Pop Culture

When Meg chose her classes for the spring semester she included one on the old testament.  It not only fulfilled one of her general ed credits, but also peaked her interest.  Unfortunately, Meg found out the first week of the semester that the class was not as described and ended up being an indepth study of Judaism.  Thus, Meg had to scramble to find another class.  She was excitd at first to see that there was an opening in pop culture.  She had really wanted to take the class as she had heard a lot of good things about it and felt that it would be a great way to learn about pop culture over the decades.  

Meg was surprised when she went to her first class period and found out that it would revolve around science fiction.  That was definitely not in the class description, but she decided to stick it out as she needed the credits and it would at least be easier than the old testament.  During her first month of pop culture they watched the movies Alien and Terminator.  Doug was happy to hear that and enjoyed talking to her about the films.  Meg noticed that the discussions in class revolved around sexism in the films and women empowerment.  Since both movies were filmed in the 1980s with different expectations in screenwriting than today, Meg didn't feel that it was relevant to today.

The class continued with a science fiction theme and Meg got used to the discussions.  She acutally even talked about liking the movie Terminator.  Late in February all of that changed, however, when the topics turned toward lesbian rights.  All of the videos, movies and readings were dominated by that theme as well as the class discussions.  Meg was extremely disappointed as the topic of pop culture seemed to have been pushed aside for media involving vivid sexual encounters in multiple formats.  Meg has had several homosexual friends and has never discrimanted against any of them.  She understood that their feelings and needs in life were the same as hers.  In saying that, however, she was extremely disapponted that the focus of her pop culture class would now be on gay rights.  She wanted a broader study of culture in America, not just one small segment of it.

When Meg first told me of her disappointment in the class, I encouraged her to give it time.  Maybe this would be a small portion of it and soon it would turn to something more interesting.  I also did not completely believe that the videos were quite as bad as she claimed.  Since she has been home I have had time to watch several of them with her and can now verify the strange, sexual content that she has had to endure.  Over the weekend, Doug was even exposed to a video called "Dirty Computer" where lesbians minds were wiped of all memories and songs about vaginas were highlighted.  At that point we just threw our hands up and encouraged her to do her best to finish it the class as well as she could.  Thankfully, since it went to an online learning format it was a lot easier to earn A's on the assignments.  Nevertheless, Meg will be extremely glad to be done with pop culture next week.