G.Angstadt Analysis 5-1

The Paranormal

          For this week’s analysis I chose the topic of the paranormal. I believe people have always been infatuated with the paranormal and unknown. Back in the mid 1970’s and 80’s there was a show called In Search of… hosted by Leonard Nemoy that became very popular. Since then topics on the paranormal have been few and far between. Sure, we had the occasional movies or shows on Bigfoot or other mysterious creatures and UFO’s, but nothing really took off and caught the eye of society until recently.

     Not too very long ago there were a couple of shows that came along that caught our attention. We had shows that came out and dealt with myths such as Bigfoot, Yeti, werewolves, and other creatures and unexplained phenomen caught on tape. These shows were titled MonsterQuest and MysteryQuest. Then we had shows that dealt with the paranormal such as the two plumbers who started hunting ghosts and created a show called Ghost Hunters. Eventually, other shows spawned up like Ghost Adventures and The Unexplained. Then a movie came along like no other that sent our society into a talespin and really put the phenomena of the paranormal on the map and made it one of the most popular subjects in our culture at the present time. That movie was Paranormal Activity. That movie became so popular they decided to create a combined prequel/ sequel called Paranormal Activity 2.

     Since then many shows have exploded onto the scene. Shows such as Paranormal State, UFO Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Celebrity Ghost Stories, and The Haunted just to name a few. Everywhere you turn you can turn on the television and watch something about the paranormal or unexplained.

     So are these shows real? Maybe, maybe not but I think that is why our society is so curious about this subject and why it has become so popular as of late

References

Duplatt, L. (2008). Why Paranormal Topics Are So Popular in the Media. Retrieved February 2, 2011, from www.associatedcontent.com: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/778441/why_paranormal_topics_are_so_popular_pg2.html?cat=38

weekly analysis 4-1

The Blu-ray Disc

           My Popular culture topic for this week is one of the most popular trends going on right now involving the technology of Blu-ray. This new technology has spread like wild fire and has become very popular in a very short time. With the explosion of High definition television has come the explosion of Blu-ray discs onto the scene.

     This disc was originally made because it was able to rewrite, record, and replay high definition video. This disc is also able to store up to five times the amount of data than a normal DVD. This extra storage capacity along with the top of the line video and audio technologies available will allow for the utmost High-Definition experience.

     This new technology is becoming very popular already in companies as Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, and Sony just to name a few who have already dwelled into the flat screen and High-Definition televisions. Also many major movie studios like Disney, Fox, Warner, and Lionsgate have already made movies and released them in Blu-ray.

      This is the new technology that has come along most recently and it will indeed replace DVD’s just like VHS replaced BETA tapes and how DVD replaced VHS. With the rise of high definition technologies throughout the American households, we will all soon have Blu-ray players that will be compatible to Blu-ray as well as DVD. This is to follow suit on how many people have a VHS and DVD combo player. I thought I was equal to the technological curve, but yet once again I have fallen behind and must upgrade.

     So once again America open up those wallets and prepare to pay top dollar for a brand new and improved entertainment system.

References

Calonge, J. (2011). Blu-ray Disc. Retrieved January 24, 2011, from www.blu-ray.com: http://www.blu-ray.com/info/

G.Angstadt Assignment 3-1 weekly analysis

The Beatles

          For this week’s analysis I chose the Pop Rock group The Beatle’s. This English rock band formed in 1960 out of Liverpool and is considered the most popular and critically acclaimed band in popular music (Spitz, 2005).

      The band The Quarrymen was created by a teenage high school kid named John Lennon and some of his buddies from school in 1957 and was joined by Paul McCartney later that year who also invited another individual by the name of George Harrison to join (Spitz, 2005). In 1960, all of John Lennon’s original school friends left the group in order to pursue their respective college careers thus leaving John, Paul, and George to rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer to play with them (Spitz, 2005). Another friend of John’s named Stuart Sutcliffe joined the band as a bassist and actually thought of the name The Beetles. The name of the band went through some changes to include Johnny and the Moon dogs, Long John and the Beetles, and The Silver Beatles. The Beatles finally stuck in August of 1960 (Spitz, 2005). For a short time, an individual named Pete Best joined the band as a drummer who was later replaced by Ringo Starr and Sutcliffe left the band (Spitz, 2005).

     In 1964, The Beatles left England and came to the United States. On February 9^th they performed live on The Ed Sullivan Show which was watched by 74 million people, thus creating the birth of Beatle mania (Spitz, 2005).

