The first pop mania I remember was the Disney induced Davy Crockett craze of the mid to late 1950s. No dobut Disney regretted the fact that Crockett died at the Alamo, who knows how long it might have lasted otherwise? But my point is that Davy Crockett faux coonskin caps et al were the craze at the time.
We have mentioned the public fascination with the dark side of the force, ie, vampires. And so
I was greeted this morn by Amazon hawking Twilight tote bags, key chains et al. Yesterday a student was sporting a Wicked T Shirt.See our May 10 post about Wicked.
Classes have scoffed at our continual presentation with this fascination with the dark side of the force. Really, pop culture reflects reality. As an elementary school kid I had a Roy Rogers lunch box Indeed Roy and wife Dale were the American symbols of upright virtue, even in real life. Roy and Dale led the current trend by adopting Korean orphans after that conflict. Today young ladies carry Twilight tote bags. This is not about adopting Korean orphans... see the difference?
I came across this interesting article on Fixing Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords in Five Minutes.
It is not related to the blog above, but I did not know where to put it. It is very interesting.
Posted by: Felix Duque | July 24, 2009 at 04:27 PM
It does seem that all the positive elements of the childhood models such as Roy Rogers and Superman show young children that good defeated evil in every situation. The most productive income producing movies today would include shows about aliens, vampires, and destruction of societies. Either in theory or practible with children. There is a theme that children do believe in an armageddon or an eventual destruction of our modern high-tech society and those feelings and emotionals probably promote movie producers to create movies that fall on the dark side to turn our lives upside down.
Posted by: LeAnna M Nesbitt | July 26, 2009 at 11:34 PM
The dark-side phenomenon is an interesting trend in American Society, but in all reality it started a long time ago. While young girls today may be sporting twilight lunch boxes, girls in the 70’s could find yellow submarine lunch boxes. Good natured vampires who only eat animals as an attempt to be more humane, or LSD laced songs about colorful lives lived beneath the sea… is there a change?
I think yes, but only in the medium in which it is conveyed. The concept is still essentially the same. The fascination with what you’re not supposed to do will always be there, why else would college freshmen go crazy as soon as they’re out of the protective eye of their parents. Which, as we all know, is not a recent trend.
Posted by: Rob Earle | July 27, 2009 at 11:19 PM
Rob
Yes but the point is that these social moods determine what happens. Universities have entire depts devoted to finding the 'fundamental price' ofa stock, are you kidding me, prices never stay the same, they are the result of social mood, look at any price chart for the last year, do you see a 'fundamental price?
INdeed mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein wy back in the 1800s the point is that it was a change in social mood then also
Posted by: Dennis Elam | July 28, 2009 at 08:08 AM
Dont forget about all the people who while watching the original Star Wars movies felt that the best characters were Darth Vader and Boba Fett, tow of the most popular charecters in the entire franchise
Posted by: Harrison Belt | July 29, 2009 at 02:10 PM