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As Americans we are inundated with consumer culture. It is what defines or defies us. That consuming power which it bolsters constantly reminds us that reading a text responsibly is extremely challenging on several levels: the first being, consumer culture is horizontally challenged in that there are so many different texts that we have access to (advertisements, items of popular culture, sub-genres of culture, etc.). The second level of consumer culture can be said to be vertically challenging in that. As we explicate one cultural text, many subtexts 4 emerge. For instance, the tagline for Katy Perry's documentary Part of Me is "[b]e yourself and you can be anything". Her music video for the track "Part of Me", yes carries the same title, features Katy eyeing her boyfriend making a move on his female office counterpart. In that very moment of the video Katy confronts her boyfriend, breaks up with him, and drives away. At the level of the text, the first few seconds of the video narrative would suggest the moral lesson that when your partner treats you poorly, you move on. Well, this message is immediately
complicated by the next series of events. Stopping at a local gas station Katy spots a bumper sticker for the United States Marine Corps stating "[a]ll women are created equal, then some become Marines." Katy grabs her ice tea and storms off to the gas station ladies room where she cuts her hair, binds her breasts with an ace bandage, and hides under a hoodie.
Why the Marines? Why the binding of her breasts? Why hide under the hoodie? What is the role of gender and masculinity in this video? The video goes on to complicate things even more as we see recruit Perry in basic training, off to war, and when she isn't too busy serving her country, dancing in fatigues under a massive American flag. While the video started off as a great moral lesson, it is suddenly turned into a mocking of the traditional narrative of a rejected man enlisting in the Marines. Using the presented narrative twist, this video serves as text that is confronting and challenging traditional cultural norms. How does that confrontation embrace teenage anxieties or aspirations? What does that challenge pose for teenagers? While I don't necessarily want students to overthink everything around them, I do want them to analyze the stories being told and the ideological subtext being presented to them.
Consumer culture lends itself neatly to high school teaching in that it is accessible and appealing to students. Additionally, popular culture functions as a means by which society's fears, anxieties, and dreams are realized in popularized songs and stories. Through this unit I plan for students to use the (adjusted) lens of critical analysis (rhetoric, etc.) to explore responsible readings of consumer culture.
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