Dear White People

By Bre Davis & Alyssa Kubaiko

Dear White People  is a hit Netflix series that follows Logan Browning’s character, Samantha, in her journey at college. As can be inferred by the title, the series addresses critical social justice topics such as police brutality, backhanded compliments, the love of black culture, and black masculinity. By taking the perspective of a young, college student, it is able to attack immature prejudices that have trickled down from earlier generations. It does so by, non-offensively, confronting each dilemma, showing how black people interpret it, and the implications of such actions. Aside from obvious oppressions in society, interracial relationships--especially those involving black people--are still not widely accepted. The show puts a lot of effort into showing how the loathing of interracial relationships affects the black characters.

Sam attends an Ivy League college that only a handful of students from minority races are accepted into. These students form robust bonds with one another and fight to increase diversity and culture awareness around campus. Sam is the president of the Black Student Union and very educated on the injustices that black people in America face. However, she has a huge secret that she has been keeping from her friends and peers; she is in a furtive relationship with a white student, Gabe. They have sex, netflix and chill, and hang out in each other’s dorm rooms. They never go out on public dates or tell their friends about each other. Sam believes that as a black woman and the leader of the African American organization, she owes the loyalty to her people. She is afraid that if the news gets out that she is dating a white man, she will lose her credibility and respect to her peers. One day, Gabe takes a photo of Sam getting ready and posts it on his instagram and she immediately makes him remove the picture. He does not understand or relate to her not wanting her peers to know about their relationship. They have the typical “are you ashamed of me?” argument and get over it. However, to Sam’s dismay, the picture was screenshotted and circulated to all of her peers, where they confront her for dating a white male. The reaction that the black students give Sam is one that many minorities can relate to. We have been conditioned to oppression for so many centuries that stepping out of our own race to find love is seen as betrayal. It is considered “selling yourself out”. Dear White People emphasizes that black culture is a community that no members should find love outside of. We should be able to date anyone we want, regardless of their race, but, in reality, this still does not hold true.

With segregation occurring within the last sixty years, older generations of white people still struggle with accepting diversity. Some ridicule their family members for dating minorities while others blatantly disrespect the partner until they become comfortable with them (if ever). Get Out, a 2017 film by Jordan Peele, is an extreme example of the “crazy white family” stereotype. However, the purpose of the movie is to show that there is a mutual fear of racial crossbreeding.

This topic is very important to discuss, even in our progressive society. If we consider our society as moving more towards diversity and acceptance, we cannot scorn others for their dating preference. Though students in the honors program recognize and understand how humiliating this divide, even other students at Millikin are not as open to interracial relationships as we may expect. By addressing the latent prejudice, we can help make everyone feel comfortable about who they love.

Snapchat

By Lucy Rossi & Jared Scott

In September 2011, Snapchat, a multi-media image messaging application hit the app store market. The creators, Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, developed this app for the purpose of private messaging that allowed a person to send and receive pictures that self-destruct. The app has gained popularity over the years, especially in the millennial generation. Though the main purpose of the app was intended for comedic purposes, the creators do realize that the app carries the advantage of private sexting with the safety of the destructible image feature. Over the years, Snapchat has evolved from the basic form of sending pictures, to a larger social media outlet with multiple features.

The app has changed over time in order to adapt to the times and modernize in order to not be out of date. Before, the design itself was very out of date and simple. Today, the design of the app is very sleek and clean, which is more attractive for the eye. Currently, the ability to screenshot is enabled for the receiver to screenshot the sender’s Snapchat, however, the catch is that the sender is notified when it happens. Before, if you were to screenshot, the app would shut you out of seeing the image, and the only picture you would get is your lock screen. Another addition that has sparked a lot of interest and has taken the app further is the Discovery page that was developed in 2015. This feature created a branch with different news outlets and magazine sites to publish smaller articles that would catch the interest of Snapchat users. It also allowed for Snapchat to step up its game and expand its media horizon by adapting different news articles for people to see what is going on in the world today.

