Jar Jar Binks is a Sith Lord

Brief Introduction: My name is Keishawn Smith, and I enjoy basketball, playing guitar, listening to music, video games, and I am a big star wars fan (safe assumption to make when you look at the class I am in) I am from Chesapeake, Virginia which is a similar area to Farmville, just a bit more urban.

The purpose of this blog is to take the concept of high culture and apply it to the Star Wars universe  for the second blog post in “Star Wars and Pop Culture.” High culture in our general society is drawn in a comparison to the perceived high culture

The definition of high culture is a privileged set of cultural goods like paintings, classical music, literature, and other forms of creative expression.  Usually the “rich” or wealthy are the ones commonly seen appreciating or partaking in high culture. As most things in high culture are expensive or hard to come by, it makes sense that the majority of the people who enjoy high culture are the wealthy ones due to the exclusivity. In the Star Wars universe the Jedi could be seen as the wealthy of the galaxy, but not necessarily for their money, but for their ideals and the stigma around their place in society. Jedi are similar to monks in that they do not believe heavily in relationships or making decisions out of emotion and promote logic and reasoning for everything. The Jedi also have a big emphasis on literature in their culture and are seen by others as snobby or inhuman due to their lack of emotion when dealing with other species or political issues that involve them. Not everyone is fit to be a Jedi which makes it a coveted and generally well respected “job” or lifestyle and makes the Jedi heroes that the children of the galaxy look up to. Now one of the things the Jedi can relate to with the books definition of high culture is their promotion on creativity and finding different ways of situations. For instance Obi-Wan Kenobi using the Jedi mind trick in the infamous scene to avoid any casualties or unnecessary violence to escape. If I was to define high culture I would say its the smaller percentile of a community who have an emphasis on certain values and virtues, literature, and have a degree of pacifism and a focus on oneself intertwined in their beliefs. Due to all those things they typically view themselves as above the people who fall in the other categories of culture. Whether they know it or not the Jedi have placed themselves above the average person in their society and have a perceived moral high ground over the citizens and innocent they look over. Meditation is also a large part of Jedi society to achieve peace with themselves and any emotional turmoil they might be suffering from.  In this way the Jedi serve as the example of high culture in the Star Wars universe. In our society today, what do you consider to be high culture, whether it be values, professions, ideals, or place in society?

I would say tea is a bit of a high culture thing as well ~Keishawn

Brief Introduction: My name is Keishawn Smith, and I enjoy basketball, playing guitar, listening to music, video games, and a big star wars fan (safe assumption to make when you look at the class I am in) I am from Chesapeake, Virginia which is a similar area to Farmville, just a bit more urban.

A Reflection on Effects of Society and Pop Culture

In what ways do you think society has affected your perspective and your lifestyle? Pop Culture and Society have always had an interesting relationship with each other. A good way to understand the relationship between the two would be the reflection theory. The reflection theory is a sociological approach to literature and other forms of cultural objects. It is often represented with a diamond where creators produce what they think we (the consumers/receivers) want, receivers consume the products and cultural objects that affect the social world we live in. For instance, the societal focus on the only ideal female image being the Victoria Secret models you see on TV and reality TV stars like Kim Kardashian being praised creates a standard practically unreachable for the average person to meet. Failure to meet this standard causes a lot of women to suffer from low self-confidence and feel insecure about themselves and their bodies. In this example,the society and culture that has that such a large focus on ridiculous bodies and appearances affects the people involved as well as invested in pop culture. Another instance would be the prevalence of superheroes in modern media and the reception of the concept in pop culture. A few years ago, being a big Batman or Ironfist fan would result in being a called a nerd, or in more drastic cases, being alienated from a friend group or social cliche. Compare that to now where almost everyone is very open about any interest in superheroes and Marvel and DC movies are huge successes all around (except for maybe Justice League). People on sports teams that would have had a scaled down experience of the Glee members from the show and how they were treated on the show are now very open about it with teammates. NFL stars have even made references to Dragon Ball characters as touchdown dances. All of these examples show how the reflection theory fits in to the general flow of society by the pushing and backing of what creators think consumers want as well as how cultural objects play a large part in shaping pop culture.

God Bless ~Keishawn