Course Reflection
During this semester, I studied 4 units. It
is a 'pop culture' class, which has learned not only about 'pop culture' but
also about old culture. I learned about culture, pop culture, movies, and
music. We learned through read, think, see, do, reflect. Each unit, I read
various texts, talked and shared our opinions in class. After making
presentations, I could experience many things by listening to my friends'
presentations, and at the end of each unit, I wrote the reflections. It helped
me a lot to think that I learned in the unit.
The first unit was culture. I learned the
essential meaning or characteristics of culture, not popular culture. Culture
is not inherited, but passed down and learned. I also learned some terms, and
among them, the culture shock class was the most impressive. Culture shock is
an experience and that is experienced by many people living a new way of life
or moving to another country. In addition, it is divided into several stages,
after going through them all, we can accept the culture. Culture shock is not
something special, but something that everyone can experience in one’s life.
The second unit was pop culture. Through
the texts, we could learn the meanings of popular culture and symbols such as
things, people, events, and places. Popular culture has positive aspects such
as popularization of culture, improvement of quality of life, improvement of
social problems, equality of culture, and so on. However, there are
disadvantages of poor quality of pop culture, unity of thought, information
manipulation rate, and so on. Popular culture is when someone starts and people
gradually follow and eventually everyone is doing the same thing. Everyone can
enjoy it together because they have become famous, but they have no
individuality. And also, we can't predict about culture. What was pop culture
in the past, and later it might be high culture.
The third unit was movie. Through the
presentation, we were able to learn about genres of movie such as noir and
concert movies that we do not usually know. I didn't know much about Hollywood
movies because I wasn't very interested in them. Most famous movies are
Hollywood movies. Hollywood films dominate the film industry, but only whites
appear. In contrast, Tyler Perry is African-American, actor, writer, and
director. He is versatile and famous, and makes a lot of money. All of his
films are African-Americans, and the movie's contents are African-Americans
lives. Showing their true lives, showing their love, friendship, family. Also,
I read an article about why people watch horror movies. Audiences feel relieved
that they are less crazy than the characters in the scary movie, and feel
vicariously satisfied that the characters in the movie go crazy instead of
themselves.
Unit 4 was music. We saw the music charts,
listened to a few songs and shared our feelings. I read 'The Same Old Song' and
'Pop Music Is Same.' Pop music is so sensational that children need adult
protection. And pop music can be predicted. Scientists have studied a lot of
pop music. The same song is played over and over again on the air, and we hear
it over and over again. Then we get used to the music and think it's a good
one. I also read text about blues. Blues is music that originated from
African-Americans and was initially aimed at conveying information and
communicating. Singing was the only way to express their thinking. They
couldn't say what they wanted to say.
Through this semester, I learned various things about culture. Not only learning theories, but we also had time to share our opinions. We didn't just sit and read, we thought and understood. I watched various video materials and made many presentations. I hate to make a presentation personally, but if I hadn't done this much in this class, the content I would have learned would have been limited, and I wouldn't have thought about class.
