too poor for pop culture essay

Too poor for pop culture

Where i live in east baltimore, everything looks like "the wire" and nobody cares what a "selfie" is, by d. watkins.

Miss Sheryl, Dontay, Bucket-Head and I compiled our loose change for a fifth of vodka. I'm the only driver, so I went to get it. On the way back I laughed at the local radio stations going on and on and on, still buzzing about Obama taking a selfie at Nelson Mandela's funeral. Who cares?

No really, who? Especially since the funeral was weeks ago.

I arrived, fifth of Black Watch clenched close to me like a newborn with three red cold-cups covering the top. We play spades over at Miss Sheryl's place in Douglass Housing Projects every few weeks. (Actually, Miss Sheryl's name isn't really Miss Sheryl. But I changed some names here, because I'm not into embarrassing my friends.) Her court is semi-boarded up, third world and looks like an ad for "The Wire." Even though her complex is disgustingly unfit, it's still overpopulated with tilting dope fiends, barefoot children, pregnant smokers, grandmas with diabetes, tattoo-faced tenants and a diverse collection of Zimmermans made up of street dudes and housing police, looking itchy to shoot anyone young and black and in Nike.

Two taps on the door, it opened and the gang was all there -- four disenfranchised African-Americans posted up in a 9 x 11 prison-size tenement, one of those spots where you enter the front door, take a half-step and land in the yard. I call us disenfranchised, because Obama's selfie with some random lady or the whole selfie movement in general is more important than us and the conditions where we dwell.

Surprisingly, as tight as Miss Sheryl's unit may be, it's still more than enough space for us to receive affordable joy from a box of 50-cent cards and a rail bottle.

"A yo, Michelle was gonna beat on Barack for taking dat selfie with dat chick at the Mandela wake! Whateva da fuk a selfie is! What's a selfie, some type of bailout?" yelled Dontay from the kitchen, dumping Utz chips into a cracked flowery bowl. I was placing cubes into all of our cups and equally distributing the vodka like, "Some for you and some for you ..."

"What the fuck is a selfie?" said Miss Sheryl.

"When a stupid person with a smartphone flicks themselves and looks at it," I said to the room. She replied with a raised eyebrow, "Oh?"

It's amazing how the news seems so instant to most from my generation with our iPhones, Wi-Fi, tablets and iPads, but actually it isn't. The idea of information being class-based as well became evident to me when I watched my friends talk about a weeks-old story as if it happened yesterday.

Miss Sheryl doesn't have a computer and definitely wouldn't know what a selfie is. Her cell runs on minutes and doesn't have a camera. Like many of us, she's too poor to participate in pop culture. She's on public assistance living in public housing and scrambles for odd jobs to survive.

Sheryl lost her job as a cook moments after she lost her daughter to heroin, her son Meaty to crack and her kidneys to soul food. It took 15 to 20 unanswered applications a week for over a year for her to realize that no company wants to employ a woman on dialysis. Sometimes Bucket-Head and I chip in and buy groceries for her and her grandson Lil Kevin who has severe lead-paint poisoning, but was diagnosed late and is too old to receive a check.

Bucket-Head is a convicted felon but not really. He was charged with a crime that he didn't commit. I know this because my late cousin did the shooting and our whole neighborhood watched. Bucket was in the wrong place at the wrong time and as many know, we are products of a "No Snitching" culture.

As a result, the only work Bucket can find after 10 years of false imprisonment is that of laborer with the Mexicans who post up in front of 7-Eleven, or as a freelance dishwasher. Bucket's no angel, but he's also not a felon and doesn't deserve to be excluded from pop culture no more than Miss Sheryl or Dontay, who represents the definition of redemption to me.

I placed our cups at the table and the bottle in the center. "Me and Miss Sheryl are gonna whip ass tonight, hurry up, Dontay!" I yelled.

Dontay cleans nonstop. Roaches sleeping in the fridge, roaches relay racing out of the cabinets carrying cereal boxes, purchasing homes, building families, slipping through cracks for fun and weaving in and out of death -- Dontay bleaches them all. Dontay doesn't take handouts from us and won't go on government assistance. He couldn't contribute to the chips and vodka that week so he's cleaned for Miss Sheryl and would clean for Miss Sheryl even if there were no chips and vodka.

"Boy we ready to play the cards. Stop acting selfie and sit yo ass at the table!" yelled Miss Sheryl from another room. We all laugh. Miss Sheryl's rooms are separated by white sheets; they look like a soiled ghost at night when the wind blows. Her son Meaty stole and sold her doors years ago and housing never replaced them.

Dontay joined us at the table. "Takin forever, boy, wit dem big ass feet!" yelled a happy Bucket. Dontay was wearing my old shoes. They are 13's and busting at the seams but Dontay's a size 8 and his foot is digging through the side. His arms are chunked and wrapped in healed sores from years of drug abuse. He's eight years clean off of the hard stuff now, but I met him way back when I was 13, in his wild days.

He was huddled over his girlfriend in the alley behind my house. I watched moments before as she performed an abortion on herself with a twisted coat hanger. She screamed like the sirens we hear all day. I couldn't stop looking at her. He gazed too, in and out of a nod and then signaled me for help. I joined them. Together we dragged her to Johns Hopkins Hospital, which was under a mile away. Blood scabbed and dried on my hands, Nikes and hooping shorts; she lived until she OD'd months later. I've been cool with Dontay ever since.

"Tryin get dem roach eggs, tee-he, tee-he he he, gotta get the bleach on da roach eggs! Den dey won't come back!" Dontay replied as he sat at the table.

I dealt the first hand. Miss Sheryl reminded me to deal to the left. "Always deal to the left, boy, the rule don't change!" she said. She has the widest jaws in the history of wide and jaws, thicker than both of her bloated caramel arms, which are thigh-size. I collected the cards, reshuffled and dealt to the left. And there we were -- my job-hungry unemployed old heads and me the overworked college professor.

College professor?

Not the kind of professor that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars for teaching one class a year but a broke-ass adjunct who makes hundreds of dollars for teaching thousands of classes a year. The other day I read an article about an adjunct who died in a homeless shelter and I wasn't surprised; panhandlers make triple, and trust me, I've done the research, I should be looking for a corner to set up shop.

I have a little more than my friends but still feel their pain. My equation for survival is teaching at three colleges, substituting, freelance Web designing, freelance graphic designing, rap video director, wedding photographer and tutor -- the proceeds from all of these are swallowed by my mortgage, cigarettes, rail vodka and Ramen noodles. I used to eat only free-range organic shit, I used to live in Whole Foods, I used to drink top shelf -- I used to be able to afford pop culture.

But long gone are the days when I pumped crack into the very neighborhood where we hold our card game. Eons since I had to stay up all night counting money until my fingers cramped. Since I had to lie on my back to kick my safe closed and I wore and treated Gucci like Hanes and drove Mercedes CL's and gave X5 beamers to my girlfriends -- my good ole days.

Eventually the mass death of my close friends caused me to leave the drug game in search of a better life. Ten-plus years and three college degrees later, I'm back where I started, just like my card-playing friends: too poor to participate in pop culture. Too poor to give a fuck about a selfie or what Kanye said or Beyoncé's new album and the 17 videos it came with.

"Put me on that Obamacare when you can, college boy!" Sheryl says to me as I contemplate the number of books I can make out of my shitty hand. We all laugh. I am the only one in the room with the skill set to figure it out, but we all really see Obamacare as another bill and from what I hear, the website is as broke as we are. We love Barack, Michelle, their lovely daughters and his dog Bo as much as any African-American family, but not like in 2008.

The Obama feeling in 2008 isn't the same as the Obama feeling in 2014. Obama had us dream chasing in 2008. My friends and I wanted him to be our dad and best friend and mentor and favorite uncle. Shit, I wanted to take selfies with him. He was a biracial swirl of black and white Jesus sent to deliver us. To bless people stuck under the slums like Sheryl, Bucket, Dontay and I with jobs, access to the definition of words like selfie and hope -- REAL HOPE.

