Media_And_PopularCulture

Media And PopularCulture With reference to one specific area of the media, discuss the ways it may be termed popular culture. By: Mark Green For this essay I am going to be studying the popular animated TV series ‘The Simpsons’ and saying why I think that it is a classic example of popular culture texts. The programme is twenty-five minute animation about a family at the bottom of the social ladder, the Simpsons. Revolving around the central family the show takes a sideways look at the life of ‘ordinary’ American people. The family has five main members; Homer the father of the family is a blue-collar worker at the local nuclear power station. Marge the mother is a housewife who stays at home all day, then there are the children. Bart (a mischievous prankster) and Lisa (school swat) are pre-teens and lastly there is baby Maggy who doesn’t do that much at all. Every week the family get into various and amusing scrapes and generally carry out the activities that a working class family are ‘supposed’ to do. There are many factors that could categorise ‘The Simpsons’ as being popular culture, one of them being its intertexuality. The show makes great use of culture, popular, people, simpsons, show, way, something, family, dominant, power, texts, being, about, work, termed, shows, programme, ordinary, one, media, just, ideals, form, entertainment, both, audience, view, time, shop, seen, out, marge, made, lot, look