussion Guidelines.

Here is question below. 

Kalle Lasn, the writer/activist, argues that you are in a cult. What does he mean by that? What evidence does he offer? Why does he start with a nightmare? And can you think of evidence that supports this argument or contradicts it?

Need typical discussion response for the following

1. When Lasn says you’re in cult, I think he means that everyday is a routine with the same people with the same ideas. You get up, you do what you do then repeat all over again. He talks about television and advertisement and how its fed into our lives, he mentions things he sees and adds what reminds them of a specific famous person (which is seen on TV). In his writing he describes a lot of daily routines we all live as a society and we’re all sucked into that lifestyle. I think the nightmare from the beginning of the piece is a kind of analogy of how we’re haunted by our regular lives (i.e. going to the supermarket “beating at the hands of the Keebler elves”). As cult members, he says their words and ideas come from television and advertisements seen on TV and they’re subliminally influenced by such things. These specific people in these groups have the same mindsets don’t necessarily wear a specific “uniform”, but wear matching “Tommy Hilfiger” apparel or whatever else they decide suits their demographic. He says we’re in a cult, but didn’t necessarily choose it “consciously”, as a society we get sucked into these cliques and abide by the rules established, but at what cost? I think that there’s evidence that supports this idea throughout his writing because he utilizes many comparisons to get his point across to the reader, but there’s also evidence that contradicts his argument. Just because someone does certain things doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in a “cult”, just because I watch TV doesn’t mean I “feel neither loneliness nor solitude”. The generation we live in, it’s physically impossible to avoid all the things Lasn says that makes us a cult, it’s just how we perceive the information and how it affects us.

1. Lasn’s cult is our culture. We’re all tangled up in a psychedelic kaleidoscopic web of advertisements, fashions, and media images. We’re trapped there, and something’s coming to suck the life out of us. His paper is a staccato assault of cultural references. I get it—he’s ironic. He’s using the language of our corporate hypnotists against them (cool emoji, Kalle).

He might be exaggerating a little—don’t all cultures bind their members like this?  Lasn paints American culture as a mix of contradictions that come in such a constant flood that we get sucked out to sea and drowned in a riptide of advertisements, TV personalities, celebrity athletes, and out-of-context movie lines. But I grew up here, and I don’t remember being as bamboozled by pop culture trivia growing up as I was reading this paper. He starts with a nightmare for dramatic effect—the same reason an action movie starts with an explosion. It’s a foretaste of what’s to come, and in Lasn’s idea of American culture, what’s to come is a herd of pop culture gremlins that will invade our psyche as implacably as any zombie army. We’ll all be tricked into craving Armini suits, fast cars, and instant wealth.

OK, he’s not wrong to say that most of us are likely to take on the dominant values of our culture, and materialism is one of those values. He’s right, too, when he predicts that we’ll desperately want whatever is in fashion. I remember causing a scene in a department store as a child because my mother said the track shoes I wanted were too expensive. (Don’t remember track shoes? They were Nikes before Nikes were a thing.) But surely other culture’s children have similar tantrums. Why is American culture a “cult” because it is consumerist?  Is that fair?

Lasn might have had a point decades ago (he writes like a child of the 80s), but now most every culture is consumerist. If he means that in consumerist societies the citizens’ desires are crafted by corporate advertising and their aspirations are molded by media conglomerates, he’s right. They are. Are we persuaded to buy things we don’t need and to see movies that won’t inspire us to save the children? Sure we are. That’s what cultures do. They tell us how to behave.

I also grant that, as he says, we might well end up disappointed that we never got the Hollywood entourage lifestyle that the advertisements promised. But would our lives have been better without the dream? I am not sure about that either. Pursuing one’s personal happiness based on following cultural role models isn’t wrong if you chose the right role models. That’s true all over the world. Also, hyper-consumerism is not a sound life strategy, agreed. But I don’t know anyone who uses it as one.

In his final sentence, Lasn asks, “What does it mean when the whole culture dreams the same dream?” My reply: It means we all grew up in the same culture.