But in 2014 it feels the same as Bush, or Clinton, or any other president. The rich are copping new boats and we still are using the oven to heat up our houses in the winter, while eating our cereal with forks to preserve milk. America still feels like America, a place where you have to pay to play, any and everywhere even here at our broke-ass card game.

1 a.m. rolls around and we're faded, everyone but Miss Sheryl, that is, because dialysis prohibits her from drinking. My kidney pounds, her 2008 Obama for Pres T-shirt stares back at me all stretched out of shape, making Barack look like Sinbad. No one knows who won because really, we all lost. Dontay is asleep because I saw the roaches creeping back and Bucket staggered out.

I looked at Miss Sheryl, "We could take a late night selfie now but I swapped my iPhone for a boost mobile, $30 payment!"

She laughed and said, "Baby, what's a selfie again?"

D. Watkins is an Editor at Large for Salon. He is also a writer on the HBO limited series "We Own This City" and a professor at the University of Baltimore. Watkins is the author of the award-winning, New York Times best-selling memoirs “ The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America ”, " The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir ," " Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised: A Memoir of Survival and Hope " as well as " We Speak For Ourselves: How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress ." His new books, " Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments ," and " The Wire: A Complete Visual History " are out now.

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Dwight Watkins, former drug dealer, forges a new identity: D. Watkins, author

Credit: Jonathan Hanson

By Bret McCabe

This past May, writer Dwight Watkins sat in the midtown Manhattan offices of Grand Central Publishing waiting for the chance to make his pitch. He didn't have an appointment. He wasn't sure how much time he was going to get with the vice president of the paperback division—should he even get in to see her. All he knew was that he wanted a book deal for his memoir. And he understood that he would have to convince somebody to gamble on him.

The 34-year-old Watkins, Ed '11 (MEd), had been in discussions with two publishers previously, but each time, no dice. Watkins recognizes that he's an unknown variable. In talking with publishers, he repeatedly hears a number of other books mentioned as comparisons: MK Asante's Buck , Ta-Nehisi Coates' Beautiful Struggle , Wes Moore's The Other Wes Moore . Over the past decade, these highly regarded and emotionally gripping memoirs offered a peek inside what it's like to grow up young and black in contemporary urban America.

These narratives are part of a larger tradition of African-American autobiography that practically stretches back to when representatives from 13 colonies declared themselves the United States of America. In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano , first published in 1789, freedman Equiano chronicles his journey into and out of slavery, and ever since, African-Americans have documented the long economic, psychological, and cultural shadow of being imported like commodities to this country. These works include everything from Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery to Richard Wright's Black Boy and John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers , to Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father and the aforementioned books by Asante, Coates, and Moore.

Watkins knows he is and isn't like those recent authors to whom he's compared. "You put me next to those guys, I look like black Scarface," he says, adding that he's "not the type of black guy [publishers] usually work with."

He's joking, but it's a sarcasm rooted in understanding that he's a walking contradiction. He's the young, urban black man who believes in education and who excelled academically, working hard to improve his lot in life. He's also the young, urban black man who sold death to his own people by being a drug dealer. That he's both is one of the main reasons Watkins is even getting into the room with a publisher. As D. Watkins, writing about his journey from drug dealer to aspiring writer has made him Internet infamous.

In February, his "Too Poor for Pop Culture" essay went viral almost immediately after it appeared on the website Salon . It's a vivid meditation about how little pop culture matters to the people who live paycheck to paycheck. Two more essays followed—"How Glamorizing Drugs Is Killing Black Kids" and "Poor Black People Don't Work? Lessons of a Former Dope Dealer"—that people eagerly shared and tweeted. Here was a guy writing about people wagering on junky fights, playing cards in a room with bedsheets for walls, and losing friends to guns and drugs. His voice was lively and witty, his observations detailed, and his bluntness sobering. On entering a friend's house to play cards: "Two taps on the door, it opened and the gang was all there—four disenfranchised African-Americans posted up in a 9 x 11 prison-size tenement, one of those spots where you enter the front door, take a half-step, and land in the yard."

Publishers began to notice that people wanted to read what Watkins had to say. His agent had put his proposal in the hands of a Grand Central editor who liked it, but she didn't get to make the deals. He'd have to sell himself to her boss. So when he and some friends drove to New York for an event in May and the possibility of meeting with the VP was offered, Watkins jumped at it. An hour went by as he waited in the office, then another. His friends buzzed his cell phone wanting to know if he was ready to be scooped up yet. "My friends are like, 'Yo, what's up?'" Watkins recalls. "I'm like, 'Go to Brooklyn. I'll sit here all night if I have to.'"

Eventually he was told he was going to get 15 minutes with the VP. Which story was Watkins going to tell her? He's an aspiring young African-American writer, but he's also a young black guy who used to sell drugs. Trying to put the two together prompted one publisher to tell him he imagined Watkins' potential reading market being white people who watch Breaking Bad . You know, a gritty morality tale. "I didn't break bad," Watkins says. He didn't make a moral compromise to support himself; he simply went to work in one of the few openings he saw around him. "There was a time when I was a kid when I thought selling drugs was legal. It looked legal. I had an extremely flawed mentality, but if that didn't happen I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today."

At the same time, Watkins is still fighting his way out of where he came from. Yes, he is no longer selling drugs, has moved away from his old neighborhood, and has earned two graduate degrees, but he's still starting his career. And that's what sets him apart: His story is rooted in contemporary class consciousness, coming from the perspective of somebody who didn't just come from little. He's still there. It's what distinguishes him from the authors to whom he's been compared. MK Asante, now a good friend and mentor to Watkins, is a successful writer, filmmaker, and English professor at Morgan State University. Wes Moore is a successful businessman, a military veteran, and a Johns Hopkins trustee. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic and one of the most incisive thinkers about race and politics in America. Watkins ekes out a living with freelance writing, adjunct teaching at Coppin State University and Sojourner-Douglass College, substitute teaching, and doing for-hire video work with his friend David Manigault, which can run from making music videos for hip-hop artists to commemorative videos for weddings and funerals.

"My story is different because I didn't make it out yet," Watkins says. "Can I make it? Maybe. Have some good things happened to me based on where I come from and what my family did? Sure. But if David calls me up and says, 'Yo, you want to work this funeral with me?' I'm going to say yes."

Watkins turned his 15 minutes with the VP into an hour, and his debut memoir, Cook Up , is scheduled for release by Grand Central in 2015. In it, he hopes to chronicle how and why he decided to change his life—to leave behind the street economy and try to forge a writing career. He wants to talk about the pointless toil of drug dealing, the power of education to help people find ways out of hardship, the importance of art in young people's lives, and the worth of working toward a life away from the streets.

In short, Watkins is writing a perennial American dream narrative, a Horatio Alger saga of overcoming adversity. Only he's doing it after that dream has long since been demystified, when the American narrative for most people isn't a triumph over adversity but a steady struggle to get by. That focus makes his writing a potent exploration of income inequality, and he's doing it as somebody straddling two worlds. He's writing about the underemployed, the undereducated, the people who only appear in the newspaper in crime blotters or homicide reports, those who don't know what other possibilities might be out there because they've never been out of their neighborhood.

And he's doing it in stories riddled with pride, style, and wit. "When I stopped selling drugs, there were people who couldn't believe that I wasn't in the streets selling drugs," he says. "They didn't believe me. They didn't believe that the money wasn't coming in like it was. Now that I'm writing about it, it's the other way around. 'You were in the streets? How did you go to college? How did you do your homework?' I'm like, 'I'm not a fucking animal. Just because I did one doesn't mean I can't do the other.'

"I want to put enough in my book to explain what life was like for me coming up," Watkins continues, "and try to point out that it's not really how you start life, it's how you finish."

