Love For Jerry Maguire...

     I originally viewed the film Jerry Maguire in the theatres with my mom and sister. I was only eleven and I really did not care what the film was about. All I remember was the famous line “Show me the Money!” and the critical acclaim the film was praised for. When I am asked to define love and, or what makes it possible within this film, I became puzzled. Perhaps the possibility of love within the film goes further than man and woman.

      For example, the love for friends, for our jobs, for sports, for money, for our children, and for our parents, these are all possibilities of love topics to be analyzed within this film. The film begins with Jerry writing a statement on how his company can connect better with its clients. The statement was to cut back on some clients to become closer to a smaller amount, thus enabling them to care and love for their clients better. He gets fired shortly after and then bigger conflicts and competition arise. He learns who his real friends are. The woman he originally is engaged to loses all interest in him when he becomes a softer and a more caring individual. During his bachelor party, several women made comments on Jerry’s love life. Comments like Jerry needing to have a woman by his side and that he couldn’t be alone. When he tells his fiancé that it is over she overpowers him by making him weaker. She does a TKO on Jerry; however, this just furthers the fact that the two of them were not truly in love. Dorothy Boyd works for Jerry and agrees to work for him after he is fired. She told Jerry prior to him being fired that she was captivated by his statement and truly loved his ideas. He begins to see her more importantly, and her son, and begins to love them. All this love is being thrown around, but not necessarily stated.

     Rod Tidwell is Jerry’s one and only client besides Frank Cushman who lets his daddy make all his decisions as far as game playing. Rod gives Jerry inspiration and the two of them really connect and pull themselves out of the shadows. Frank’s daddy and family can be described, in my opinion, as rednecks or trailer trash. They string Jerry along making him believe that they were going to sign with him, but instead they sign with Jerry’s new enemy and former employer Bob Sugar. Frank’s daddy didn’t like the idea of Jerry working with Rod because the color of his skin. That’s not love, just pure hate.

    Both Rod and Frank share love for the game of football; however, Rod is looking for endorsements, Not just any endorsement, but the big ones; Nike, Reebok, Coca-cola, etc. He is subject to endorse blow up mattresses of some sort and goes on and on about being neglected by Jerry’s people. In other words, he is not getting any love. Nearing the end of the film Rod is injured during a touchdown he makes and Jerry runs to the field from the skybox. He calls Rod’s wife and talks her through the hard time. If this isn’t love than I don’t know where else to find it within this film. Jerry began as a self-centered businessman making big dollars and ignoring the people that were truly important. A simple change of heart is what made love possible in the film Jerry Maguire.

   

Ethnography

   Ethnography: The Coffee Bean, Valencia, CA

       It is Monday, July 25 and I am sitting in the Valencia Town Center Coffee Bean kiosk. I arrived at 1pm, ordered a drink and a doughnut, and had a seat by the entrance. When I walked in, there were two young associates working, there was a young woman on a laptop, there was a man listening to music on an ipod, another woman appeared to waiting for someone and there were two men conversing in French. I gazed outside from time to time and I would notice the many people that walked by. They were on their cell phones, they would glance at their reflections in the shop’s windows, they were mothers with children, they were elderly couples, they were families, they were purchasing things, they were wearing flip-flops and sunglasses, they were all doing the same thing.

     The Coffee Bean is set up like most modern coffee kiosk. It has a soft urban setting and played soft Indie music. The smell of coffee is not as accurate as Starbucks but there is the slight aroma. Every now and then blender would be the only thing you could hear besides the men conversing in French. There was a television over the area that has the items like napkins and coffee stirs. On the television were zodiac analogies, movie trailers, health tips and music. The traffic began slowly at first, and then it would get very busy. Most people did not have a seat except two women that were at least fifty. By the time I left there were six associates working. The same woman with her laptop remained in her seat. The woman that appeared to be waiting for someone was waiting to be interviewed by a nearby employer. The man listening to the ipod was joined by two acquaintances and the two men speaking French were also greeted with another acquaintance.

     It began to be amusing noticing all the similarities in the sixty to seventy people I observed inside and outside the Coffee Bean. The sandals, the sunglasses, the cell phones, the laptop, the ipod, the prepared coffee drinks, the entire shopping experience are all part of the norms within this setting. According to Chris Barker, “Meanings are generated not by individuals alone but by collectives. Thus, the idea of culture refers to shared meanings” According to Carl Marx "the first priority of human beings is the production of their means of subsistence through labour. As humans produce food, cloths and all manner of tools with which to shape their environment, so they also create themselves" (Barker).

     The television I mentioned earlier presented the normal type of cultural signs that relate to this popular culture. The type of popular culture who shops at high fashion retailers and purchase fancy prepared coffee drinks. Zodiac analogies were on display, which is something that people can access on ipods, in magazines, and on the web. Movie trailers are previewed promoting the film industry. One of the biggest cultural ideals in America is movie-going as well as music listening. Health tips are also displayed, one being that America has a high population of overweight individuals and two being that America has been referred to as the fast food capital of the world. Again, zodiacs, film, music, health etc., these are the same topics brought up in The Insider, US Weekly, Cosmopolitan, daily news broadcasting, AOL welcome screen etc. Barker refers to text by Raymond Williams and cultural materialism. Williams mentions that there are three different levels of culture. The first one he states is “the lived culture of a particular time and place, only fully accessible to those living in that time and place”(Barker 45). This “lived culture” and “culture materialism” is what I observed and analyzed within my seat at the Coffee Bean.

