I will be a senior at UNCG in the BLS program this Fall. I hope to pursue a career in the Hospitality Industry. I think popular culture is often reinvented from one generation to another. An example can be seen in the music of past generations that resurfaces when a new age artist puts their own style or signature to an old song. The themes are often the same, love, hate, infidelity, alcohol, fast cars, and fast women. Fashion is notorious for its capacity to cycle back into style from era to era. The trend I see in television and the cinemas that concerns me is its exploitative nature. The entertainment industry has become more graphic in their use of adult language, sexually explicit situations, gore, and violence. As a society we have become almost numb to the violence that occurs all around us because we see so much of it via Hollywood. Children learn about sex at an early age through the media not from their parents or at school. Daytime TV centers around young beautiful people having premarital sex on almost any local channel any day of the week. I think this must surely have a direct impact on the increased number of teenage pregnancies in our country. The media's idea of beauty found in fashion magazines, TV, and in the movies, has created an obsession with thinness that has lead more and more girls my age and even younger to develop eating disorders. The power the media has over popular culture is almost frightening. Many of the talk show programs middle school and high school age kids watch that feature "Who's the Daddy" DNA themes and other trailer trash topics cause me concern because they are so mesmerized by them. What has happened to the generation of kids who prefer Animal Planet?http://www.myxer.com
