The Amorphously Gray-Shaded Lens of Media, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Internet Curation of Television

I feel like the question of what pop culture’s influence is on American society is a bit of a loaded one. The issue is more over how each individual consuming whatever piece of pop culture is being examined interprets it; the same piece of media can instill a number of different feelings (and impart a number of moral lessons) over a wide spread of people. The same piece of media that can connect with someone on an intense emotional level can invoke rage out of another person, all depending on that individual’s background. Take Steven Universe, for example; in a sea of children’s cartoons all directed at the “majority demographic” (i.e. young white men), Steven Universe stands out as a beautifully inclusive cartoon where even though the main character is a boy, the rest of the cast are voiced by a diverse cast of women of color. Even though the show artfully depicts important and complicated subjects like grieving and loss and how trauma processes don’t have a set end date (You don’t just “get over” something completely within a set amount of time, in other words), it has received a notable amount of complaints over how the show promotes “unhealthy queer relationships,” among other things, because of the dynamics depicted between the Crystal Gems. Even though this same piece of media can bring an entire community together, and help young kids questioning their sexuality or gender identity find some commonalities with worthy role model analogs, it brings nothing but vitriol from an entirely different set of people. Though there are some exceptions, most pieces of media can be examined from any angle to find some positive or negative in it, which is why I believe that though every person may have certain pieces of media that they are averse to I feel as if I have little room to say that there are any particular pieces or types of pop culture that are “better” or “worse” than others.

That being said, there are always ways in which someone can observe their media with a more conscious eye. There are some contributors to media that exploit people of various marginalized identities, races, and disabilities, such as displaying their ‘oddity’ for the sake of a joke (like the old trope of depicting trans women as ‘deceitful’ and ‘secretive,’ which could easily damage the way in which viewers would later view any trans folk they would meet in person, depending on their reaction to said exposure). I’ve included at the end of this post a link to an article on the concept of “punching up” versus “punching down;” I feel as if the statements made in this article thoroughly explain how certain taboo subjects can easily be found to be humorous, as long as the deliverer of the joke is aware of who exactly they’re throwing under the bus in order to elicit a laugh from their audience. My interests in pop culture mainly lie in the outer edges of points of reference, since most pieces of media that I’ve found that “punch up” lie somewhere around the perimeter. I like to keep my lens through which I view media to be fairly narrow, and usually curated from recommendations of close personal friends, since they are the people who are most likely to know what sorts of shitty jokes I find to be stressful and emotionally draining to try and stomach. I also tend to use various pieces of social media (such as Tumblr) to find highly recommended pieces of media, as most of the blogs I follow on said website are run by other like-minded queer people.

In this class, I hope to expand the vocabulary of terminology I have on hand for carefully picking apart media, which is something I already enjoy doing in my free time. I also hope to be able to share my viewpoint on certain pieces of media, as well as use recommendations from my peers to continue to (slowly, selectively) expand my current scope of modern media.

For the curious, here’s the article on punching up/punching down I referenced earlier:

https://reasonableconversation.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/punching-up/