Snapchat has had loads of rebuttals from the public since the major improvements to the features. In 2017, Snapchat developed the Snap Map so that users could see the exact locations of their friends on a map. People found enjoyment in seeing where their friends are, who they are with, and the story locations around them. However, parents of the younger generation were not approving of this update, as they were worried for their children. Criticisms against the new update quickly rose when people began to call Snapchat unsafe for the use of children who don’t know any better. However, the creators of the app thought ahead and developed “ghost mode”, which is the option to not share your location in order to remain off the app for others to not know your whereabouts.

To relate the relevancy of Snapchat back to our reading and classroom discussions, the app allows for the instant gratification from others that fills our self-esteem and makes us feel better about ourselves. In our generation, we constantly are looking for the approval of those around us in order to feel adequate. With the “story” feature on Snapchat, we now have the ability to post a selfie of ourselves and quickly have a few responses from others that tell us how pretty and beautiful we look in the photo. Snapchat, unlike other social media pages in the past, allows us to have an instantaneous outlet that gives us a boost in our ego.

Snapchat hasn’t technically been labeled revolutionary, however it is a key example of our generation and how we act in society. Snapchat has the famous stereotype of being an easy way to sext and send private messages that are to not be seen anywhere, and though it is very true, the app still carries a lot of different features. The app is still modernizing with every update and continues to be an appreciated by the millennial generation.

Snapchat

By Saamia Saalik

We chose Snapchat for our cultural artifact because though the app was created in 2011, it
has had a large influence on our culture over the years and is a reflection of values of the newer generation. Snapchat was founded by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown who are former Stanford students. The application was initially intended as a private way to exchange photos. Researchers believed that most people would utilize the app to send sexual content, since the images can only last a max of 10 seconds. However, it was discovered that most people utilizing Snapchat are on the app to create comedic snaps with witty captions, rather than for the privacy factor Snapchat had during its initial launch.

Over the years, Snapchat took a clear diversion off its intended purpose for privacy, in order to adapt to our currently interactive culture and remain relevant. Snapchat added more features like the ability to screenshot snaps, replay snaps, and take videos which enable you to capture memorable moments. Snapchat has even allowed you to add a “story” which is a picture or video you can post that lasts a whole 24 hours, which allows everyone to see how you’re spending your day and who you’re spending the day with. There is even a way to find out someone’s location if they have the GPS setting turned on in Snapchat as well as a way to exchange money over chat. What sets Snapchat apart from other forms of social media is the ability to see people in their daily lives, no matter how casual they appear or how mundane the snap may be. On social media like Facebook and Instagram, appearance is everything and it is important for people to maintain a certain “glamorous” image. Nobody wants to portray themselves in a negative light, but since snaps only last a few seconds and you can choose who you send the snap to, there appears to be no harm in taking an “ugly” picture.

Snapchat also differs from other avenues of media because it requires some level of active participation and content creation. On Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, it’s easy to simply scroll down your feed and see what updates are occurring in other people’s lives without having to offer up a fraction of your life in return. The moment Snapchat opens up, you’re faced with a camera because the sole purpose of the app is to exchange information through images and videos. There is no point in having a Snapchat if you aren’t sending out any content, because chances are, you will receive little in return. Though the idea of active participation can seem time consuming and strenuous, it barely takes any time to capture an image and is a way to communicate simple ideas in an efficient way. Because snaps are present for a limited amount of time it’s important to be able to convey your message in a line or two.

The ability for Snapchat to enable people to carry out quick paced conversation without the strain of constructing a lengthy text, is a reflection of our fast moving digital culture. Since Snapchat provides an image that serves as context for your snap, the captions are relatively short or may be unneeded. It’s a way of relaying information in a short amount of time. Because Snapchat is so straightforward, it appeals to the sense of instant gratification newer generations long for. Instead of receiving a lot of information and having to process what’s most important, snaps already give you the main point without having to find it yourself, which is why Snapchat is still used worldwide today.