     The Beatles set the foundation for the popular culture of rock and roll and are considered the best and most popular band of all time. It is very difficult to imagine where music, as we know it today, would be like if it wasn’t for The Beatles. They will remain icons for music forever along with names like Elvis and many other icons of the music industry.

Spitz, B (2005). The Beatles. Little Brown. Retrieved January 20, 2011.

G.Angstadt Assignment 1-3

          The article “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”: Cold War Culture and the Birth of Marvel Comics discuss the creation and rise of the most popular icon of comic books: Stan Lee and Marvel Comics.

     Comics were originally made popular in the 1930’s by a company named National Comics, now known as DC Comics, who created and made comics with superheroes such as Superman and Batman. In the 1950’s, comics had turned to ideas of crime and gangster stories that received criticisms from the public as well as the politicians of the United States. This is turn made National Comics resort to their old ideas of superheroes and created the comic book titled The Justice League of America which united various superheroes to fight crime on the planet Earth and throughout the universe. This was the beginning of bringing comic books back into American society and making them popular once more.

     The rival of National comics, Timely Comics, needed to make an adjustment to their line of comic books in order to keep up with their rival. Therefore the publisher of Timely comics asked a person by the name of Stan Lee to create an idea to keep pace with the comic The Justice League of America. His first successful creation was the taking of four normal people and adding their exposure to cosmic rays to turn them into superheroes. These individuals became what are known as The Fantastic Four. This comic book company shortly thereafter became known as Marvel Comics.

     After the success of The Fantastic Four, Stan Lee created more characters that were directly responsible for the incredible resurgence of comic books in the 1960’s which were Spiderman, the Hulk, and Iron Man. However, his characters not only had their superhero abilities, but these comics also honed in on the superheroes personal lives such as Peter Parker’s various teenage problems or Iron Man’s (Anthony Stark) problem with women. They also crossed over into the cultures and problems associated with American society and the Cold War.

     For example, the Hulk was created based upon issues at that point of time in our culture, which included being a warning of the result of scientific technologies, experiments, and developments, which were happening at the time to include nuclear holocaust. This is why David Banner was a scientist who had an experiment go terribly wrong and the government was always trying to hunt him down.

     With the case of Iron Man, Anthony Stark was also a scientist as well as a wealthy industrialist who was captured over in the Vietnam Jungle while doing military experiments by a communist tyrant named Wong-Chu who fatally inflicted damage close to Stark’s heart. This caused Stark to construct the Iron Man suit in order to keep his heart beating even after the shrapnel reached it. After Stark is fully able to move and use his suit properly, he easily destroys Wong-Chu and vows to conquer and fight any and all communist infiltration and threats. Stan Lee used the outline of Hugh Hefner for the character of Anthony Stark noting Hefner as a billionaire industrialist inventor and also depicted the character of Anthony Stark as a playboy who constantly had trouble with women.

     Spiderman put a twist on the creation of previous characters of Stan Lee. Even though Peter Parker was bitten by a genetically altered spider and was very fluent in science, his character dealt more with teenage problems than anything else. Since most comic book readers were young teenagers Lee’s focus went to everyday lives and problems of those teenagers. These included problems with school and young love, who can forget Mary Jane. This was a comic that enticed readers with the Spiderman character, but also was able to possibly influence their own personal lives.

     I believe this article is well written and really makes you think of how all these comic book characters came to being. With every one of these aforementioned characters having their own movies today along with sequels, except for the Hulk, I believe the target audience to be anyone who is a fan of the movie, comic book, or superhero character.

     The biggest thing that came out of this article is the premise of what these characters were based upon which included science, development of technologies, and cold war aspects such as communism and nuclear holocaust. In all of my years of watching these characters as a child until now I never made the connection of the characters. Sure I knew they were scientists or science affiliated, but never looked at them based upon scientists and technologies of the 1960’s and the direction science was going toward at that time or how the potential was created for science to go terribly wrong. This is especially true for the formation of the villains in the Spiderman series.

References

GENTER, R. (2007). “With great power comes great responsibility”: Cold war culture and the birth of marvel comics. The Journal of Popular Culture, 40(6), 953-978. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5931.2007.00480.x

G. Angstadt assignment 2-1 weekly analysis

          For my current popular culture topic I chose the Razor Scooter. The Razor scooter became popular after the year 2000. This little creation was invented by Razor USA, LLC  based in Cerritos, CA (Clarke, 2011). This has been one of the most popular ways for young kids and teenagers to get around the neighborhood or from point A to point B. This toy has become as popular as bikes and skateboards and became a nationwide sensation almost over night.

