Popular Culture Essay

Improved Essays
The term ‘popular culture’ refers to a culture built on what the general public desires opposed to the elite class that usually have the control. This applies to things within society such as music, food, fashion, even religion. Whether someone considers themselves to be religious or not, it affects their life in numerous ways. If someone is religious, they most likely participate in religious rituals, practices and makes life decisions with their faith in mind. On the contrary, if someone is not religious they may not do any of the above, but chances are they know someone who is and are educated to some degree on at least one religion. It is relevant in today’s society whether we want to accept it or not. As David Chidester argues, religion …show more content…
what truly makes a religion comparable to popular culture in today’s society are the elements in which it values. For example, some elements of religion are: a belief system, a sense of community, rituals, emotional experiences, material expression, and sacredness (college.holycross.edu). As previously stated, baseball, Coca-Cola, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Olympics all embody these elements. Chidester goes on to also include Tupperware parties, Disney and various other international companies into his argument and the same elements apply. The Olympics is a unique example because it originally started as a so called “religious festival” in Greece in honour of the Greek Gods. Therefore, it does have a religious origin to begin with. Now, millions of people all over the world come together to watch the Olympic games and support these athletes. The athletes themselves are considered to have superhuman abilities that people aspire to have and be like. There are routines, rules, and regulations that it creates unity and conformity. There is overwhelming support for what they believe in and what the athletes represent. It is familiar and relatable in a sense that people know what to expect and no matter where you come from, you can appreciate what the games are all

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    First of all, we need to understand the meaning of popular culture. Popular culture is the culture of the mass. With the inventions of televisions and radios, the culture is heavily influenced by what is being conveyed on those outlets. This includes all the…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Religion can be considered to be the common human culture, there is a mysterious myth, it is the human spirit. The Faith is the highest embodiment of a talent human subjective response, it is the paradise of the human consciousness of the universe, the earth's history beyond the form of fate, it is of our human existence and the integrity of the relationship between the objective world, it is a kind of metaphysical…

    • 74 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hi, I am XX, you can call me XX. It’s a pleasure to stand here and do the first graded presentation here. I almost love all kind of art: music, film, painting and literature. I started playing piano when I was five, and now I prefer some rock and roll. I am very interested about cultural communication with new media.…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Human civilization has improved a lot since the beginning. Through all the different time periods we’ve learned about, certain people, events, achievements, and time periods have been more influential than others. For example, Julius Caesar has proved to be the most important individual. The most important time period is obviously the golden age of Greece. The greatest achievement would be religion.…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Eastern Religion

    • 1296 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Throughout history people have turned to sacred beliefs for sense of well-being, gathering with others whom share their interests, or simply for a guided way of life to live by. Some of the world cultures have rituals, sacred grounds, even objects of common use to represent the practices in which they hold so dearly, for the majority of cultures, religion, typically with a worshiped deity, if not more than one, and a literary central religious text to live by, is how the rest of the religious world practices their beliefs. The largest of those religions is Christianity, making up 33.0% of the World Population, followed primarily in North and South America as well as Europe (Schaefer, 2015, p. 308). Christianity is defined as “the religion based…

    • 1296 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Many ancient empires helped create the world as we know it. There is the Byzantine Empire, Mongolian Empire, and the Mesopotamian Empire. Two other empires that stand out are the Roman and Greek empires. Both of these empires were strong empires that were able to expand and maintain rule in a time that was unruly. The Roman and Greek empires were developed and maintained based on religion, military readiness and economic factors.…

    • 1265 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion and culture both have influence on views regarding death and dying in the Western World. This essay will show the impact this influence may have on views today. Religion is defined in the Oxford English dictionary as “Belief… which is typically manifested in obedience, reverence, and worship; such a belief as part of a system defining a code of living, esp. as a means of achieving spiritual or material improvement.” (2014).…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Modern America, many values that people live by are influenced by the concept of religion. Religion teaches the values in life, whether the religion is Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or any kind. The concept of religion being the overarching idea that teaches people values even goes back centuries ago. For instance, the Puritan society was heavily influenced by religion. Even the government was controlled by the power of religion.…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Introduction Popular culture is a necessity nowadays because if people do not follow the trends in the society, they might be marginalized from the mainstream culture and it would be difficult for them to reconnect with others. Although there is no accurate definition to describe what popular culture is, it is seen as a form of communication that has a connection with the mainstream culture which subdivides into mass culture and folklore and folk culture (Buhmann, Hellmueller, & Bosshart, 2015). Similarly, in the field of early childhood education, it is no doubt that popular culture exists in children’s lives and they experience it through everyday interactions. With this in mind, sometimes the existence of popular culture makes people wonder…

    • 2165 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Olympic games are an international sport festival that is watched by millions of people across the globe. These special games have developed into something much bigger than entertainment purposes. Instead, they have radically changed world culture by uniting all the people in the world with sport. Competitions featuring the world’s greatest athletes and cultures are present at this special occasion. Although, the games are founded to be cultural, emotional and entertaining, the leading inspiration behind establishing the Olympic games is based off of religion.…

    • 1204 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Alee Beheshtaein M, W 3-5 11 November, 2016 Religion in life Religion has affected most of the people’s lives around the world for hundreds of thousands of years, directly or indirectly. People, who let religion into their lives, start to follow a variety of behavioral and social guidelines that the religion sets for them. People can get caught up with religion through a very deep emotional level, that their religion will control their lives. The City of Churches is about a young girl named Cecilia, who has just moved to a new city to start a rental car business.…

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion is always found on the side of culture; however, it is potentially imposed by our nature. For the evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, "the predisposition to religious belief is the most powerful and complex force of the human mind and in all likelihood an inseparable part of human nature" (1978: 238). In some way, religion is anchored in general structures provided by the brain as a natural biological organ. Which does not mean that there is no particular content preprogrammed. The logical thing is to think that what these structures impose on the myth or rite is analogous to what the brain itself imposes on articulated language: schemes and rules without which it could not exist, but absolutely insufficient for it to exist, something…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion occurs where ever societies exist, from the Sumerians and the Ancient Egyptians right through to modern society religion is everywhere. This essay will look at religion from a sociological perspective and try to answer whether or not Britain is becoming a more secular society. When it comes to religion sociologists, unlike theologists and philosophers, are not as interested in the details of religions themselves, but in what effects religion has on its particular society. The sociological study or religion is separate from the philosophical approach, which is concerned with such questions as the nature and existence of God and the relationship between God and science (William Alston, 1967), in that it does not seek to answer whether or not there, is any validity to religious beliefs. Sociologist Peter L Berger (1967) coined the term ‘methodological atheism’ to describe the process needed in comparing the different beliefs of various religions.…

    • 1079 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion plays a huge role in our daily lives. Rather your religious practice is Judaism, Christianity, Amish, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, etc., religion seems to shape minds and have a part of every society. “Over the past 100,000 years, no group of people anywhere on earth have been found that did not practice some type of religion (Haviland, 2011)” In researching religion, I’ve found that most religions work towards positive change within its members, in return brings positive change in society.…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I never was the writer who lived a rich life grand with detailed stories that gave them initial inspiration on my creation of a character, detail of a line or the crafting of a setting/scenario. I just started with something out of the ordinary and built off it. I will say that the only initial theme quantities I enforce are biblical allusions or themes that work as political commentary on religious matter. No matter what I am writing about it try my best to express a political statement or opinion. I will say that the array of topics discussed and imagery used in this short collection is my attempt to remain diverse and produce a broaden voice that covers a multitude of cultural topics, the way I see it is that even though there is more than one popular culture in the world they are all relatable and contains elements of…

    • 942 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays