Pop Culture: Good or Bad?

 Pop Culture

Pop Culture can refer to a lot of things, the world is filled with it! All sorts of popular shows, movies, and different forms of media. The basis of what fills popular culture can be almost anything, but does that mean that it's good? Are the things that are popular now good for the people that take it in?

Story and Its Elements

When it comes to the many things that pop culture has, I believe the story and the elements used in it are very, very important. The things done within the stories of popular shows and movies can range, so can their tone. One of my favorite types of media to watch are animations, but some of the more popular animated series have started to lose their appeal.

Popular media such as Rick and Morty have taken the world by storm, being one of the most famous animated series in recent history. It was praised for its dark humor and self aware jokes and commentary. However, in the later seasons of the series, the show has become much more self aware and meta. A trend that is made quite often in other forms of media such as comics and live action movies with characters such as Deadpool from Marvel.

References are always nice and a cool nod from creators to fans to show their self-aware nature to how some situations are inspired by other pieces of media. However, it seems like the internet has shown a burnout from these types of jokes, with many fans of both Rick and Morty as well as the Deadpool movies have shown their disinterest in this type of comedy. Pop culture made a creative type of humor into more of a chore as some series seem to overly rely on it. This is not all in bad faith as it shows that fans have much higher expectations from these different pieces of media! They no longer want quick jokes or a nudge on the shoulder. They understand that creators know what they know, but they want more proper jokes that can't simply be brushed aside with mentioning another popular piece of media such as Diehard. 

Music

Outside of just what we can see and the dialogue, music has become a very important thing to pop culture. People may believe things that are strictly a multimedium such as movies and shows would fall to this category, but these things do as well. Music is not immune to the increasing expectations of consumers. 

Music is such a popular form of media, but many current consumers would say that the new popular music have taken a real hit in quality. They don't hit the same and the lyrics sometimes don't have much to say. 

Consumers now have a taste for the genre and type of music they want now. They don't always want music of people talking about how much more money they have than another person. Music is something that has an increased expectation rate, as consumers are now much more aware of what they truly want. 

With the consumers having increased tastes, some artists are no longer successful as they once were. Change is necessary in this day and age, and without that change, some careers may fall flat.