Essay Sample on Pop-Culture

Introduction

Pop culture has become a valuable tool that is utilized in different aspects of peoples lives in order to change their perspective on varying certain objects, beliefs or practices through the use of dominant and significant objects in society. The impact of this influences imposed on people generally gives them a new way of thinking which could either be a positive or negative effect. In week 13, I studied and conducted an in-depth analysis of two significant concepts that mainly focused on the salience of an emerging hip-hop sexual script and the dilemmas of femininity in the music media. These two articles are relevant as they deeply connected due to the fact that they both address issues that have an effect on the female gender and they also directly relate to pop culture. Well to begin with, in the 'salience of an emerging hip-hop sexual script' article, it is evident that Hip-hop plays a major role in influencing its young listeners. However, the influence of hip-hop is negative considering the fact that it brings out a cynical perception of the ideas about sexuality and sex. On the other hand, the piece on 'dilemmas of femininity' has a significant relation to pop-culture as it brings out the fact that the male gender believes that it has dominance over the female gender with reference to the narrative of Music Television (MTV).

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A clear example of how hip-hop influences and alters the views of its young listeners on sex and sexuality, and the idea of male dominance in the music industry has been brought up as a concern in the television series 'Empire'. To begin with, in this particular television show, male dominance in the music media is clearly evident in every aspect. To begin with, it is noticeable that a majority of Lucious Lyon's competitors, who are CEO's at their music labels, are in fact of the male gender. This clearly changes the perception of the audience into making them believe that a successful leadership in music can only be attainable if you are male, and this is definitely a pop-culture element. In addition to that, this television series also addresses how hip-hop influences its young listeners on matters concerning sex and sexuality. In most of the instances, it is portrayed that for a female to be relevant in music, especially African American women, they ought to give sexual favors to their male counterparts. Despite this, the television series also brings out the power of femininity through the use of Cookie Lyon, who is a strong woman that fights against all the odds in order to do just as good as the men in the music media.

This piece of media is definitely a representation of what I learned in Week 13 in class. To begin with, the main issue at hand was pop-culture, which in this case, one can notice that the music media not only influences peoples perspective on femininity, sex, and sexuality, but also it plays a major role in influencing the point of view in other aspects. The association is illustrated from the feedback from both men and women who gave a description of the experience they had with the society's expectation in relation to sexuality and gender. Cultural presumption of an ideal woman is one who is beautiful, alluring, wanted and individualistic, and theoretically, women can use their sexual appeal to achieve dominance over men as portrayed by hip-hop in the music media.

Conclusion

To conclude this, it is evident that hip-hop and the music media as a whole plays a significant role in pop culture in different societies all over the world due to the fact that music is global and has the capability to reach many individuals. This means that the aspects of pop culture in different parts of the glove might actually have similarities.

References

Kalof, Linda. 1993. "Dilemmas of Femininity: Gender and the Social Construction of Sexual Imagery." Wiley. 34 (4): 639-651.

Ross, Jasmine, N., and Coleman, Nicole, M., Therese Hoff. 1990. "Gold Digger or Video Girl: the salience of an emerging hip-hop sexual script." University of Houston. 13 (2): 157-171.