Paper 3 - Cultural Critique

This paper is modeled on George Orwell’s essay “Boy’s Weeklies.” It requires you to choose a series of “texts” from popular culture and to use close analysis and much specific, cited evidence to draw a larger conclusion about the identity of the audience(s) of those texts, and the culture they inhabit. (The word “text” is used to denote anything - a website, album, magazine, etc. - under analysis, because I want you to “read” those things as if they had a story to tell you about the culture - which they do.) The essay should have three tiers:

A close analysis of the texts
An explanation of the audience for these texts
Conclusions about the culture of the audience

Some Guidelines, based on our in-class analysis of “BW”:

The texts should be examples of “popular” media.  You may use several versions in the same genre(tv show, magazine, music artist, etc.), or different things in the same genre (reality tv, podcasts, romance novels, etc.) or even a comparison of two different types of texts, with different audiences, how and why those two cultures are different, or anything else you can think of. I encourage you to be very creative about the texts you use, all I ask is for a convincing, logical explanation for why the particular texts were chosen.
There should be a (fairly brief) justification for why the texts can be used as indicators of the broader culture. (see Orwell p. 280).
This should be a close analysis - requiring your own interpretations and descriptions relying on very specific evidence, using quotations and paraphrasing with citations explaining what text they came from. 
The thesis or conculsions of the essay should not be simplistic. (i.e.“Americans are obsessed with violence/bling/celebrity/crime/ERs/etc.”)You should draw several descriptive conclusions about American culture based on your texts - or one larger conclusion with several components - all illustrated by the specific evidence from the texts.
You can research audience responses/opinions about the text, but they should be used only as supporting evidence for YOUR ORIGINAL ANALYSIS that is based on EVIDENCe FROM THE TEXT
5 page minimum
5 “text” minimum: at least 5 types of pop culture/media
Draft due 11/4. Paper due 11/6.
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