Modes of Uban Entertainment and the Different Ways it Affects Our Day to Day Activities - Annotated Bibliography Example

Entertainment Annotated Biography Stern, M.J. & Seifert, S.C. (2008). From Creative Economy to Creative Society: A neighborhood-based strategy to increase urban vitality and promote social inclusion. GIA Reader, 19 (3), 1-6. The authors in the article recap the current research on the entertainment cultures, revitalization and promotion of a new model. The neighborhood-based strategy is the new model that promotes creative economy. The new creative economy has the potential of moving the 21st-century towns and cities towards sharing of social integration and prosperity. Nowak, J. (2007). Distressed Places and Creativity: Eight Propositions about the Creative Sector and Neighborhood Revitalization. GIA Reader, 19 (3), 7-15. The article explains the interest of the author in the creative sector of entertainment and neighborhood. The article discusses The Reinvestment Fund and how it is providing finance and also high-quality information for the youth. The strategies the organization use for funding of different entertainment agendas is part of the discussion in the article. Ashby, L. (2010). The Rising of Popular Culture: A Historiographical Sketch. OAH Magazine of History, 24, 11–14. The article emphasizes on the growth of pop culture and where it is at the moment. The article has its focus on the 1960s and 1970s and how America’s entertainment culture moved from being that of folk culture to the appreciation of pop culture. The culture involves music and art, and the article focuses on the different ways it is appreciated in the entertainment industry today. Griffin, E. (2002). Popular Culture in Industrializing England. Historical Journal, 45 (3), pp 619 - 635. Griffin takes us through the steps that popular culture took to be part of England’s industrialization. The article traces the use of popular culture by historians since it began in England in the 1970s. The author explains to us how there was a misunderstanding of the culture initially and how people have now accepted its values and ways. The author also lets us know the significance of pop culture. Storey, J. (2012). Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction. New York City: Pearson Education. Print The book presents to us different competing theories on the various approaches to popular culture. The author in his writing is flexible and applies the theories over a number of different disciplines. There are also examples of the different genres and theories that explain pop culture. Swirski, P. (2005). From Lowbrow to Nobrow. Montreal, London: McGill-Queens University Press. Print The book demolishes the elite argument that popular culture and fiction movies are the epitomai of civilization. The author goes on talking about how Highbrow ends up being the Lowbrow. He shows us that “Nobrow” art is the interacting factor between high-end art and low-end art. There are several questions regarding pop culture that the author says. The author argues that no critic should ignore any form of art. Cowen, T. (2007). For Some Developing Countries, America’s Popular Culture Is Resistible. New York Times, Sec. C, p. 3. The author sheds light on how far and wide the popular culture has spread. The argument regarding the popular culture by the author is that it is irresistible to developing countries in the world. The countries are looking for a base and a culture to follow rather than their own, and they have decided on the popular culture. The insights and facts about the popularity of pop culture in developing countries make the article interesting. Barbour, C. & Scully, P.A. (2008). Families, Schools, and Communities: Building Partnerships for Educating Children. New York City: Pearson Education Inc. Print The book talks about the different influence of urban entertainment and the media on children and their environment. It is a family book, and the author focuses on building partnerships while offering the children the best education in life and also in school. The mass media and social media are a major part of the authors’ discussion in the book. Harriger, J.A., R.M. Calogero, D.C. Witherington et al. (2010). Body size stereotyping and the Internalization of the thin ideal in preschool girls. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 63: 1-5. The journal has several authors that focus on the entertainment industry and its influence on girls and their body image. The journal gives insights on how idolization of certain characters in the entertainment industry has had a negative effect on today’s youth. Several findings on the influence of the media on the youth are also part of the journal. Ferguson, C.J. (2011). Video Games and Youth Violence: A Prospective Analysis in Adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Ferguson has his focus on the youth, video games and violence from his journal. The author talks about the different ways the modern day youth have been influenced by video games to see violence as a normal day to day activity. The interesting part of the journal is finding the connection of the youth, video games, and violence. Introduction Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the interest and attention of an audience that involves itself in it. Entertainment’s principal aim is to give pleasure and delight to the people that perform it and are the audience to the show. Entertainment can be any idea or task that brings joy. Urban entertainment is a form of entertainment that happens in the 21st century. Some of the modern urban forms of entertainment dates back to the late 20th century. The article is going to focus on the different modes of urban entertainment and the different ways it affects our day to day activities. Discussion Popular Culture Popular culture famously known as the pop culture is the most common form of urban entertainment. It is the entirety of ideas, attitudes, perspectives, images and other types of phenomena that a community adopts that is within the mainstream of the Western culture. Pop culture has a heavy influence from the mass media, which is another form of urban entertainment. The ideas and its perspectives reflect and show the