     The concept combines the handlebars of a bike along with a modified skateboard but this only has two wheels instead of four. They are powered by the rider, however there are variations that actually utilize an electric motor. It is kid friendly as well as parent friendly since it doesn’t take up much room in the garage and even folds up for very easy storage (Clarke, 2011).

     Even though we as parents must worry about our kids getting hurt with outside activities, as is the case with almost everything, at least this scooter  will be useful in getting your children to drop the video game controllers long enough to go enjoy outdoors and get them out of the house for a little while.

     I chose this item because it is one of the latest trends in today’s society that is popular and appealing to our young youth.  Another example of what will be collecting dust in my garage in about another two years or whenever something better comes out to replace it. Another reason I chose it is because it is another item that is manufactured and makes a lot of money and can be attached to economics (Browne, 2005)

Reference

Browne,R.B. (2005). Profiles of popular culture: A reader. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Clarke, M. (2011.) www.Razor.com.  Retrieved January 13, 2011, from http://www.razor.com/products/scooters/

G. Angstadt assignment 2-2

     Bugs Bunny is one of the most recognizable names in cartoons. He is the top dog for Looney Tunes as well as a mascot for Warner Bros. (McCorry, 2010). He is viewed as one of the biggest cartoon icons of all time by both young and old alike. Bugs Bunny first appeared on a cartoon titled “A Wild Hare” way back in 1940 (McCorry, 2010).  The reason I chose bugs Bunny is because he is my favorite cartoon character. I can remember like it was yesterday just waking up Saturday morning and turning on the TV and watching the Bugs Bunny Show.

     John Wayne was one of the biggest icons for western movies. He was born in 1907 by the name of Marion Morrison and lived in Southern California. Before turning actor, he delivered medicines for his dad and also sold newspapers (Wayne, 2010). His first big film that led to him becoming famous was Stagecoach which premiered in 1939 (wayne, 2010). His nickname was “The Duke” and he went on to make many western movies. He died in 1979 from lung and stomach cancer. I chose John Wayne because of my father in law. He loves his films and we all sit around when 24 hours of the Duke play on TV around Christmas or in the summer.

     My last icon is Clint Eastwood. His acting ability has made him an icon for both westerns and suspense when he played the Dirty Harry character (Eder, 2010). Clint Eastwood was born in San Francisco and was a logger and gas station attendant in his younger days (Eder, 2010). His first films that propelled into acting success and stardom included A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Eder, 2010). He had many catchy quotes and phrases, but one of the most popular must be from the Dirty Harry movies when he says “Go ahead, make my day” (Eder, 2010).

References

Eder, B. (2010). Clint Eastwood. Retrieved January 11, 2011, from The New York Times: http://movies.nytimes.com/person/88601/Clint-Eastwood/biography

John Wayne. (2010). Retrieved January 11, 2011, from www.imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000078/

McCorry, K. (2010). The Bugs Bunny Show. Retrieved January 11, 2011, from looney.goldenagecartoons.com: http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/tv/bbshow/

G.Angstadt Weekly Analysis #1

For my current popular culture topic I chose the game of Halo. Halo is a video game that takes place in the distant future. Its main characters consist of the Master Chief who is a cybernetically enhanced human super soldier and his sidekick companion, Cortana, who is an alien (Mclaughlin, 2007). The game is based on a war between humanity and an allegiance of aliens called the Covenant who worship an ancient civilization called the Forerunners (Mclaughlin, 2007).

     The first Halo game was released in November 2001 and was called Halo: Combat Evolved (Mclaughlin, 2007). Halo 2 was released in November of 2004 and Halo 3, the final game of the trilogy, was released in September 2007 (Mclaughlin, 2007).

      In recent years, the Halo trilogy has become one of the most popular games on various video game consoles such as Xbox and PS3. The game sales have exceeded 34 million copies worldwide. With the success of the games, Halo has branched off into Halo novels and other products including various forms of merchandise. This merchandise has bought in over $1.7 billion in sales (Mclaughlin, 2007).

     With the great success of the main Halo trilogy, Microsoft created other Halo games off of the trilogy called Halo Wars and Halo: Reach (Mclaughlin, 2007).

References

Mclaughlin, R. (2007). IGN Presents The History of Halo. Retrieved January 9, 2011, from IGN.com: http://games.ign.com/articles/821/821618p1.html