Watkins arrives at an early evening meeting in June looking sharp in denim and a pressed long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the neck. He's a solidly built, six-foot-one or –two man with an introverted confidence. His sleepy eyes calmly drink in everything around him as if he's always taking notes.

"Man, this is going to be a tough month," he says, taking a seat with a sigh. He had just finished the first day of teaching for a monthlong summer class at Coppin State, which meets every day from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. with a lunch break. He'd rather be working on his book, but the money is too good to pass up.

He's written three drafts of his life so far, one of which was his thesis project for the University of Baltimore Master of Fine Arts degree that he completed in June. Right now, what he has is too filled with friends and loved ones getting killed, friends going to jail, and more friends and loved ones getting killed. Elements of that saga are going to be in his memoir, but death isn't the subject of Watkins' life. "I'm trying to figure out how to focus on my own journey without only talking about the impact that these murders were having on me," he says. "My biggest issue with my memoir right now is that the biggest reason I decided to leave the street was all of my friends are just gone. They're just dead. You're on the corner with a group of guys you knew since you're a kid, and a few years later you're out there with a new group of kids. And somehow you're the last one left. That bullet missed you."

He wants to celebrate how he got to this point in his life, what he's learned along the way, and why telling stories like his matters. He feels if he can leave drug dealing behind, others can too. "No one should feel irrelevant or inadequate," he says. "The same things you need to make it in the job world or the school world are some of the things you need to make it on the street, but people get intimidated by that. They think that they don't have any place in that world."

Watkins used to feel he didn't either. He was born and raised in an East Baltimore neighborhood where the drug activity was so bad in the 1980s and 1990s that the Baltimore police nicknamed it "Little Bronx." He excelled academically at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, well enough to get into college when he graduated in 1998. He wanted to work with kids and thought about becoming a history professor, but school didn't sit right with him at first. He enrolled at Loyola University, but his mind was elsewhere. His stepbrother had been murdered the year before, and he felt out of place at the predominantly white university. He lasted a little less than a year before dropping out to sell cocaine and heroin back in East Baltimore.

He was entering the only family business he'd ever known. In his Salon articles and his "Stoop Stories" piece for the online magazine aeon, Watkins talks about his late older brother, whom he calls Bip in his writings. Bip sold drugs and was murdered before Watkins entered college. A close friend of Watkins who started selling drugs for Bip was also murdered. Feeling depressed and alienated at school, Watkins took the cash and drug stash that his brother kept in a safe and used it as the seed for his own selling. That drug business lasted nearly five years before he decided to go back to college at the University of Baltimore.

During that time, he operated a vehicle registration shop, but he was still trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He considered being a real estate appraiser and even took a class to get certified, but he never pursued it. He thought about becoming a teacher because he wanted to work with kids, and he entered the Johns Hopkins School of Education in 2009 after graduating from UB. While earning his teaching degree, he met MK Asante playing basketball, and when Asante was heading to a 2010 literary conference in London that November, he invited Watkins to come with him.

That experience inspired him to become a writer, and he decided to pursue an MFA immediately after graduating from Johns Hopkins. "It fit everything that I wanted to do," he says. "It combined my interest in history and storytelling and the possibility of working with young people. It seemed like a way to make a difference, a way to express yourself, a way to connect with other people."

He intuitively understood that everything in life is copy, and he didn't shy away from writing about his street life for assignments. In talking about this portion of his life, Watkins is honest and direct about his own activity but demurs from saying much about other people, either close to him or mere acquaintances, who might still be involved in the shadow economy. He has no problem owning up to his actions; he just doesn't want to get anybody else in trouble.

Besides, he has plenty of stories to tell. Watkins' writing is lean and moves fast—he admires the bluntly provocative American writers Sherman Alexie and Chuck Palahniuk for the constant momentum of their sentences—and he's able to be vivid and visceral without overwriting. He opens his "Poor Black People Don't Work?" Salon essay with a simple introduction of a character and then quickly sketches an idea of her in body and mind: "My grandma Famma Gill worked her ass off. Her worn, plump, diabetic hands scrubbed crud off chipped dishes minutes after she finished a 10-hour shift." Two paragraphs after this touching portrait, he's recalling slicing the tips of his fingers off while "shaving marble-size pieces of crack into smaller bits before shoving them into long glass vials." The juxtaposition is intentional—two workers, two sets of damaged hands—and candidly matter-of-fact.

Watkins talks about dealing drugs the way a low-wage employee talks about working at the doughnut shop. It's monotonous, disheartening, and sometimes feels like a dead-end job going nowhere, but it's also marked by the ordinary humor, pathos, and boredom common to any position at the bottom of the service industry. What Watkins says about dealing is probably common sense to anybody familiar with the trade and fascinating to those who aren't. For instance: In Watkins' experience, crack didn't take over Baltimore's drug economy the way it did in New York and Los Angeles in the 1980s, where the drug made some dealers kingpins overnight. Instead, Baltimore's drug trade is dominated by heroin, cocaine, and pills. These are three different highs with three different types of customers. A junky, unlike a crack addict, isn't coming back for more every 45 minutes. Heroin addicts are maintenance users, as brand loyal as people who only buy Apple products.

"You have to build a heroin business like you're building a restaurant," Watkins says. "You have to build that clientele up. You have to make sure you have a product that you would put your name on, something that will make them come back for more. I never had patience to build a heroin spot like that because you got to get up at 4 in the morning to sell that shit." He laughs brusquely. "If you let some of the rappers tell it, selling drugs is easy, anybody can do it, and it's a quick way to make money," he says. "I don't know why they call it fast money. It's not fast. That shit takes time ."

Such mundane drug-dealing details aren't the common folklore documented in hip-hop, crime movies, and video games. Yes, some popular entertainments explore this aspect of the inner-city life—notably the television drama The Wire , Richard Price's novel Clockers (and Spike Lee's film adaptation), hip-hop artist Nas' Illmatic album—but they're the exceptions. And in Watkins' telling, the drudgery is scarred by the work's psychological toil. In "Too Poor for Pop Culture" he writes: "Working 100-plus hours a week, burying best friends, seeing their moms cry, and feeling their tears spill on you is hell. Being beat on by beat cops is hell. Looking at that shoebox full of cash under your bed and noticing the shoebox full of obituaries next to it is hell."

"It's fascinating for me to read [Watkins'] stuff because I don't know what it feels like," says David Maginault, who has known Watkins since high school. "I wasn't surprised that he got into that. All of us could get into it growing up in East Baltimore. It's like going to the corner store."

Maginault only knows about such activity as a bystander. He hasn't stood on a corner to make money. He hasn't stomped on cocaine to get it ready to sell on the street. "I can't relate to knowing what that's like," Maginault says. "I mean, a lot of his homies got killed—and when I mean 'got killed,' he saw it. And I think his writing is paying homage to friends that he's lost and is a release for him to not have to go back to that world."

Not everybody who grows up in an economically depressed neighborhood knows how its illegal economies operate, and Watkins' essays deliver a different picture of the crime-ridden neighborhood than what appears up in news reports. You can live in a bad neighborhood and not be in the streets selling drugs, Watkins says, pointing out that it's possible to be around drug dealing and not know anything about dealers' lives. "You can live in a neighborhood and see, 'OK, [a drug dealer] has a Lexus,'" he says. "But you don't know the whole story. You don't know how much he paid for the car. You don't know if he got it from a police auction. You don't know if it's leased in somebody else's name."

For more than 40 years, the War on Drugs has focused on a one-dimensional idea of who the young, black, inner-city drug dealer is. It's an image that's been shaped by the usual popular culture suspects, but the ongoing success of that image speaks more to it as a commodity than its accuracy. What makes Watkins' story sting is that it isn't simply a journey of a young black man away from drug dealing; it's the more pressing story of a member of the underclass wanting to be recognized as human.

