In Mix it up the modern pop culture and its interactions with society are discussed in great detail. The book starts by showing how pop culture can be recycled, especially in the music and movie industry. Artists often take music, lyrics, or beats from previous artists and do their own rendition ( a cover) or mix it with other old songs to make it popular again. The next part talks about how pop culture can be used to bring people together, a perfect example being sports teams. Many people take pride in their cities sports teams and enjoy going to the games and this gives a common ground for people to develop their own culture based around a sports team. For example people from Pittsburgh are known for the way they talk and this is used by marketers and such to show support for the Steelers and other sports teams. Grazian also brings up a negative side to this, such as children who are pressured into modeling and develop eating disorders because society demands skinny models. I think that this functionalist approach does have a fairly large impact on pop culture because it encompasses societies expectations of certain roles such as women. Therefore it may cause people to act in ways that do not feel natural to them and further pushes along pop culture.
The third chapter shows how companies use marketing and other techniques to influence consumers and argues that this drives pop culture. It is interesting in this section to see how many companies are actually tied together or affiliated with one another. For example i never knew that the Walk Disney Company owned ESPN along with a plethora of other T.V. stations. Although marketing does play a major role in consumer decisions I still find it hard to beleive that this is the true driving factor behind pop culture. If a company that makes a product that does not work well it doesn't matter how well it is marketed once people realize how bad it is it will stop selling.
Finally the last chapter discusses the ways in which people interact and spread pop culture. I think this is the most prominent way in which pop culture is spread. People have friends who generally who have many opinions of music, movies, or art in common. This allows people to suggest things taht they like to others and this is how pop culture is spread. If a friend who you know has a great taste in music suggests a CD to you, I would bet you would be much more likely to check it out, moreso than if you just saw a trailer for the CD. This section was most interesting to me because it is the most obvious to observe in everyday life. Which way do you guys think is way most pop culture is spread? Would you be more likely to see a movie because you heard it was great? or because your city is featured in it? or just because the trailer looked amazing? Also how much do you think societies opinions of what a cheerleader, model etc. should look like, affect people's lives? and is society to blame or the individual?
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As far as your second question is concerned, I think the glorified image of a model or cheerleader very much affects peoples lives. It may come down to a very cliche notion of the grass being greener. We have way more food than is necessary to sustain ourselves in this country, so we eat it, we get fat, and then we want to be a sexy, skinny cheerleader, even though this image is not really realistic. The girls in today's media are too thin to be healthy. I think both society and the individual are to blame for having no perception of what the individual actually is and for not promoting individuality. I hope that makes sense...
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