ESSAY

In the essays I had you read leading up to this assignment, Klosterman situates pop culture within a larger conversation about race and consumption, economics/class and consumption. In other words, Klosterman thinks (and I agree with him, as do basically all other cultural studies scholars/critics) that pop cultural artifacts are consciously designed with a white audience in mind, and that then goes on to be (one of the guiding) principles of how pop culture is run, regardless of audience intent in their watching/listening/buying of pop cultural artifacts.  You can see it in everything, even in hip-hop (what some might say to be a very specific cultural type of art), in that the large majority of hip-hop buyers/listeners comes from white suburban boys/men.  Klosterman (especially in “33”) makes it clear that he thinks that, when we grow up, we are expected to align ourselves with a certain type of person as seen in various pop culture artifacts (whether that person is an athlete, a pop star, a television character, a writer, etc) so that the art we consume can become more personal.  Indeed, that is one of the very points of pop culture and its power–the ability it has (and what it needs) to turn the impersonal personal.  For this assignment I want you to think about the pop culture material that you consume, that you enjoy, that you think about.  Watch TV, watch movies, listen to music, and make a note of what you see.  This happens particularly on popular (mainstream) TV, but it happens everywhere, so it’s unavoidable. It is dominated by whiteness.  All of it, whiteness everywhere.  It’s not exclusively white, of course, but it is absolutely predominantly white.  Pop culture depends upon its audiences to buy it and the products within it; and if you take popular TV, film, music as an indication, the makers and keepers of pop culture must assume that it is white people who are watching, or at least white people buying–the implications of this are profound.  So I want you to think about, then to write about (using Klosterman as your guide, as well as your source) these implications.