"A lot of times when people from different places look at us, they put us all in the same box," Watkins says. "Like, 'All these guys from East Baltimore, they all wear big jeans—they wear tight jeans now, but we wore big jeans—all these guys sell drugs and are knuckleheads and none of these guys can read.' And, you know, we love the O's game like anyone else would love an O's game. We cheer for the Ravens. When our family members get hurt, we suffer. We all going through the same human things, but sometimes we're viewed as subhuman. So I want to bring in some of those real life stories, with the purpose of humanizing the whole thing.

On May 17, 40-year-old John Jackson was among a group of people gathered on North Caroline Street in East Baltimore around 11 p.m. when somebody started shooting. Jackson was hit in the head and killed, though he wasn't officially pronounced dead until May 21. (He was an organ donor, and the intervening days allowed for harvesting.) He wasn't involved in the street economy; he was a father of two who worked for the city. And Watkins, like many people in the neighborhood, knew him simply by his nickname, Free.

Watkins had run into him just a few days earlier, and the two sat on a park bench chatting, watching hoops. "I know these dudes with tattoos all over their faces who sit around with gun magazines all day and dudes who do all this treacherous, grimy, disgusting shit, and the dude who gets popped is the fucking organ donor?" he says. "That could happen to anybody . And people would come through with pictures of you on their T-shirt, and people would pour some Hennessy out, but nobody else would care."

On July 13 Salon published Watkins' "Gunplay Is All I Know," an angry, passionate, and moving essay that was in part an obituary for Free and in part a disarmingly vulnerable confession that being a bystander to murder never gets easy:

I'm naive to be surprised by Free's murder. Or my cousin Damon who was 36, my friend Nard who was 24, or Dev at 20, or DI at 17, or Bip at 18, or Man Man at 16, or Bryant at 12, or Don Don at 22, or LA at 35 or the countless other people I could name.

I'm still in East Baltimore, and even though I signed a book deal, I'm nowhere near rich and my essays can't block bullets.

"I don't believe in any of that desensitized-to-violence shit," Watkins says. "I think that we just have different coping mechanisms. I think it looks tough to say, 'Oh, I've seen so many murders, that shit don't mean nothing.' But that shit is not true. I still get nightmares about murders I saw. And we don't talk about it or open up about it."

It wasn't until he started writing that Watkins was able to open up about it himself—"Writing keeps me human to the point where I can feel," he says—but that doesn't mean he's made sense of everything he's experienced. Like the time he took a gun to the prom. It was a matter of protection, he explains casually, since young guys in his neighborhood were being jumped by guys from another neighborhood. But it's still hard for him to fathom how he was able to get a gun in the first place. "As a teenager, it was easier for me to get a gun than it was to get a job," he says. "I'm not talking about little cap guns. I'm talking serious shit, Desert Eagle, Mack 10, HKs, stuff with straps and belts and all types of clips and AR-15s. You know who to go to and they've got inventory, scopes, lasers, shit you've got to plug in walls. And not just a little bit. You can shop . Where does this shit come from?"

Lester Spence, a Johns Hopkins associate professor of political science (who knew Watkins on the basketball court before learning he was a writer), says that storytelling like his is filling a void that mainstream journalism has left behind. Watkins writes about inner-city life from the point of view of someone living it, and Spence sees Watkins' work as a complement to his own research exploring the impact a shift from industrial to postindustrial economies in American cities over the past 40 years has had on black politics and urban life.

For one thing, deindustrialization has coincided with media consolidation and the constriction of newspaper staffs and budgets. Many daily newspapers don't have the editorial luxury to support investigative journalism that might examine the lives of its residents in depth. As a result, the stories that do get reported are reactionary, less time-intensive items that rely on available information, such as who got shot where and when.

The absence of journalistic storytelling allows entertainment to acquire the veneer of realism and be consumed as reportage. "Gangster rap purported to be telling the truth, and people hear it and tend to think that's the way it really is," Spence says. "So let's say [early rap artists] were reporting. N.W.A.'s 'Dope Man' came out in 1987. Even if they were telling the truth, [that was] almost 30 years ago." Watkins' writing fills this narrative void. "The people who are qualified to tell these stories, most of them aren't writers like D.," Spence says. "The game itself, the political economy, is decimating that population. So the people who can actually tell the story effectively, they're not around to tell it."

That's one reason why Watkins thinks he's a good publishing gamble: There's a market for the stories he's telling because nobody else is doing them. "I think that my side of the story is never really told at all, it usually comes from the perspective of a cop, or the perspective of a bystander just looking out the window," he says. "I'm not saying I have a monopoly on the experiences of Baltimore, this is just the shit I've been through. And I think the right book about the street experience could be a cult classic. It could be branded like a hot sneaker—I mean, who thought people would pay $300 for Dr. Dre headphones? There are nontraditional readers out there that [publishers] aren't thinking about, and I want to reach them."

If the white person who watches Breaking Bad is curious, that's cool. But Watkins is more interested in reaching somebody who grew up like him, like the young guy who emailed him saying he saw his article on Facebook and now wants to be a writer. "Right now, it's hard enough to find a kid that reads, let alone one that wants to write for a living," he says. He just wants to let other young people know that their stories matter, and they can be the one to tell them. "I want them to be, like, my neighborhood has a drug dealer. It has a single mom and a grandma who gets a check. The neighborhood has a guy who works for the city but he's not supposed to be living there because he makes too much to get that project rent. So all this is going on in the neighborhood and in the midst of it all, this guy, he writes stories . That's what I want. I want it to be an option."

Bret McCabe, A&S '94, is the magazine's senior writer.

Posted in Arts+Culture

Tagged d. watkins

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Longreads : The best longform stories on the web

Too Poor for Pop Culture?

“What the fuck is a selfie?” said Miss Sheryl.

“when a stupid person with a smartphone flicks themselves and looks at it,” i said to the room. she replied with a raised eyebrow, “oh”, it’s amazing how the news seems so instant to most from my generation with our iphones, wi-fi, tablets and ipads, but actually it isn’t. the idea of information being class-based as well became evident to me when i watched my friends talk about a weeks-old story as if it happened yesterday., miss sheryl doesn’t have a computer and definitely wouldn’t know what a selfie is. her cell runs on minutes and doesn’t have a camera. like many of us, she’s too poor to participate in pop culture. she’s on public assistance living in public housing and scrambles for odd jobs to survive..

— D. Watkins, writing in Salon, on how class differences influence the consumption of pop culture. Read more from Salon in the Longreads archive .

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The good, the bad and the trashy: The pop culture viewing that helped us escape 2020

From real housewives to real depression, anne t. donahue and peter knegt dare to take a look back.

Social Sharing

Anne T. Donahue and Peter Knegt each write regular columns for CBC Arts, and they decided to join forces to reflect on what the pop culture they consumed to get them through 2020.

Peter Knegt: Anne! It's somehow almost 2021, and I thought maybe we could "celebrate" by both acknowledging we are likely to make it through this year and discussing how exactly we managed this — namely, the pop culture we consumed to numb our way through what at many points felt like the apocalypse. You down?

Anne T. Donahue: I have never been more down in my life. First, to congratulate ourselves on making it through this ghoulish year. And second, to talk about the things I've been screaming about on Twitter, only with more thought than simply typing in all-caps, "THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK ARE MY BEST FRIENDS."

Which I guess make for the perfect segue. As a woman who once prided herself on being above reality television (note: I was an insufferable, snobby, naive fool), it became my security blanket this year. I began with Vanderpump Rules . Then I transitioned to Real Housewives : I started in Beverly Hills , made my way to New York , shimmied over to Potomac , spent some quality time with New Jersey , and am now in Orange County . And don't even get me started on Salt Lake City .

The thing is, it's so far from my own day-to-day life. It's so devoid of real, consequential drama, and it's so beautifully crafted, edited, and executed that it's morphed from a boredom watch to a bona fide cultural life raft. For a few hours every day, I can exist in a world that is seemingly untouched by our actual one. Plus, I can finally understand all the references my friends have been making for years. Clap! Clap! Clap!