everyday lives that people are living in the society. The most common popular culture in entertainment is movies, music, art, and TV. Sports are also a form of entertainment and are also among the popular culture (Swirski, 2005). There has been major and heavy criticism from people who do not believe in the mainstream. They are against the ways the pop culture is twisted to fit the needs and desires of almost everyone who is interested in pop culture. The critics are mainly religious groups and counter culture groups who do not believe in the Western culture or any other culture. They deem the culture as corrupt, consumerist and superficial. Popular culture became common in the 1960s and 1970s, but was originally from the 19th century. The culture had an association with the poor and lower class citizens. Mass media innovations at the end of World War II made pop culture to be appreciated all over the Western world (Ashby, 2010). Social changes in America led to people craving a different type of entertainment, hence music, art, and TV invested in the popular culture. There are six different types of pop culture according to John Storey in his book. The different definitions equate pop culture to various forms of entertainment, for example, TV, movies, mass media, among others. Storey continues to argue that there is a political definition to pop culture. There was a distinction between high and popular culture in the 19th century, but a post-modernist approach to the arts does not distinguish between the two. The industrial revolution that led to urbanization is what Storey claims brought along the pop culture (Storey, 2012). Shakespeare and his books had a modernization and his story became very popular hence being part of the pop culture. Popular culture is however changing over the course of time, and they occur uniquely in different places and time. Pop culture represents mutually independent concepts that are complex in one way or the other. The changes have different values and perspective that influence the society in different ways. The pop culture currents that originate from a certain subculture are examples of the pop culture that affect the community. Pop culture is a form of entertainment that appeals to a broad spectrum of people. There have been various studies on the impact of pop culture on the American, European, Asian and African societies (Cowen, 2007). Americans are the most affected by the culture and carry out their day to day lives, focusing on the ways and the currents of pop culture. The traditional folklore has people adapting some of it to form the popular culture, especially in the music industry. The public does not however buy everything the folklore sells as different individuals have different taste of the folk type of learning. Popular culture has a wide range of interconnections mainly the intermingling of some cultural anthropologists, complementary distribution sources, literary, and critics. They have discovered that there is a significant amount of intertextually in the modern cultures and ways it portrays itself. The media outlets have stopped focusing on the real world and but instead focus on other narratives and images. Self-preferentiality embraces all the modern culture, although rarely acknowledged. Critics have warned that self-preferentiality is only part of the mass consumerism side effect. There have been, however, different alternative explanations from other critics. One of the critics says that it reflects a fundamental paradox i.e. the increase in cultural and technological, combining it with an increase in dehumanization and superficiality. For example, there has been a long-running animated series “The Simpsons” that adhere to the massive media properties and the commercial properties of the show (Griffin, 2002). The television studies scholars say that self-preferentiality on the mainstream American TV stations reflect the type of progression already characterized in previous scenes or episodes. Influence of Urban Entertainment The urban entertainment industry especially television has had a significant influence in our day-to-day lives. There are different ways in which the entertainment industries have affected us. For instance, the popular television franchise, “CSI” has changed the way the jury looks at cases. There have been unrealistic expectations to come up with convincing evidence as we see on “CSI”. The identification of suspects from a single skin cell is expected of the police carrying out the investigation. Many people have walked scout free from the guilty verdict just because there was not enough evidence to convict them despite having numerous witnesses. There has been an increasing fad on “cool” animals that does not impact on real life. After a movie with a certain breed of animal hits the theaters, there is usually a fad about the animal. People end up massively buying the kind of an animal only because they saw it on the television. Most of the people that go with the flow to the urban form of entertainment do not realize that the actions of the animals are not real but part of making the movie. Medical drama TV series have been on the rise for a while now in the entertainment industry. The portrayal of the doctors and how accurate they are in making the decisions has influenced the real world’s medicine. People go to the doctor with strange expectations that the doctors do not see as appropriate. The interns are created by the shows to act as stupid. They risk the lives of patients in the medical dramas. People are now scared to go get treatment from interns because of the perception and often seek to find the surgeon or doctor at hand and not the intern. The screw up of the medical procedures goes from the TV and goes to the real hospitals where interns are messing up and causing loss of human lives. The interns are taking medical advice from Hollywood in programs such as House, Grey’s Anatomy, and Scrubs among other medical dramas. Fictional movies that come from a person’s brain invention also influence our lives in different ways. There are people who now believe in aliens and zombies from the kind of movie they have been watching. Entertainment clearly has different influences on our social behavior overall. Urban