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5-8 pages, typed, in MLA format. Several sources required; you may use a combination of print, electronic media, and interviews. You must use a variety of sources (not all internet or electronically reproduced materials).

The purpose of this essay is to analyze a particular feature of popular culture in order to arrive at some insight about the meaning of your subject within the broader context of the times in which we live. You will engage in the kind of rigorous cultural analysis that the authors we have been reading use in their essays: Ventura in his study of media; Gutterson in his analysis of the Mall of America; Solomon in his study of American advertising; Charles in his analysis of Coca-Cola ads in the African American community; Katz in his study of the "new news media" of rap, rock and movies; and the other authors in their studies, whether of daytime talk-show TV, "Generation X," or political advertising. Notice how all the essays we have read attempt to get at the significance or meaning of the feature of popular culture they analyze. Each essay places the feature of popular culture it examines within its broader cultural context, seeing its relationship to other elements in the culture that seem to indicate similar significance. Each essay looks closely at its subject in order to tell us something important about the values, assumptions, fantasies, or aspirations of particular cultural groups.

In this research project, you will use research from several sources to support, enrich, and contextualize your own critical analysis of some element of popular culture of particular interest to you. Any area of popular culture is open to you for examination. You might examine any subject drawn from your familiarity with TV, film, advertising, exercise, sports, health crazes, beauty crazes, images of ideal male or female beauty, MTV, popular dance, children's toys, adults' toys, clothing/fashion trends or "looks," musical styles or trends, film or TV idols, body adornment (tattooing, piercing, enhancement surgery of one kind or another)--to mention only a few possiblities. You should focus your study as narrowly as you can. You may choose any element in popular culture that you think you can analyze in order to convince your reader that you have a valid interpretation of the deeper implications of the subject you analyze. Choose a topic with which you are familiar or for which you have a keen interest.

The purpose of your researched essay is to analyze some popular cultural phenomenon, image, icon, artifact, event, product or practice IN ORDER TO INDICATE HOW IT OPERATES AS A SIGN THAT REVEALS SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT CONTEMPORARY CULTURE. YOUR ANALYSIS MUST DO MORE THAN MERELY DESCRIBE YOUR SUBJECT. IT MUST EXPLORE EXACTLY WHAT THE POPULAR CULTURE "SIGN" YOU ARE ANALYZING SUGGESTS ABOUT THE CULTURE OF WHICH IT IS A PRODUCT. You must critically analyze what you believe your subject reveals about contemporary culture. You need to articulate how your subject has deeper implications that indicate something important about our culture, whether that be the values, assumptions, attitudes, needs, fears, desires, prejudices or fantasies of the contemporary scene. In your analysis, you will use a close, detailed and specific, critical examination of numerous sensory features of your subject; in other words, you will need to describe its significant features fully. But you must also analyze what those particular features SIGNIFY about our culture. Analyze how the specifics of your subject indicate something about contemporary culture. You will use research in order to gather information about our culture, history, psychology, arts, social practices, etc., in order to provide a context for your work. You may also use some research into the work of other critics who have commented on your specific subject. In other words, you will research both about your specific subject and about the larger contexts in which your subject is situated.

As in the cultural phenomena that Venture, Guterson, Solomon, Charles, Katz, Rapping, Zinn and Adatto study, the implications of the subject you examine are likely to be quite carefully concealed. Common sense might suggest that there's really only a "surface" meaning there; that, for example, Captain America Comics don't mean anything about culture; they're just enjoyable. Common sense might suggest that the rebirth of interest and sales of Barbie dolls over that past five years doesn't mean anything; Mattel just decided to market them again. Common sense might dictate that the popularity of tattoos in middle- to upper-middle-class people doesn't mean anything; tattoos just look good. Common sense might insist that working out and creating a chiseled "hard body" for both men and women don't mean anything; it's just important to be healthy. But critical judgment and informed cultural analysis would suggest that there's actually much more there beneath the surface. And what is there, beneath the surface sales pitch or media image or latest craze or newest "fashion look," tells us much about our culture and its values.

Essentially, you will be looking at some image, icon, product, practice, or phenomenon of popular culture in order to engage in a critical analysis that reveals some of the values or assumptions, desires, fears, or prejudices wishes or fantasies of our culture.

The kinds of elements of popular culture you might analyze include, but are not limited to: a specific TV series (including sitcoms, soaps, dramas, talk shows, docu-dramas, etc.); a type of TV series (cop shows, lawyer shows, hospital shows, family shows, friends shows, talk shows, etc.); a particular TV series (Seinfeld, Roseanne, Bay Watch, 90210, Ellen, Saved by the Bell, Bevis and Butthead); a type of film (e.g. "epidemic or health panic movies," single father movies, "gal pal" movies like Thelma and Louise, gay or lesbian films like Love! Valor! Compassion! or When Night Begins to Fall etc.); an advertisement or an ad campaign (e.g. Benneton's "Many Colors of Benneton" or Images of the Third World Campaign, Soloflex, Calvin Klein jeans, Levis baggy fitting jeans, etc.); a clothing catalogue or a catalogue of other kinds of products (e.g. Peterson's Clothing, Orvis, Land's End); a musical style (new wave, fusion, hip-hop, rap, new age, ska, etc.); a specific popular fad (bungee jumping, aerobics, physical fitness, healthy dieting, working out, skate-boarding, snow-boarding, suchi bars, health food, macrobiotic diets, dieting, tattooing, body piercing, graffiti art, "extreme" sports, etc.); a particular fashion "look" (grunge, hip-hop, the "dead" or hippie look, punk, skin-head, etc.); a specific sport and its whole milieu (rugby, lacrosse, women's crew, croquet, surfing); current dating or relationship practices; a specific cosmetic item or line of cosmetics; a particular rock star and the image he or she cultivates; a political campaign slogan ("family values," "a thousand points of light," "Morning in America," "Get government off our backs," "Let's Take Back Our Culture," etc.); a particular religious campaign (Dr. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, "One man and one wife for life," rastafarianism, liberation theology and the third world).

How does this subject work? What specific images and details act upon the viewer in order to appeal to some deeper desire, assumption, wish, fantasy, prejudice, fear? Here you will want to engage in the kind of specific, detailed analysis that the authors we will read do when they examine their subjects. Describe your subject fully, choosing the significant details that you then interpret to get at the deeper implications. For each significant detail you describe, explain what it suggests about those deeper implications.

What does the subject assume about the audience? Its values, hopes, fears, desires, etc? What does it assume the audience believes, wants, and will accept?

What is the subject's logic? What kinds of steps in reasoning does it take, and what are its conclusions? How does it get to these conclusions?

What are the subject's intentions other than the obvious ones on the surface?

Why are these intentions hidden? How are they hidden?

Whose interests, other than the obvious ones of producers or advertisers, might these hidden intentions be said to serve?

What larger cultural patterns or larger cultural values does this piece fit into? What else in the culture is it related to? How does it contribute to some larger cultural pattern? In other words, how does this one cultural sign fit into a larger system of other signs and their meanings, of history, and of social life?

How is this subject related to whatever else is going on at its precise historical moment? How does it fit into its social,

historical and/or political context and how does it reflect that context?

Home Page | 102 Description |102 Requirements| 102 Syllabus | Reader's Log | Research Project #2 | Working Bibliography | Annotated Bibliography | Course Descriptions and Syllabi