PK: Ok, so we went about these past nine months a little differently but I am definitely feeling like you took the better route? I am genuinely ashamed that despite being locked in my house for the worst three quarters of a year I have still never seen an episode of Real Housewives , but I'm thinking maybe the rest of this winter should be devoted to it exclusively? (Please tell me where to start.)

That is not to say I didn't have an equivalent phase of escapism in my quar viewing. I rewatched Sex and the City in all its problematic entirety, as I did every single season of RuPaul's Drag Race and all its spinoffs. But I did try to start things off high-brow. When everything went down, one of my main sources of optimism was considering this as an opportunity to watch all this stuff I should have watched but never did. I made a list of mostly HBO series I'd never finished and got a subscription to the Criterion Channel and was all, "I am going to watch every single Ingmar Bergman film!" But by the end of April, I was just no longer capable of consuming anything remotely challenging. I think it was finally watching The Leftovers that truly did me in, which makes sense given it is absolutely the last thing you need when you are crippled with anxiety that the world is maybe ending. (Although going to bed thinking of sweaty Justin Theroux on a run definitely got me through a few lonely nights.)

ATD: Honestly, that's the most sophisticated thing I've ever heard in my life: I got a subscription to the Criterion Channel . It makes me want to do it now! I won't, but oh man!

That said, I absolutely understand. I dabbled in a few high-ish brow things this year, but every time I thought about really delving into a series I've always wanted to watch but hadn't, I felt overwhelmed and stressed and worried that I'd make the wrong choice. Miniseries were okay: Murder on Madison Beach was phenomenal, and I'll Be Gone in the Dark made me weep. I also got really into Chernobyl right before our collective nightmare struck (days before the province sent that false warning about the Pickering power plant , which we all should've taken as some sort of sign of things to come), and I rewatched Succession no less than 18 times before I realized I was ruining it for myself.

What surprised me the most this year, though, was the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries (on Netflix). I started watching it assuming it'd deliver the same level of camp as Robert Stack circa 1989, but it was thoughtful and heart-wrenching and terrifying and shockingly well done. In the second instalment, there was an episode about the 2011 tsunami in Japan and it absolutely destroyed me. Which you'd think I may want to avoid amidst our current global crises, but it presented a really beautiful approach to thinking about death, which felt like a reprieve from thinking about it all the time in the way we've seemed to this year.

Were you surprised by anything this year? I surprised myself by continuing to not watch The Morning Show , which I know I'd like but just can't care about.

PK: I'm not sure if you would? Though I watched the entire thing despite generally disliking every episode and will probably do the same with season 2 now that Julianna Margulies is joining the cast. Which was definitely a 2020 trend for me: continuing to watch many series I didn't even enjoy because it just felt like I might as well since time is no longer valuable! Like, I find The Flight Attendant to be horribly written garbage and yet every week I press play again because what else am I going to do?

As for surprising, for whatever reason I had kind of assumed there would be a lack of great new content this year. But so much had seemingly just finished production when everything went down, and we were pretty consistently blessed all year long. The Plot Against America , Mrs. America , I May Destroy You , Lovecraft Country, Normal People , the new seasons of Pen15 and The Crown . And have you seen The Great ? I kept putting it off because it just didn't seem appealing but was I ever wrong. It is honestly the funniest show of the year and Elle Fanning and Nicolas Hoult just kill it. Not enough people seem to be talking about it.

What's also great about all those shows I just listed is that most of them are set very much in the past, which was definitely something I found comforting. I don't know about you, but watching anything contemporary just felt depressing. I don't want to watch people freely hugging or dancing in public spaces until I can do the same.

ATD: Oh, that's relatable. I've found watching anything contemporary stresses me out because it feels like drama on top of drama. Even if it's funny! I've heard The Great is amazing and Pen15 is a game-changer, and as a Princess Diana stan I know it's my duty to watch the latest season of The Crown . But even new series set in the past feel like too much. Which is ironic when you think about how much "reality" (LOL) TV I've been shotgunning. To me, those plots aren't real and the low stakes feel like a relief. But scripted series? That are well-written and good? No. I'll care about everybody involved way too much and my life will be consumed by whether or not they (yes, the characters) are okay. And saying that out loud certainly makes it sound like I'm not!

What about movies? Right before this nightmare began, I saw Emma., which I absolutely LOVED. Anya Taylor-Joy thrived this year, and we're all the better for it. But every movie I was excited to see I just ... didn't? First, I wasn't about to go to a movie theatre, are you kidding me? And second, I felt like I was already spending so much time in front of my screens — I couldn't commit to another two-ish hours of story and conflict. This year really illuminated that my favourite way to see movies is to leave my house and watch in a big room with lots of strangers. And I didn't know how much that type of escape meant to me until I couldn't do it. I'd always rented movies (hello, child of the 1990s), but "going to the movies" has always felt like a treat. Which probably makes me sound elderly, especially when thinking about this deal between Warner Bros. and HBO Max. Honestly, a part of me thought, "Well, I guess I won't be watching a lot of movies anymore!" when I read about their zest for on-demand. Streaming just always feels like work . (Literally. When I stream movies, it's usually when I'm reviewing them.)

PK: So I have to confess it's possible I am partly responsible for cursing this year because on January 1, 2020, I made 10 of my friends join me at a matinee of Cats . That's how I started 2020: WITH CATS . In my slight defence it was my birthday and it was definitely intended to be watched with a wink (edibles may have been involved). But I feel like as a result, I got reprimanded by God who then said, "I will destroy the movies with a plague!" And honestly, that was one of the hardest things to watch happen in terms of how the pandemic disrupted our downtime: movie theatres closed, and the entire notion of their existence has been put into real jeopardy.

I also love going to the movies, and had just settled in to a new routine of heading to the recently reopened Paradise Cinema in Toronto a couple times a week for their retrospective programming when COVID hit here. ( Cats , thankfully, wasn't the last movie I saw in a cinema: that would be Paris is Burning .) So how I reacted initially was going probably the longest I ever have without watching any movies whatsoever. My lockdown attention span had been reduced to an absolute max of an hour anyway.

I did eventually adjust to reality and found my way back to movies (at home), particularly in the last few months. I watched a dozen movies at virtual TIFF ( Nomadland and Beans being standouts), and then again at virtual Inside Out ( No Ordinary Man and The Strong Ones are so good). And I was definitely clicking play on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm the second it was released (and was happy to find my anticipation warranted). While lately I've been lucky enough to enjoy screener season (give Minari all the COVID Oscars), I am definitely ready for a world without cinemas to no longer be.

That said, I am glad I was stopped from ever seeing one movie in cinema: The Prom , which I saw last week in a horrendous error of judgment assuming that no movie starring both Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman could be unwatchable. I was wrong. Because just as he did with Cats some 11 dark months ago, James Corden (in a role that should not have been played by a straight man) descended onto a screen in front of me to remind me that there are some things about going to the movies that I should never mourn — namely, watching anything with him in it.

ATD: 2021 will be the year we purge James Corden from our pop culture mainframe. Also, the year in which we all re-watch Cats because maybe it's the only way to reverse and reclaim time.

I've heard The Prom was terrible, and not even in a good way. Between that, The Politician and Ratched , do we maybe give Ryan Murphy a timeout next year? Does he need a break? Is he tired? I know I'm tired, so he's gotta be.

Which brings me to our last point: how would you sum up this year when averaging out the pop culture landscape? I mean, music was great — we got new Lady Gaga, Miley, "WAP," and Phoebe Bridgers. And I made it a point to make my neighbours uncomfortable while blaring Fetch the Bolt Cutters this spring when I was cleaning my car. (In my defence, their four-year-old daughter was outside, and if I can't introduce her to Fiona now, when can I?) TV and movies weren't bad at all — I just failed to connect with a lot of what came out, but that was my own fault. I was too preoccupied with existing in survival mode that I couldn't lend the bandwidth to anything other than the Housewives and various true crime docs.

