Dictating culture to the masses

By Jordyn Marcellus

We’re an entertainment junky culture. From a young age we get addicted to injecting ourselves full of pop fluff, then spend our time looking for the next big fix. Curmudgeons on the right bemoan the lack of morals and values in society while curmudgeons on the left bitch about how this Nintendo generation is unwilling to get off their asses to affect any meaningful social change.


Television executives just say that they’re providing what the public wants. Shows like Wipeout, American Gladiators and From Gees to Gents are just entertainment. Since capitalism is all about the quest for the bottom line, it’s not the executives fault for unleashing Flava Flav on womankind– that’s what the people want.


This of argument hinges on the idea that pop culture is a reflection of modern society. That was never true. It dictates what people want and how they view themselves through the creation of archetypical roles that both men and women desire to fill because that’s all that we have left. We’re so disconnected from our social sphere that we’re referring to pop culture to see what life should be like. More often than not, it only presents an idealized image that we can never achieve.


In the ’50s and ’60s, shows like The Brady Bunch and Leave It to Beaver were idealized versions of suburban happiness. All the conflict would inevitably be wrapped up in a neat little 22-minute tale, often with a moral. Carol and Mike Brady never had any long-simmering tension that would eventually blow up and divide the family for weeks on end. The only long-term troubles the family seemed to have were between Greg Brady and that goddamned cursed Tiki Idol.


Millions of kids were brought up on this pablum. When you’re young, it seems like the perfect life. Everything is hunky dory and no one is addicted to drugs, porn or gambling. Even when you are, with a little perseverance and a stern talking to from Danny Tanner and Uncle Jesse, life will return to normal. That’s what people come to expect as reality and what they aspire their own parenting styles to be like.


Of course, no child is as good-natured as DJ or Steph Tanner. Teenagers are belligerent assholes. Parents cheat on one another. The Kinsey Reports suggested between 25 to 50 per cent of men and around 25 per cent of women, will cheat on their partner once in a lifetime. Most television sitcoms don’t even attempt to broach the difficult questions of extra-marital affairs and when they do, it’s only for an episode or two. In all forms of media, love is this beautiful thing that, as Joe Cocker sings “lifts us up where we belong.”


The modern idea of love has entered in the era of the bawdy Harlequin romance novel. Right or wrong, a lot of men believe they have to become muscle-bound lunkheads with a rockin’ bod to get a girl. Some women, too, desire to be swept off their feet by John Cusack’s character in Say Anything. Guys spend years learning guitar to be like the latest indie songwriter flavour of the week– and then incessantly cover Bright Eyes or Dashboard Confessional.


We want to live our lives like our pop culture heroes because we don’t know who else to model ourselves after. These roles define what is loveable and idealize a form of love.


For people without any self-confidence or who are confused about their place in the world, when they are constantly berated with these images the obvious answer is to adopt them and internalize them. Through that adoption of the role, people become the stereotype. There’s far too many men who think the only way to attract women is to be a chest-puffed-out, over-confident popped-collared douchebag. Many women think that men will never like them unless they play down their intelligence. This isn’t always the case, but when media tells the successes of pick-up artists and devotes shows to them– like VH1’s The Pick-Up Artist– men actually believe this will work all the time. But the shows are edited to make them seem more successful than they really are. Magazines like Cosmo sell an entire lifestyle of vague bedroom submission and un-intellectualism for women– all to ensure that a man’s ego isn’t threatened in the boudoir.


People adopt these roles in an attempt to be part of a group, then accept them as normal. Through the process of trying to fit in, there’s an over-exaggeration and then lapse into self-parody– like the uncool mom trying to fit in with her daughter at a Jonas Brothers concert.