In Sociology, pop culture is defined as the assembly of cultural products such as music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, cyberculture, TV, and radio that consumes much of our society’s population (Crossman, 2018). Two opposing impacts from a sociological view includes general culture being used by elites to control people below them, and popular culture being a force for uprising against the culture of central groups. According to John Storey, he states that popular culture is standard and manipulative, but not like what we would call views of advertisement. A brand has to be sold to an audience and barraged in society so it can be placed in popular culture (Crossman, 2018) .
Reality television programs are alternative, but have become the most popular type of tv among viewers. The Real World reality television programming is unplanned and casts real life people, instead of skilled actors, and just follows these people and documents their lives. Reality television has become such a staple in our American lives today that it’s difficult to partition what we watch on television and what we do in our real lives.
As stated by David Grazian popular culture discusses to commercial media thought to be trivial, tacky, and pitched to the lowest common denominator as mass culture intended for general consumption. Implications are often patterned according to determined systems of social organization organized by differences in socioeconomic status, nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, age. When watching a reality television show like The Real World the viewers draw on their social behaviors and life skills to make sense of broadcasting and widespread culture, and those whose shared flora and fauna assessments inform their understandings of culture in efficient ways are called revelatory societies.
I would like to mention to The Interaction Approach (stated by Grazian) it is developing and reproducing our social selves, we rely on our peer groups in myriad ways: we compete against our friends and associate for status and prestige; internalize group-generated cultural attitudes, orientations, and tastes; and allow our comfort within the group to inform our sense of well-being. Our knowledge and our knowledge of popular culture is conditioned by the societal circumstances in which we interact with others. Our consumer and cultural tastes are deeply influenced by our peers, while the manufacture of popular culture may be centralized among a handful of companies, the eventual success of their efforts may be contingent just as much on micro-level processes graphic of how chattering individuals within small groups and community scenes interact in the context of everyday life. Community networks provide key to sympathetic how everyday pop cultural trends, fads, and fashions become popular.
The Real World is a television show where several groups of people compete in series of events for a outstanding prize that takes place in the last occurrence. Abolitions are at the end of every round and the worst team gets mechanically placed in them. While the charming group not only advances to the next round, an discrete competes for power over the whole group thus giving the individual winner of the round more say so. That specific person gets to choose a team to face the wickedest team in the purging round. There is a form of social difference due to race and or age. Challengers always want to eliminate the less social, or even the youngest ones.
The conflict standard emphases on separations of society, this television series gives the viewers a standpoint of humanity having social order and control through domination. Due to scarce resources, race is inevitable and we can see examples of social ascendancy in The Real World. Most reality television shows use a form of the conflict pattern by having conflict over properties, such as money, goods, or power. This theme keeps TV ratings soaring due to the invented scuffles relating to some of the viewer’s lives by the social difference that society faces.
The reality television show “Real World” its viewers they stars as that wear brand clothing to refresh their minds when it comes the latest fashion trend. In “Real World Jersey Shore” reality television star Michael Sorrentino, known, as “The Situation” happens to wear Abercrombie & Fitch brand clothing. This is a form of merchandise location that gets the attention of consumers by allowing them to be in place with our society’s fashion and puts money in the pockets of those that are displayed. The economic structure soothes without much effort and accidentally helps boost up sales on certain lines of clothing.
A functionalist standard can uphold and reestablish equilibrium in its social system with shared values. This singularity has the people in society conversing with one another about a show they like to watch, or in which they can both relate to. Having shared values helps foil struggles among the structure, which makes functionalism completely opposite of the conflict theory. Society interacts naturally within each other. Due to the lack of drama in most people’s lives, the reality television shows have provocative arguments throughout the series that may be suitable to talk about with people who have seen the same show. This brings a camaraderie among people.
To understand reality TV’s true effect on the general populace, we must consider the social concepts of obvious and latent functions. A apparent function of reality TV would be the purpose of its commencement acting. Unlike the news, reality television is to humor the community with unlikely situations of drinking, sex, and of course the signature melodramatic fights that make a reality series widespread. Whether you want to know who the Kardashians are dating or how Snooki gets her “hair-poof”, you are purposefully giving into reality TV’s apparent purpose.