It almost felt like a lost year, where even the best stuff was tossed into the quicksand and left for us to find when and if we found the time. Being an active pop culture consumer felt like work. As much as I may have liked something, I don't know if I really enjoyed anything. And that makes me sad! You know me, and you know I love to actively celebrate good pop culture. I hope I re-learn how to do it in 2021, because I'm almost angry at myself for missing things that brought so many people joy.

PK: I would get into music but I literally wrote 2000 words on how music helped me get through this year last week and honestly, I too am tired. I will say, though, that I feel like when we look back at this year, music will stand out as its greatest pop cultural asset — I mean, even just for Fiona alone.

That said, I am looking forward to taking a cue from you and pursuing a more survival-mode cultural consumption for the rest of this nightmare of a winter. Which leads to me to remind you that you never told me which season of Housewives I should kick off 2021 by falling into a deep abyss of comfort to? ATD: I'm so tempted to say Beverly Hills , but the real truth is New York . You must start with New York . It is iconic. It is bananas. It is the reason why any of us are even here. Then you must chase it with Potomac. And you will be changed. PK: Bless you, Anne.

Queeries is Knegt's weekly column that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. Anne-iversaries is Donahue's bi-weekly column that explores and celebrates the pop culture that defined the '90s and 2000s and the way it affects us now. You can check out a few editions of both below.

Queeries Rain on me: Navigating the five stages of pandemic grief through the pop music of 2020
Anne-iversaries The Social Network is a horror movie — one that only gets scarier over time
Queeries The day the numbers went away: A movie box office nerd mourns the loss of a lifelong obsession
Anne-iversaries Looking to radically reset your life? Be wary of the superficial Eat Pray Love approach
Queeries 10 ways to use our quarantines to become better people through queer film, TV, books and music
Anne-iversaries All the women who independent: How Charlie's Angels celebrated finding your own unique feminism

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne T. Donahue is a writer and person from Cambridge, Ontario. You can buy her first book, Nobody Cares, right now and wherever you typically buy them. She just asks that you read this piece first.

Pop Culture Criticism: A How-To For Beginners

Post author By Anna Hamilton
Post date July 15, 2021

It seems like pop culture criticism is everywhere these days, from Twitter threads and newsletters to podcasts and critical essays. If you want to write pop culture criticism but have no idea how to get into it, here is a quick guide to getting started.

If you’re really new to the form, start by reading some pop culture criticism—and lots of it . Part of learning how to write well is reading as much as you can, and it’s true even for a specific type of writing like pop culture criticism. Bitch Media —which, in the interest of full disclosure, is a publication that I contribute to semi-regularly—is, in my opinion, the gold standard of in-depth pop culture analysis and an excellent place to begin. Their diverse roster of contributors and commitment to intersectionality is particularly impressive, as is the variety of pop culture properties that their writers cover. The A.V. Club is great, too although they tend to publish more reviews and recaps than criticism.

Know the difference between a puff piece, a review, and a critical piece. These things are distinct, and knowing the differences between them is important! Puff pieces tend to be about celebrities, and while some purple prose on celebs’ beauty and talent might be okay for entertainment magazines (ask me how many yawn-inducing Vanity Fair profiles of celebs I read growing up), a more critical piece by design will not share many characteristics with a fawning profile. The point of a review is to communicate to the reader whether the book, movie, or other property being reviewed is worth the reader’s time and/or money invested in that thing. A piece of pop culture analysis might contain elements similar to a review, but pop culture criticism is really its own form – and an important one. As Emily VanDerWerff wrote in a 2018 piece for Vox on why cultural criticism is necessary: “We need cultural criticism not just to tell us which movies to go see and which ones to avoid, but to tell us things we already knew but didn’t know how to express. If reporting can explain the world to us, cultural criticism can explain us to us.”

Choose your scope — and the format for your analysis — wisely. If you’re analyzing a TV show, will you focus on one episode? A character’s arc through several episodes? An entire season of the show? If you’re new to pop culture analysis, you’ll probably not want to just start an entire podcast on the thing you want to examine; a tweet thread, a newsletter installment, or blog post might be a better starting point if you’re new to the form.

Make sure to pitch a fully developed idea to editors rather than just saying that you want to “write about [pop culture thing]” as your lede. I’m suggesting this because I have made this exact mistake many, many times. In general, it is best to have a specific angle that you want to take on a pop culture property instead of just wanting to write about a pop culture thing that interests you. To use a more specific example, let’s say you want to write about the character Bucky Barnes from the Captain America and Avengers movies; if you have a strong angle, such as “I want to examine the character arc of Bucky Barnes in [name of Marvel property] and how the Marvel universe portrays acquired disability, in the following ways: x, y, and z” — that is going to be much more interesting to an editor than writing a more general “I want to examine the character arc of Bucky Barnes in [Marvel property].”

Remember, every pop culture criticism writer, no matter how successful, was once new to the form. Not to sound like a banally “inspirational” meme image from Instagram, but you have to start somewhere. And if starting somewhere is writing lengthy rants about music that no one will read — something that I did as a 16 year-old, although my definition of “successful” might not match yours — I’ve done it, and your favorite pop culture critics may have done similar things while starting their writing careers.

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How to Write Personal Essays About Pop Culture

"It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary." -Ta-Nehisi Coates

Write about Pop Culture with Lit Hub and Crime Reads contributing editor Lisa Levy

We all engage with pop culture every day: we check gossip sites, we hit Spotify, we read about a new movie; we play an alphabet soup of games, we scan websites, or watch a YouTube video, or binge a Netflix show. There are as many forms of popular culture are there are ways to write about it.

We start engaging with pop culture as soon as we're able to perceive the world around us. You know when you're a teenager, and you have all these obsessive interests that might seem strange to anyone who doesn't understand the rabbit hole you've gone down (or live in)? Your entire world revolved around a grunge band from the 1990s that only released one album with five good songs, but you listened to those songs on repeat and learned every lyric.

Or you were obsessed with this one character in an animated show about animals that was too odd for adults, but it was just so funny, even now. Or, you followed every move of some boy band from the early 2000s that you can only find on YouTube now (a few rungs below LFO).

Some of these obsessions follow you into adulthood, or you're discovering them for the first time years later. What do all of these things have in common? They are all obsessively obsessed with pop culture. And while they might seem trivial or silly, they also offer a lot of great insight into who we were as younger people. Or who we are now. Or who we have discovered ourselves to be through some portal into the long-forgotten.

Why did we love this particular thing or moment so much? How did it impact us as young people in forming our own identities? Why did we like it so much at the time? And would others benefit from our intelligent and incisive commentary?

Want a great example? Read The Ecstasy of Frank Ocean by Doreen St. Félix, MTV News.

What Is a Personal Essay About Pop Culture?

In the Washington Post , Sonny Bunch wrote, "the best writing about popular culture — about music, about movies, about TV shows, about books, about whatever — interrogates the way we think rather than what we think." Indeed, pop culture is an integral part of the development of a person's personality and identity.

And a personal essay about pop culture can be like any other essay you've written. You might have fond memories of watching The Office and choose to write about how it worked its way into your life at the time, how it shaped your sense of humor, or the conversations you had at school or work. You can look back on it and recognize a link between how you felt about the show and how you feel about it now. If you enjoyed it back then, you might still enjoy it now, but you might also notice flaws you didn't see at the time. It can be the starting point for a personal essay that takes a second (or third or fourth) look at the pop culture that shaped or changed you.

Want a great example? Read The Grace of Keanu Reeves by Angelica Jade Bastién, Bright Wall/Dark Room

Writing Your Essay About Pop Culture

Of course, writing about The Office is but one of infinite possibilities. Writing your essay about pop culture is about finding the small details that link your past (recent or otherwise) to the present day. How does the fictional character you were obsessed with or the album you cared so much about still inspire you in your life now? Or, how does it show the flaws in the way you might have thought about culture then as now?