The Facebook

By Lauren Artime & Alyssa Vignos

We chose to talk about social media. Since social media is such a broad topic, it seemed best to specifically talk about Facebook, and the pros and cons of it. Facebook started in 2004 and it was called “The Facebook.” Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University. It was not until August 2005, that the name of “The Facebook” was changed to just “Facebook.” Whenever Facebook first came out, the point of it was to “like” and “dislike” photos, rate others’ photos, and to stay connected with people you knew. Today, most of the friend’s people have on Facebook, they have never even met in person. Facebook is one social media site that most generations are a part of, unlike Snapchat. Facebook was the first social media app that people downloaded their phones. It seemed like such a big deal growing up, and it was a great way for people to connect with friends and family who did not live with them. From an older generations perspective, they use it for staying in touch with old friends and keeping up with what is new in their kids and grandkids’ lives. Since Facebook is so popular in our culture today, it seems fit that we dig deeper and learn more about the meaning behind it. The reason we chose social media was because it is a major factor in our culture today, and it can positively and negatively affect us.

Some of the pros of Facebook include the ability to connect with people around the world (i.e. family, work peers, and old friends), an easy way of being informed about parties and major events that are happening around you, to share your life’s greatest moments for you and your friend’s enjoyment, and to give private business owners a chance to get their name and products out there for people to see. With Facebook, you have the ability to be caught up on daily news around the world about political and environmental issues. The only downside to this is that the news may not be true.

Some of the cons of Facebook include being a form of distraction for those who may be trying to get their work done or wish to have a tech-free dinner. When people get distracted, this causes them to put off certain work that they are needing to get done in a timely manner. Putting off the work can cause procrastination which is another drawback to having Facebook and getting the constant notifications. With the way that technology is growing today, lack of privacy is a real issue. People are tagging their locations in photos and not making their accounts private. Not having enough privacy opens up cyberbullying. Without controlling what people see and who you let view your profile, you will get those who may not be in favor of you and your posts.

Facebook says a lot about our American popular culture. It shows that we care more about what is on our screen more than what is in front of us, such as fake news found on Facebook. We are more apt to believe what someone posts more than what they might say to us in person. People find it as a sense of accomplishment when they get a certain amount of likes on a picture or post. This shows us that our confidence is found in a “like” button rather than in a goal that may actually help us in our future endeavors. On a positive note, our culture nowadays values staying connected with the people we love. This is done by sharing photos of special events for our friends and family to see, and to see the photos they share themselves. Our society today revolves around social media but this is not always considered a bad thing.

Family Guy

By Bre Blackwell & Selena Smail

Family Guy is comedy based off a stereotypical middle-class family, but like all families, they have their problems that can be very strange. Individuals typically admire shows that are different from any other ones currently represented in the media because of the archetypes and reoccurring plotlines that currently exit in manty shows. Family mocks many of those archetypes in various ways. In this show, you have:

• The drunken fat husband
• A pretty housewife that loves her fat idiot husband
• Megan the oldest, yet very unattractive daughter
• The middle-aged son Chris, who also is not the brightest of the bunch
• Their one-year-old infant child Stewie, the evil and smartest of the family, not to mention he’s homosexual
• The family also has a pet named Brian, who talks.

