intro paragraph noting the relevance of the movie to the course
b) one page description/summary of the contents of the film
The purpose of this assignment is to critically watch and review a movie with popular culture themes/symbols in terms of the sociological perspective and cultural theories.
Many say art imitates life, and we see a reflection of our society and its values in art and entertainment. Others say life imitates are many of our behaviors and values are modeled after what we see in art and entertainment. Either way, you will find examples of popular culture in the movies.
Assignment 1 meets the following course objectives:
• Compare and contrast culture, popular, high culture, elite culture, mass culture, low culture, subculture and counterculture.
• Describe examples of the different types of norms operative in popular culture, and how these are related to the process of social control.
• Apply key cultural theories and analytical dimensions for examining popular culture.
• Explain how various elements of popular culture inform or reflect our attitudes, behavior, and society and why the popular culture becomes popular.
• Illustrate diversity in popular culture and concepts of multiculturalism, ethnocentrism, and cultural relativism with reference to key stratifying factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, region and sexuality.
• Analyze culture within individual, social, historical, political, economic, and global contexts.
• Describe the cultural and social significance of popular culture in shaping the larger contemporary American society.
• Examine the roles of print media, art, music, radio, television, motion picture, the Internet, sports, fashion, and technology in the development of American popular culture.
0.5-1 page in which you discuss how popular culture themes were constructed in the movie use at least 3 examples
d) 1-2 pages in which you use at least 4 sociological/pop cultural concepts covered in this course to analyze the movie (cite class materials as you do so)
e) Analyze which issues emerged as the strongest…as the weakest?
f) Briefly compare the popular culture themes in the movie you watched for this assignment to another movie you have previously seen that had similar themes.