     Another analogy is from a feministic approach. Of the six associates that were working at the kiosk, only one was a male. Besides the three men that were inside the kiosk the entire time, only two men walked in within the hour. The number of women who walked into the kiosk was almost twenty.  Women were often with women when shopping outside; whereas, the men that walked outside were alone and walked at a fast pace. The mothers with their children were not with their husbands, or children’s fathers. What does this mean in popular culture? According to Barker, "gender is historically and culturally specific, subject to radical discontinuties over time and across space. This does not mean that one can simply pick and choose genders, or that gender is a matter of random chance. Rather, we are gendered through the power of regulated and regulatory discourses." The women I observed were doing the same thing women were doing ten, twenty and even fifty years ago. According to de Beauvoir, And yet we are told feminity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. Women make up one half of humainty. Although men do work in coffee shops and go shopping, women as constructed by gender are usually assoiciated with these ideals. De Beauvoir's The Second Sex was written over sixty years ago, it is relevant today as much as it was sixty years ago.

     Whether the children’s father is at work, at home, or not around at all; whether men do not gossip, shop and drink fancy prepared coffee or; whether men do not want to be employed at a coffee kiosk; these analogies all play into de Beauvoir’s women as Other. Was I engaging myself in a feminine activity, or do men avoid what I was doing because it is feminine? I did not mention that the stores that surround this kiosk are Macy’s, Sephora, Roman Holiday and Diane’s Swimwear to name a few. These people, out of the sixty or seventy, were ninety-five percent female. They were shopping, pampering and indulging themselves while there are hardly any men around. These are the "merits" of being "truly feminine" as described by de Beauvoir’s in her text. “[Truly feminine] women are frivolous, infantile, irresponsible and the submissive women.” Although the feministic view is not the best analogy to be observed, one can point out the obvious women being treated as ‘the Other’ and as the weaker sex. However, there are women that will prove otherwise.     

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies Theory and Practice, Chapter2: Questions of Culture and Ideology. Sage, 2008.

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies Theory and Practice, Chapter2: Questions of Culture and Ideology. Sage, 2008.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, Introduction Woman as Other, (1949). Accessed online: moodle.csun.edu

Introduction

     Hello and welcome to Alex’s Pop Kiln. This is an introduction to Alexandra Johnson’s Popular Culture Blog for English 313: Popular Culture. I first would like to say my main interest is photography and fine arts as well as film and computers. I find that this course is relevant to prior art courses that I have taken reflecting on pop culture, pop art, mass media and American lifestyle as a commodity.

First, I would like to state what popular culture is from my perspective.

·      Popular culture is what is popular now (current at the time).

·      A mix of art, media, television, film, computer and other unveiling technologies,

·      that is exercised (or emphasized, or expressed) within a culture.

After reviewing some of the courses text, I found that my perspective on popular culture is much too narrow. Although the ideas that I have expressed do coincide with the ideals of popular culture there is more to popular culture’s meaning.

According to the text of Chris Barker, Raymond Williams describes culture as “a whole way of life” (Barker 41). Which is then referred to as the anthropological approach to culture. Up above I listed only five ideals that derive from popular culture; however, popular culture consist of more that just five. It seems that politics, church, gender, classes are among many other ideals that develop within a culture. Barker states, “the idea of culture refers to shared meanings” (Barker 42).  Basically when two individuals can share the same meaning from the same source, there is an understanding that is achieved. If the understanding (meaning) can be shared through out a vast number of people then it becomes popular in culture.

In reference to Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan’s The Politics of Culture, it was stated that, “anthropologist have always used the word [culture] in a much broader sense to mean forms of life and of social expression” (Rivkin). Barker’s text also states, “William’s concept of culture is [anthropological] since it centers on everyday meanings: values, norms and material/symbolic goods (Barker 42).  Both views are derived from how people behave during social settings.

Both readings mention Marxist theory and the idea of culture being political. Although we learn from our own experiences and are taught most of the things we say, do and think. The everyday images we see on television or in magazines, for example, are controlled to a certain degree. They too control our social order.

Other aspects I found that interested me in the writings of Rivkin and Ryan’s text was John Fiske’s remarks on audiences being able to “decode” cultural messages. This enables audiences to think about their lives culturally without hesitation. As an audience do we receive these messages subliminally? Another aspect I found of interest was the remarks by Pierre Bourdieu and “social systems”. “Bourdieu argues that culture is a way of distinguishing between positions in the social hierarchy and that the social system thus tends to reproduce itself through culture and through schooling” (Rivkin). This being stated, culture is controlled to a certain degree by usage of selective imagery and subject matter.

 (41) Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies Theory and Practice, Chapter2: Questions of Culture and Ideology. Sage 2008.

 (42) Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies Theory and Practice, Chapter2: Questions of Culture and Ideology. Sage, 2008.

Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden:  Blackwell, 1998.