Media And PopularCulture

8 Pages 1965 Words

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 both parody and pastiche as a reference to other popular culture texts such as Star Wars, Psycho and the James Bond films. The programme also features guest appearances by stars of popular culture, such as actors, sports personalities and musicians. Very few people in these roles could be classed as examples of high culture. The other major factor in ‘The Simpsons’ being termed popular culture is the fact that the show is in animated form. No form of animation has ever been seen as a worthy piece of culture by academics and those who decide what is significant and what is not. To establish just why ‘The Simpsons’ can be termed as popular culture we have to define just what it is that we mean by the phrase ‘popular culture’. To put it in its most simple form popular culture can...