Do you think about the plot of the movie or book you read often? What do you think about the music or song lyrics that impacted your life? How do you think that specific moment shaped who you are today?

When you write your essay about pop culture, try to focus on specific details that link you to the time; you don't have to try to go for some grandiose idea of how it changed your life, but that is fine if you do. What matters is the emotional connection you make on the page. As the cliche goes, to be genuinely universal, you need to be specific, so write into the details that stand out, are personal, and will be relatable to your reader.

Want a great example? Read As Not Seen On TV by Pete Wells, The New York Times

We live in an age of democratized criticism: the only thing stopping you from writing about your favorite show or game or app is you.

When you write a personal essay about pop culture, you might be trying to praise or critique the cultural artifact in question. However, to make your piece of writing more impactful, you should focus on how it impacted your life and how it still impacts you in the present day in some way.

Pop culture connects us and, in many cases, shapes who we become and what we like and molds our worldview and ethos, and it's important to reflect on these moments that shaped us and our identities.

Want a great example? Read The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, BuzzFeed

More Examples:

Read The Babysitter's Club by Jesse Barron, Real Life

Read The Confessions of R. Kelly by Chris Heath, GQ

Breaking into Literary Translation: an Interview with Jenna Tang

Meet the Teaching Artist: Mastering Characterization to Elevate Your Writing with Nadia Uddin

Meet the Teaching Artist: How to Write Commercially Viable Historical Fiction with L.M. Elliott

The Essential Guide to Starting Your First Novel

How to get published.

After reading the essay "Too Poor For Pop Culture What is the...

After reading the essay "Too Poor For Pop Culture

What is the purpose of this essay? What is the main point that Watkins is making? Is it really about Pop Culture? What can you infer from the article? Is there anything that Watkins is suggesting without saying it outright? In the introduction, Watkins compares Mrs. Sherryl's place to "an ad for The Wire."

What is the effect of this comparison? How does it reflect the point he is making about pop culture? Why does Watkins go into detail about the fact that he is a college professor? What else stands out to you about the article? What stands out as the most compelling part of the article? What do you find the most interesting?

Answer & Explanation

Goal and Primary Point

The primary goal of Kevin Watkins' article "Too Poor For Pop Culture" is to demonstrate how pop culture may be seen as an elite club where members must possess the appropriate attire, gadgetry, and financial resources. Watkins is arguing that this sort of exclusion may cause individuals to feel as if they are not a part of society, which can result in sentiments of despondency. He also makes the point that those who are not a part of popular culture often feel as if their ideas don't matter and that they are not taken seriously.

It is clear from the essay that Watkins is advocating that pop culture may be a potent instrument for fostering a feeling of community and connection in society. In addition, he makes the argument that people who are not accepted into this elite club may feel unappreciated and unimportant, which may cause them to lose hope and feel disconnected. In addition, he contends that people who are excluded from the exclusive club of pop culture are often those who lack a feeling of connection and belonging the most, and that this exclusion may be harmful to their mental health.

Mrs. Sherryl's Home Compared to "Ad for The Wire"

The extreme difference between the two worlds is shown by comparing Mrs. Sherryl's home to an advertisement for The Wire. Although The Wire is a television series that is filmed on the energetic streets of Baltimore, Ms. Sherryl's Place is a dilapidated apartment complex. This contrast demonstrates how the two worlds vary and how people who are affluent and privileged have access to a world of possibility while those who are poor do not. As individuals without access to resources like money are shut out of the lively and thrilling realm of pop culture, this parallel also helps to highlight how exclusionary pop culture can be.

Watkins Describes His Position as a College Lecturer in Detail

Watkins emphasizes his position of privilege and power by going into detail about what it is like to be a college professor. But individuals who do not have his advantages are unable to do the same, he has access to the pop culture world and its possibilities. The disparity between those who have access to pop culture and those who do not is highlighted by this.

The Most Interesting Section

The section of the piece where Watkins discusses how Mrs. Sherryl's residence was cut off from mainstream culture is the most intriguing. He speaks on how the residents of the building weren't given invitations to the parties, didn't have access to the newest gadgets and clothes, and weren't seen as significant or valued by the pop culture community. This section is fascinating because it emphasizes how isolation may produce emotions of helplessness and detachment, both of which are detrimental to mental health.

The Reason Why and the Core Idea

The primary objective of Kevin Watkins's article titled "Too Poor For Pop Culture" is to demonstrate how pop culture may be seen as an elite club, one in which members are required to have the appropriate attire, technological devices, and financial resources in order to participate. Watkins is making the point that this kind of exclusion may lead to people feeling as if they are not included in society, and that this can lead to feelings of pessimism in such individuals. In addition to this, he is implying that those who are not a part of popular culture often get the impression that they are not taken seriously and that their ideas do not have any significance.

It may be deduced from the text that Watkins is arguing that popular culture has the potential to be an effective instrument for fostering a feeling of belonging and connectivity among members of a community. He is also implying that those who are not allowed to participate in this exclusive club may have the perception that they are not recognized or treated seriously, which may result in a feeling of despondency and alienation. Additionally, he is claiming that individuals who are not included in the exclusive club of pop culture are often those who have the greatest need for a feeling of belonging and connectivity, and that this exclusion may be detrimental to the mental health of those who are excluded from the club.

The similarities and differences between Mrs. Sherryl's Home and "An Ad for The Wire"

The dramatic difference between the two worlds is shown by using an analogy in which Mrs. Sherryl's residence is compared to an advertisement for The Wire. The Wire is a television drama that takes place on the bustling streets of Baltimore, while Mrs. Sherryl's residence is an apartment complex that has seen better days. The purpose of this comparison is to highlight the disparity between the two worlds and to highlight the fact that people who are affluent and fortunate have access to a world full of opportunities, but those who live in poverty have not. This analogy also helps to demonstrate how exclusive pop culture can be, as it demonstrates how people who do not have access to money and resources are barred from participating in the dynamic and thrilling world of pop culture.

Watkins Elaborates in Extensive Detail on His Role as a College Lecturer

When Watkins goes into specifics about his job as a college professor, he is drawing attention to the fact that he has a privileged and powerful position in society. Those who are not in his position of privilege are unable to access the possibilities that are available in the realm of pop culture, while he is able to do so. This helps to illustrate the disparity between people who have access to popular culture and those who do not have such access.

The Facet That Is Most Interesting

As Watkins discusses how Mrs. Sherryl's house was left out of the realm of pop culture, this section of the essay is the most interesting and thought-provoking portion of the whole piece. He describes how the individuals who lived in the building were not given invitations to the parties, they did not have access to the most recent technology and fashion, and they were not seen as being significant or useful by the world of pop culture. This section is intriguing because it helps to demonstrate how emotions of despair and alienation, both of which may be detrimental to mental health, can be brought on by being excluded from a group.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Pop Culture — Impacts Of Popular Culture On The Society

What is Popular Culture and How It Impacts The Society

Categories: Pop Culture

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Words: 1737 |

Published: Jul 10, 2019

Words: 1737 | Pages: 4 | 9 min read

Introduction: what is popular culture, impacts of pop culture in the society today, works cited:.

Bartz, G. K. (1997). Michelangelo: The complete sculpture, painting, architecture. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Bull, G. (2020). Michelangelo: A life in six masterpieces. Penguin.
Campbell, S. (2005). Michelangelo: critical studies. Wiley-Blackwell.
Cole, B. (1992). Italian art, 1250-1550: The relation of Renaissance art to life and society. HarperCollins Publishers.
Condivi, A. (2005). The life of Michelangelo. Penn State Press.
Goffen, R. (1999). Pieta, in Michelangelo's Three Pietas: http://www3.nd.edu/~ggoiffon/htdocs/papers/pieta.html
Harris, B. (1998). Michelangelo's David: Florentine history and civic identity. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 61, 1-54.
Mundy, J. (1996). Michelangelo. Bantam.
Parker, H. (2016). Michelangelo: Complete works. Taschen.
Seymour, C. (2012). Michelangelo’s sculptures: The finest quality cast reproductions. Titan Books.