entertainment and the media have a number of good influences in the 21st-century teenager, but there are adverse impacts and results from urban entertainment. Teenagers end up picking violence from the entertainment, get body image issues, abuse drugs, and also engage in early pre-marital sexual activities (Nowak, 2007). The media images are everywhere in this present day popular culture. The teenagers cannot escape the images they see in the media. The teenagers are vulnerable to particular kind of images that make them insecure about their bodies. The media portrays the beautiful woman as being thin with a small waistline that youths strive to achieve. The violence that television represents on the television may influence teenagers to view violence as a normal thing and thus engage in it. The ones that do not have involvement in performing the violence may be victims of the violence and not report to the necessary authority as they deem it normal. There was a study in 1998 that says the alcohol, drug and sexual abuse in movies and television shows influence the teenagers and youths in a negative way. The increase in the abuse increases by about 9% after teenagers watch it and see it as cool (Ferguson, 2011). The solutions to these problems is to let the youth know that whatever the media, especially movies portray are fictional and, therefore, should not be influenced to follow in the same direction. Regular counseling sessions that remind the youth the importance of having a clean life and appreciating themselves is important. Influence of Mass Media and Social Media The social media and mass media influence has grown over the last few years. The advancement in technology has made it easy for people to be able to have the media at the tips of their hands. Smartphone technology and the advancement of computers have made us have it easy when it comes to finding information from the media. The information and communication over the social media is now the source that we all so much depend on to move from one step to the other in our lives. Waking up and checking our telephones for information and messages have become the norm in our day-to-day lives. Human beings, however, need to be conscious and aware that the values and beliefs they hold, are because of what we harbor. The decisions human beings make have a basis on their assumptions, experiences, education, and knowledge. The degree of the media influence on people depends on the availability of the media source that one has to them (Harriger et al., 2010). Radio and television were very influential some time back, but with time, the social media is the number one influence on people. People communicate on social media and issues concerning particular societies, and even countries are part of the discussion on social media. Blogs, wikis, virtual worlds and so on influence our day-to-day life. The person that controls the message is the owners of the media companies who have the rights to the media houses (Stern & Seifert, 2008). People should not let the media influence their everyday decisions and should focus on facts. Influence on Children The entertainment industry also has an impact on children, both positive control and negative influence. Almost all the young kids in America have exposure to the media and its contents on a day-to-day basis. Some of the exposure to the media is educational and is appropriate for the desired audience. Many kids like the cartoon and animation characters they see on television series and movies. With the rapid expansion of the electronic media, however, children can be influenced and get involved in the wrong kind of media that are not appropriate for them. The solution to such is to have a parental lock and parental control on the television and internet sites that you feel contain adult content. Producers and advertisers, however, expand the size of their customer base by putting the films on DVD (Barbour & Scully, 2008). In such a case, there are numerous ways one can prevent children from viewing the adult contents. The government has laws that recommend the producers to put an age limit in any of the shows they put out for the public to see. The guidelines have been of great help to the parents. Another form of urban entertainment for the children are video games. The games are healthy for the children as they provide a break needed for the busy education life of the children. Conclusion Urban entertainment has grown over time, and has had changes in its currents and tides over the years. A popular culture that is famous as pop culture is the most distinct form of urban entertainment. Urban entertainment has had both positive and negative influences in our lives. Since the 1960s, when pop culture was considered the best, it has grown over time from music to art, to television, to movies. References Ashby, L. (2010). The Rising of Popular Culture: A Historiographical Sketch. OAH Magazine of History, 24, 11–14. Barbour, C. & Scully, P.A. (2008). Families, Schools, and Communities: Building Partnerships for Educating Children. New York City: Pearson Education Inc. Print Cowen, T. (2007). For Some Developing Countries, America’s Popular Culture Is Resistible. New York Times, sec. C, p. 3. Ferguson, C. J. (2011). Video Games and Youth Violence: A Prospective Analysis in Adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence Griffin, E. (2002). Popular Culture in Industrializing England. Historical Journal, 45(3), pp 619– 635. Harriger, J.A., Calogero, R. M., Witherington, D.C. (2010). Body size stereotyping and the Internalization of the thin ideal in preschool girls. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 63: 1-5 Nowak, J. (2007). Distressed Places and Creativity: Eight Propositions about the Creative Sector and Neighborhood Revitalization. GIA Reader, 19(3), 7-15. Stern, M.J. & Seifert, S.C. (2008). From Creative Economy to Creative Society: A neighborhood-based strategy to increase urban vitality and promote social inclusion. GIA Reader, 19(3), 1-6. Storey, J. (2012). Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction. New York City: Pearson Education. Print Swirski, P. (2005). From Lowbrow to Nobrow. Montreal, London: McGill-Queens University Press. Print Read More