Goals

We are all consumers of popular culture (movies, television, magazines, books, music, etc.), and most of us define ourselves either in alliance with or in opposition to this culture or some aspect of it. In Unit One we will analyze the ways in which popular culture exerts influence over its audience, developing a set of analytical tools to identify and critique popular culture’s methods of influence, with particular attention to the fragmenting of popular culture into communities defined by interest, ideology and most importantly, language.

Feeder One: 2-3 pages

Draft due August 26

Draft due August 31

For your first assignment, select an object you own that you have a sentimental attachment to. It can be anything—an item of clothing you feel especially cool walking around in, the centerpiece of your comic book collection, an old concert ticket stub—the only catch is that it must be something that was mass produced. In other words, there are hundreds—maybe even thousands or millions—of people who have an object that is nearly identical to yours. Write a 2-3 page essay about how this item gained its significance: did you carry it on a special trip, was it given to you by someone close to you, or have you simply had it for a very long time? If you get stuck, imagine that your object was lost or destroyed. Would you replace it? Why or why not?

Feeder Two: 2-3 pages

Draft due September 2

Draft due September 7

Sometimes items aren’t significant to us because they’re unique, but precisely because they are not. In our culture, we often identify ourselves as members of a community by the things we own: clothes, shoes, automobiles, and (very often for young people) music. For your second feeder assignment, select a CD from your collection (if you don’t have any CDs with you at UNC buy one or borrow one from someone) with packaging that you find striking or interesting. Write a 2-3 page essay explaining why you were attracted to this CD’s packaging. Is the disc colorful or monochromatic? What kinds of fonts are used for the group or artist’s name and the other information on the disc? What kinds of ideas or emotions does the disc’s imagery evoke? While you should avoid talking about the disc’s music, it may be appropriate to write about what the artwork might suggest about the music to a person browsing the racks in a record store who hadn’t heard the group. Finally, ask yourself whether you consider yourself a part of the target demographic for this CD. Why or why not?

Unit Assignment: 5-6 pages

Draft due September 9

Draft due September 16

Draft due September 21

For your feeder 2 assignment you explored how marketers use visual cues to identify products to members of the communities they target. For your unit 1 project, you will explore how visual and verbal cues work together to identify multimedia projects as products of and for these communities. Begin by searching the internet for a blog that analyzes some aspect of popular culture that you enjoy: books, movies, music, television, comics, etc. Make sure the blog has a substantial number of significant posts (at least ten) and spend some time checking the latest additions to the blog as well as its archives.

Next, compose a 5-6 page essay in which you propose a set of changes that the bloggers could implement in order to make their analysis of this pop culture phenomenon more significant or substantial to the members of its community. First, you will need to establish what makes this community unique as well as why its members would read this blog and what they might expect to gain from reading it. Assess the bloggers’ degree of success in meeting these expectations, citing examples from multiple posts. Finally, explain in detail how your suggestions could help the bloggers meet these expectations.

Unit 1 Portfolio due October 5

On October 5 you will turn in your first unit portfolio. Your final grade for the unit will be based largely on the strength of this portfolio, which will consist of newly revised versions of your feeder one and feeder two assignments as well as the final version of your unit one project. The versions of these assignments that you turn in should not be the same versions that you turned in to me for earlier drafts; they should reflect whatever comments I and your classmates have given to date as well as an understanding of any new material we’ve covered in class.

Please turn in your portfolio to me in a 9” x 12” manila envelope with your name written clearly on the front. The envelope should contain all of the work you’ve done on your three assignments for unit one, including marked-up drafts from your draft workshops, draft workshop forms, drafts you handed in to me or conferences with me held outside of class. Please arrange your work in this order, from top to bottom:

• Final draft of Unit 1 final project
• Final draft of Unit 1 feeder 1
• Final draft of Unit 1 feeder 2
• Marked-up previous drafts for Unit 1 final project
• Marked-up previous drafts for Unit 1 feeder 1
• Marked-up previous drafts for Unit 1 feeder 2

Remember, all papers should follow the formatting specifications listed on the syllabus.