Some find the show to be very interesting for various reasons such as their use of comedy, violence, and its slight case of predictability. What some people fail to realize is that it is a funny show, but the messages behind the jokes are often, absolutely degrading. Family Guy has numerous episodes where there are racial jokes, religious jokes, and almost every episode talks about homosexuality in negative ways. Not to mention the abuse that is shown towards their daughter, Meg. The whole family (even the infant Stewie) treats meg like crap through bulling and physical violence. They often tell her to shut up and there is an episode where they send meg downstairs to get food, while their house was getting robbed, but first they spit on her to slide her done the air vents. Family Guy has made their infant child (Stewie) a homosexual baby. In many episodes you see Stewie demonstrating or saying many things that are considered to be on the flamboyant side. Which reinforces many of the negative stereotypes that the LGBTQ community has to face. Many in that community act opposite of the stereotypes and feel like those who may be flamboyant can affect the community by backing up the stereotypes that some individuals in the community do not like. There is nothing wrong with people in television shows that are considered to be homosexual, but a one-year old baby is not something that people should be promoting. Religiously speaking Family Guy has a way of mocking some religions, for example Mort Goldman, the Jew, is teased and made into the subject of a joke in almost every episode that he is in. Even when Jesus appeared on an episode, he was considered a “player". Although Family Guy has multiple issues, the racial stereotypes have to be by far the worst. Many episodes demonstrate this. For example, the episode when Peter had a black guy and an Asian guy teach Chris and Meg because they were being homeschooled showed how the series brings in racist jokes. Peter Automatically assumed that the black guy was the driver's Ed teacher and that the Asian man was the math teacher, which in reality was the other way around. Peter then begins to laugh and then makes a racial comment and says “let’s learn math from a black guy". This reinforces the stereotype that Asian men "must" be extremely capable at math and black men are not. Also, the family dog Brian is doesn’t like black people. He barks when they come near and there is even an episode where he stated that he did not get along with his roommate he had before he joined the Griffin family because he was black. Overall, Family Guy is an enjoyable show for most individuals. However, those individuals need to realize that the show has some serious flaws and acknowledge what those flaws are possibly representing.

The Evolution of Gym Shoes

By Angel Granado & PJ Maloney

For our presentation, we have chosen to look at the evolution of gym shoes in American Culture. We chose the evolution of gym shoes because the shoe world is constantly growing, and constantly becoming more and more a part of our society. Everyone has a pair of gym shoes, and the cost of gym shoes is increasing every time a new shoe is released. Whether it is your Grandfather’s pair of New Balances, or the new pair of Jordans, people need shoes.

The shoe world, specifically the sneaker world, is huge. There are conventions, such as Sneaker Con, there are Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter handles for all major companies, and some shoes’ release dates are so anticipated that people lose sleep and skip work to make sure they have the newest, freshest pair of gym shoes.

This can also be added to our conversations in class. There are many arguments and stereotypes that can be made against shoe freaks; both positive and negative. You can argue that men who buy nothing but Jordans are dumb, and don’t need to purchase a $275 pair of shoes. You can also argue that having the newest Jordans gives the owner a sense of pride, or “clout” as the young folks say nowadays.

Also, we can talk about the age, race, and gender of the gym shoe owners. It is culturally unacceptable for a teenager to wear a pair of all white New Balance shoes. Otherwise referred to as “Grandpa shoes”. And it works vice versa as well. Older men aren’t supposed to wear Jordans. We can also get into what gym shoes men and women are culturally allowed to wear. When it comes to gym shoes, most shoes are the same for men and women. Sure the color scheme may be different on the shoes themselves, but the design and make of the shoe are the same. When it comes to Jordans, when the new models come out, the model is the same for men and women. So it is culturally acceptable to see the “cute couple” wearing matching shoes with their outfits. She’s not wearing men’s shoes and he’s not wearing women’s shoes: they are both wearing their respective gender’s shoes.

We can also add to our understanding of American Pop. Culture by understanding why we as Americans are buying such expensive shoes, and why certain age groups aren’t socially allowed to wear certain types of gym shoes. By doing this, we will have a better understanding of the consumer’s mindset, and their rational for choosing their respective shoes. We can begin to understand why consumers spend so much on their shoes by looking at supply and demand. Jordan, owned by Nike, understands that their shoe brand is very popular. By realizing that, they know that even if they price their shoes at, say, $250, people will still buy them because of the consumer’s demand for their oh so popular new shoe.

All in all, we chose this topic because it is one that can almost everyone can relate to, and because we see similarities between our topic and the topics we discuss in class. Gym shoes will always be a high demand in this modern society, so an analyzation into that world is necessary to further understand Pop. Culture. We also see the economic value that gym shoes have in this society, and their pull in the consumer industry. These reasons, among general knowledge in gym shoes and being very big fans of gym shoes, is the reason we chose gym shoes for our topic.

