Pop Culture Blog Project

There was another me since I came to the United States. I have changed, or in other words, I have been changed since I came here. Also, I felt extremely uncomfortable when I was with my cousins or the friend I just made because we usually did not have the same topic in our conversation. I realized that was because we had totally different, even opposite, cultural background. In addition, I could not understand every single word that came out of their mouths whenever they talked about anything popular, such as movies, singers, electric products. Therefore, I recognized it is necessary for me to learn more about popular culture in the United States. On the other hand, I found I have changed myself a lot during the process of learning. My style of dressing, the way I talk and the way I think have all been different somehow.

As I said, I have realized that learning the new culture, American cultural background, is extremely important for every moment in my daily life in the United States. I found I could not fit in with my friends before I really got in touch with American pop culture. In addition, this was also why I took this class, Pop Culture. On the other side, while I was earning knowledge from the class, I discovered it is very funny and interesting to get known of people, who have different cultural background. More so, I realized respecting with this difference is also necessary. And now, I am almost able to communicate with my friends or my relatives, who were born here, normally. Furthermore, I very enjoy the process of the pop culture class, and I think of it as a club rather than a serious class.

The statue is made of five goats—one of goats stands in the center and holds a spike of rice in the mouth among four other goats. This is the major and the most important sigh of Guangzhou, this five-goats-statue is also the reason why Guangzhou is also called Goat-City. There is also a legend about the statue—long time ago, there isn't enough food in this small town, and plenty of people died in famine, and the people were all hopeless. However, one of the gods realized disaster and asked his pets, five goats, to go give the seeds of rice to those poor people and exhorted them to plant it on the ground. People did what the god told them to do and got great harvest and did not need bear damage of the famine anymore. The five goats also became stones and guard people and became people's praying object as well. Also, this city Guangzhou, which is guarded by the goats, becomes richer and richer, and it is the third largest city in China.

I remember one of the readings that I discussed with my classmate and instructor in Pop Culture class—“Text Generation Gap: U R2 Old” because it is the funniest and most thoughtful reading that I have ever read in class. The reading talks about how hard it is for younger generations to communicate with older generations by sending messages and how important sending message is in our daily lives. It is truth. Sending messages became one of necessary parts of our daily communications as cell phones are becoming part of our lives. Moreover, the article says that some younger generations would text each other even if they are sitting next to one another because they don’t want their parents to know what they are talking, and I could not help laughing when I just saw this part of the story and recollected that I seemed I have done the same thing to my own parents. I found not only me but also some of my friends have the same or worse situation. This is what I found out when I went to my friend’s home and saw he almost shout at his parent when his parent tried to stop him from texting.

In addition, I loved that project, which talked about our favorite song and singer, and it was one of the most enjoyable presentations that I have made. I chose Eason Chan as my favorite singer, and started researching about him. I have not done any other project with such interest and patience, and I thought I know Chinese music a lot because I often listen to it, but I found I was wrong. I found out many elements that I have never heard as I was researching for my project. From my own presentation, I earn much experience for presenting. I also studied many different kinds of music, different cultural background, and American pop, which had helped me fit in with the people who were born here. Also, I was able to earn grates of the class during the cheerful process.

We had a movie portfolio right after the singer presentation, and our instructor asked us to write a summary after watching a new movie for the class. Therefore, I watched The Fighter and then made my own review— Mickey was a fighter who had been losing three competitions. His manager and the incompetent coach, as well as his mother and elder brother, set him to fight with fierce boxer and Mickey lost again in the end. Therefore, he wasn’t brave enough to go out with the attractive girl, who he had asked to have a date. However, they were together after episodes, and his girlfriend suggested him boxing out of his family after Mickey told her about his situation, or to say his bitter experience. He did what she said finally after mulling and was getting more successful, but his family felt mad about that and did not believe in his girlfriend. Mickey’s family members told Mickey to work with either his own family or that unrelated woman and the former coach, who was Mickey’s coach in fact and was doing pretty competent. Mickey chose the second option after his hand got hurt seriously because of his dispirited brother. Anyhow, he found his brother’s boxing method is sometime the most effective one after fighting with a serious competitor. Thereby, he fell into the dispute and felt awful and did not know what to do next……

Before watching The Fighter, I searched for reviews for it, and I found that most people did not like the clown, Dickey, because he behaved badly in the movie. However, how I thought about him after watching is he is an excellent actor. Even if Dickey acted as Mickey’s, the main character, terrible brother, he was still doing extremely well as a villain. I wanted to beat him when he hurt his mother’s heart, and I could not also stop encouraging him when he was trying to do his best to be a good guy again. That is how a great actor works. Overall, I could learn that he was not a total scoundrel, which is opposite compare with those reviews, when I saw that he would feel regretful. He had also been trying hard to be a competent coach again for his younger brother when he realized what he did was wrong.

The reading, which talked about cell phones between younger generations and their parents, reminded me that cell phones are one of the most important technologies. Cell phone would be one of the greatest inventions in the world. Cell phones changed beings’ live radically. People are able to talk, video chat, surf the net by just using hand-size cell phones, and they start to be unable to live without cell phones. There is no lack of cell phone wherever even if ones are in one of the poorest countries—Africa. Cell phones became part of our lives, and people recognize that cell phones are one of the necessary ways of their communication Nonetheless, there also are defects as cell phones are making our lives more simple and gratifying; for example, people have less face-to-face talk, which makes people get closer. Therefore, one should use cell phones appropriately in order to facilitate his or her life but not trouble it.

We had done plenty of things for our Pop Culture class, Glog was one of them. Glog is similar to Blog, but it is a lot fancier than another one. Glog has its own creative portions—new way to put on text picture and video, that is how I felt after using it. Before we put everything on it, we needed to look for information. Therefore, my group members and I went into the street to ask how people feel about high culture and pop culture. Most people had no problem with pop culture, but they did not know what high culture, and we found that to explain the difference between high culture and pop culture face to face is much hard than to write what we want to say in sentences. Therefore, we did not get a fantastic grate for this project.

“Talent Show is also popular in the United States,” that is what I learnt when I knew that one of my friends wanted to participate in it. I just loved talent shows when I was in China because they always gave me surprises of no matter singing, dancing, or crosstalk. In addition, talent shows in the United States are more exciting and unpredictable, and it is probably because the United States has variety kinds of people, who are from different cultural background. I may always find singer or dancer in these shows. Moreover, there is no lack of unreasonable (crazy is probably a better adjective for them) fellows during the shows. I remember I have seen one of these moments, which is a perfect example—a woman put off all of her clothing while she was dancing in front of the recording machines (the video did have mosaic). This is what I have never learned in China, and it made me recollect what my friend had appraised about American pop culture—“it has more ‘dirty’ stuff.”