Trends of Popular American Culture

Running head: TRENDS OF POPULAR AMERICAN CULTURE

Trends of Popular American Culture

Marsha Williams

University Of Phoenix

Trends of Popular American Culture

Trends in popular American culture, often defines are values influence are decisions and more than likely determine where we go and how we look when we get there. Popular American culture has influenced our social, political, personal and religious decisions. "The common view emerging is that everything comes out of culture. We create out of culture and that culture creates us". (Spiritual Self Level, 2007)

The affects of popular American on religion has grown vastly, if you regularly attend church on Sundays you will see how popular culture has influenced how you come dressed to church, gone are the suit and ties and ladies dressed in fancy dresses and big hats, its been replaced by baggy jeans, t-shirts and summer dresses. The pastor weekly message will contain references to popular phase such as "can you hear me now" or even message from popular rap songs which were once considered taboo.

Popular culture has influenced how we teach our children in the classroom as well as outside the classroom. Many teachers has begun to inject popular culture into their daily routine for instance I recently had the opportunity to visit my five-year old nephew classroom, the children started the day off singing their Abc's and not the traditional way we all grew up on, no this was set to a rap song by Jay Z the popular rap artist. Later in the day I noticed the teacher using Dora the Explorer cue cards to teach the word of the day. In a recent study three children where chosen to view and comment on the works of Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory and Jackson Pollack's Composition; these where chosen because of their popularity and their connection to popular culture. When one of the children was shown a picture of Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory, he immediately recognized the picture not in the traditional way of seeing it in a museum; he recognized the picture from the popular cartoon Bugs Bunny. The children's connections provide a natural entry point for introducing critical thinking and examination of popular visual culture, studies in the classroom. (Eckhoff & Guberman, 2006, p. 6).

Today we see how the trend of popular American culture and the outcome of the Presidential race. Then Senator Barack Obama used media outlets never before seen on a political front, he took advantage of the internet age and popularity of the FaceBook and MySpace generation. President Obama