Slam Poetry

By Louisa Nickel & Madeline Wilson

“I wonder how they told you, did they sit you down over tea, delicately frosted cakes lining your chipped porcelain? Explain it as a marketing technique, a vehicle to make you more palatable to a culture that demands perfection?”

Pop culture, as our classmates before us have displayed, has created a great many monsters. But it has also birthed productive outlets for society and one of these is spoken poetry. Spoken word poetry is a type of poetry written to be performed.  Described as feeling inadequate or dissatisfied laying flat on paper, spoken word poetry demands to jump off the page and be experienced through performance.  First taking place in the U.S. in the 1980’s, spoken word poetry was born when open mic sessions started taking place at cafés in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Austin.  It is unknown exactly who started the artistic revolution of slam poetry, a competition of poets performing their spoken word, but some point to Marc Kelly Smith, a Chicago poet who is also known as “Slampapi.” He believed that academic poetry was too structured so he desired to introduce a looser poetry medium. He founded the first-ever National Poetry Slam in 1990 and that annual competition still goes on today. What Smith did not anticipate, however, would be how far the poems stemming from Poetry Slams would reach in the years to come.

For over twenty years, the Slam Poetry community was isolated due to its underground nature.  This changed, however, with the use of YouTube.  Now, poems that would be performed in a smoky bar in Queens can be experienced by someone in Seattle.  Poems that would be heard by an upwards of fifty people can now be consumed to an upwards of 13,540,995 times on YouTube like Neil Hilborn’s poem OCD did after it went viral in 2014. This new visibility allowed for this to become a method of expression that millions of people could relate to and begin to stand together and fight for the issues that were discussed. Through this it became a form of resistance.

The virality of spoken word poetry is more than just cultural appreciation of a somewhat overlooked artform.  The virality of spoken word poetry in our society today allows for the subject matter of the poems to reach audiences much wider than first expected.  The thing about spoken word poetry that makes it so appealing to poets is the ability to write about hard things that sometimes are not socially acceptable to have a simple conversation about like sexuality, gender, racism, societal expectations, sexual assault, etc.  Slam Poetry provides a safe place to write and pour out hard things on your mind and heart.

Melissa May, for instance, is a Slam Poet that had issues with Disney’s 2012 Villain Doll line. Disney took the “larger than life” villain and reduced her to “bite size pieces”.  This was a hard thing for Melissa to swallow because she identified with Ursula.  She saw herself in Ursula’s unapologetic rolling curves.  Ursula was the only Disney character that ever looked like her growing up.  Seeing Ursula, a curvy woman, made Melissa “feel like living in this body was less of a curse”.

Despite the weight of Melissa’s own feelings and her story, her poem exposes an even deeper problem in society today.  Disney, sampling the acceptable qualifications of what a beautiful person woman is, created all of their villain dolls to be a size zero.  Found in the runway models and the women on the cover of magazines, skinny is beautiful.  Anything bigger than a size zero calls for a dieting tip.  By putting all of their characters into size zero bodies, the implication is that every woman should look this way.  Because of this,  the little girls that play with these dolls that do not fit into the box of a size zero body start believing they, too, are not beautiful.  The production of this doll also questions what a woman should be.  By reducing the literal volume of Ursula, they, too, are undermining her large and booming character.  What implications, then, are made on the expectations of women?  Should all women be reduced to a small frame?  Should all women be reduced down to “bite size pieces”?

Through this poem, we get an honest account of how the broken Toy Industry can affect an individual and how societal norms can push people into boxes they were not designed to fit in just to become “acceptable”.  Through this poem, people are forced to see the hard truth of society today through a painful, frank, heart-wrenching telling of facts.  Slam Poetry forces you to feel, even when it is not easy to. Pop culture created this outlet for it to criticize not only the world around us but also pop culture itself.