How does mass/social media/influencer culture affect women and young girls and how they view themselves/each other? Cause girls to sexualize themselves at a younger age, pin women against each other?

The term “popular culture” is used to describe the kind of literature, music, painting, architecture, and other cultural matter that is produced for mass consumption. Some popular culture turns out to be very sophisticated, but much more popular culture is designed to reaffirm and comfort popular attitudes and tastes, not challenge or examine them. Above all, popular culture usually aims to succeed in the market place. Examples of twenty-first-century popular culture include television shows, feature films, popular music of various types, video games, and many other kinds of media.

 

For this paper, choose one form of popular culture for analysis. When you choose a type/genre, be sure that it is a specific genre; not simply “popular music,” but “sentimental love songs of the 1980s” or “goth rock of early 1990s”; not “comic books,” but “Disney comics” or “monster comics” or “superhero-type comics.” Be sure to select a specific kind of popular culture. Huge genres such as “rap music” or “hip hop” are simply too large for this project. Even more importantly, be sure to select a form of popular culture that you find interesting to begin with. You can choose a topic from a wide variety of material—from comic books and horror movies to TV shows and bumper stickers and magazines, from Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys to 50 Shades of Grey, from plays by Neil Simon and Sam Shepard, to Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films and Haruki Murakami’s novels.

 

Your object will be to explore the relationship between your chosen piece of popular culture and some social issue such as age, race, gender, class, religion, immigration, etc. You will be forming an argument about this relationship, a central thesis that will be supported by your evidence. Evidence for your argument will come from analysis or descriptions of the popular culture as well as from credible research sources you select. One requirement of the paper is that you use at least five research sources; at least three of those sources have to be peer-reviewed academic texts.

 

Please keep in mind that you are not writing a report. You are writing an argumentative paper that includes research and adds to a broader conversation about your chosen topic. You are to add to this conversation by making a claim about your chosen topic. Focus on the development of ideas rather than on the accumulation of quotes.

Requirements

A well-researched, academic argument that adds a new perspective to the existing conversation about your topic

A clear thesis statement that advances a specific, substantial, arguable point

Strong supporting evidence from your secondary research

In-text citation of at least five different secondary sources (at least three academic sources)

A careful evaluation of relevant counterpoints

A coherent organizational structure that enhances the argument and effectively portrays the research

A strong sense of audience

A clear ethos

4-6 double-spaced pages (1,000-1,500 words)

1 intro paragraph

5 body paragraphs (1 for each source)

1 conclusion paragraph

Works Cited (MLA)

Meticulous proofreading and proper MLA formatting

Don’t Do It!

No more than one block quote

No changing topics at the last minute.