Here we go...

So here we are, Popular Culture 313.  As many have noted, Anchorman and
Fatal Attraction in one day was pretty exciting. However, talking about
Judith Butler and gender roles reminded me of the old Literary Criticism
class that many English majors are required to take.(For those of you
who haven't taken it yet, BEWARE!) After reading the second chapter in
our text, Cultural Studies Theory and Practice,  I realized the
cleverness of asking us to define popular culture on the first day of
class. If we already knew so much about it, why would we be taking ENG
313? On the first day of class I defined popular culture as anything
produced by the media, literature, or art that is picked up by large
masses.  Now all I can think is that culture encompasses an array of
ever-changing definitive genres and standards.  Popular culture cannot
be defined, yet we will spend an entire semester trying to define it or
at least examining it from different perspectives.  One word popped up
while I attempted to read the chapter; "change, as it is the most
implemental part of popular culture.   Another part of the text that was
interesting was the redundant mention of extremes, high and low, good
and bad, which seems to be an underlying theme of the class as the first
day we talked about males and females.  Popular culture seems to rely a
lot of relativity.  Finally, the text had two awesome sentences that
stood out in my opinion-- "Culture is both the 'arts' and the values,
norms, and symbolic goods of everyday life.  While culture is concerned
with tradition and social reproduction, it is also a matter of
creativity and change" (Barker, 42).  That quote basically sums up the
thoughts in my head at this moment about popular culture.  On a lighter
note, I enjoyed in the text  how a picture of a cheeseburger could spark
an entire discussion about culture.