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Interviews with Writers

An Interview with D Watkins

D Watkins' debut memoir, Cook Up, about growing up and selling drugs in East Baltimore, will be published by Grand Central Publishing in 2016.

D Watkins’ debut memoir, Cook Up , about growing up in East Baltimore, tells the story of his journey from drug dealer to writer.

D. Watkins is a columnist for Salon . His work has been published in the New York Times, Guardian, Rolling Stone , and other publications. He holds a master’s in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore. He is a college professor at the University of Baltimore and founder of the BMORE Writers Project. Watkins has been the recipient of numerous awards including Ford’s Men of Courage and a BME Fellowship. Watkins is from and lives in East Baltimore. He is the author of The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir and The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America .

To read his essay “Too Poor for Pop Culture” and an exercise on writing complex characters and people, click here .

In this interview, Watkins discusses avoiding one-dimensional secondary people in memoir, what it means to write about a community that rarely appears in literary work, and the incredible reception his work has received.

Michael Noll

In some parts of our national discourse, we have a tendency to make symbols out of people—for instance, Chris Kyle, the “American Sniper.” In our hurry to make a point, the real person at the heart of the symbol gets lost. I can imagine that this might have been easy to do with “Too Poor for Pop Culture.” You could have flattened Miss Sheryl, Dontay, and Bucket-Head to be only symbols of poverty, but they seem like much more. For one, you allow them to be funny: “Whateva da fuk a selfie is! What’s a selfie, some type of bailout?” You also let them show their own awareness of how things are: “Put me on that Obamacare when you can, college boy!” Does the ability to show this complexity come naturally to you because you know these people well? Or, do you have to guard against turning them into symbols for a point?

I think it came natural because these are my friends. I wrote “Too Poor” out of a place of frustration, and the layers that my friends and I share just spilled out. We are funny and hurting and tuff and smart and crafty. Sometimes secondary people in memoir can be one-dimensional and that would never work in my writing because my friends make me and we are all complex in our own special way.

This essay is a really complex piece of cultural criticism. You’re making an argument about the availability of technology but also about politics and economics. How did you keep your point straight? And, where did this essay begin? With any of the points you make or with the story of drinking vodka with your friends in a housing project?

It’s easy for me to keep my point straight because this story is older than me. Black people have been slighted in America since we jumped off of the boat. And really, “Too Poor” was cut short because I could have added more of the convo—we talk about crooked cops, gentrification and everything else that plagues east Baltimore, most of which never makes the news cycle.

D Watkins was profiled in a long feature in J ohns Hopkins Magazine about his evolution from drug dealer to university lecturer and author.

I read and loved the novel Long Division by Kiese Laymon, and in it, the narrator reads a book called Long Division that is set in the part of Mississippi that he’s from. He says this:

“I just loved and feared so much about the first chapter of that book. For example, I loved that someone with the last name ‘Crump’ was in a book. Sounds dumb, but I knew so many Crumps in Mississippi in my real life, but I had never seen one Crump in anything I’d read.”

I thought of this quote as I read the first sentence of your essay, where you name the people you’re with: Miss Sheryl, Dontay, and Bucket-Head (names you created to protect their identities). You go on to write, “Bucket’s no angel, but he’s also not a felon and doesn’t deserve to be excluded from pop culture no more than Miss Sheryl or Dontay.” You’re talking about access to technology and, therefore, access to the pop culture sites and news that most of us take for granted, but it occurs to me that you’re also talking about the absence of people like Miss Sheryl, Dontay, and Bucket-Head in the news and sites that we consume. Was this something on your mind as you wrote?

Initially no. I did not read a fraction of the articles that I do now. Now I consume everything from cable news to all of the popular online magazines. I’m also a columnist for Salon , so now it’s my job, and in my journey I learned that the perspectives of people from neighborhoods like mine are always ignored or written about by outsiders. I now feel obligated to be that voice and hopefully inspire others to do the same.

Parts of the essay strike me as academic in tone. For instance, you write, “The idea of information being class-based as well became evident to me when I watched my friends talk about a weeks-old story as if it happened yesterday.” The first part of that sentence would fit neatly in any article in a scholarly journal. The second part, though, and the first-hand account that you provide in the essay, might not appear in that scholarly article, which makes me curious about your views of academia and the writing that it encourages. You write in the essay about feeling like an outside in academia—”Not the kind of professor that…”—and so I wonder if you feel that, as a writer, the kind of writing you do is valued by the academic world you work in.

My writing is valued in the academic world—since “Too Poor.” I’ve lectured at 20+ universities in graduate and undergraduate programs covering an array of topics that range from creative writing to public health. I think I have a unique opportunity to create a new lane in academia, a lane where street education is respected amongst the tweed coated scholars.

Originally published March 2015

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Check out the official announcement here !

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100+ Pop Culture Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Pop Culture Essay Topics: Dive into the Pulse of Modern Society

Pop Culture, short for ‘popular culture’, is a fascinating area of study that delves into the various elements of entertainment, fashion, news, and daily living that are prevalent in a society at a given point in time. The culture we consume, whether it’s the music we listen to, the shows we binge-watch, or the trends we follow, gives insights into our values, our beliefs, and our aspirations. Writing a Pop Culture essay offers a unique opportunity to explore these topics in-depth, offering both a critique and appreciation for the world we live in.

What is a Pop Culture Essay?

A Pop Culture essay is an academic or personal narrative that explores the influence and significance of current trends, events, idols, or practices that are widely accepted and followed by a large group of people. It is a reflection of how society perceives and interacts with these elements, and how they in turn shape societal norms and behaviors. From movies to memes, and from fashion fads to viral challenges, Pop Culture essays can dissect any of these aspects to shed light on its larger implications.

Guide to Choosing a Pop Culture Essay Topic

Selecting the perfect topic for a Pop Culture essay starts with personal interest. Think about what you love, what intrigues you, or what you often discuss with friends:

Stay Current: Trends change quickly. Your topic should be relevant to the current cultural climate.
Be Passionate: Choose a topic that excites you. Your enthusiasm will come through in your writing.
Research: Make sure there’s enough information available to support your argument or perspective.
Broaden or Narrow Down: Depending on the assignment’s length, ensure your topic is neither too broad nor too narrow.

Riveting Pop Culture Essay Topics Lists

Television and movies.

The cultural significance of binge-watching
The rise and impact of superhero movies
Representation and diversity in modern television

Music and Artists

The influence of K-pop on global music trends
Evolution of music festivals and their societal impact
The role of music in social activism

Fashion and Trends

Sneaker culture and its rise to prominence
The lasting impact of fast fashion on the environment
The evolution of beauty standards through the decades

Digital Age and Social Media

Memes: A reflection of society or mere entertainment?
The psychology behind viral challenges
Social media influencers: A new age of celebrity

Literature and Books

The young adult genre: A reflection of modern teen struggles
The re-emergence of poetry in the digital age
Post-apocalyptic novels and society’s fascination with the end of the world

Sports and Games

The cultural implications of e-sports
Sports activism and its role in societal change
The rise of niche sports in mainstream media

Art and Performance

The rebirth of street art and its societal messages
The evolution of performance art in the 21st century
Drag culture: From niche to mainstream

Food and Lifestyle

The vegan movement and its cultural implications
Coffee culture and its global significance
Travel trends: From luxury vacations to eco-tourism

Global Events and Movements

Pop culture’s role in promoting environmental awareness
The significance of global award ceremonies like the Oscars and Grammys
Celebrity involvement in political and social movements

Streaming and Digital Content

The impact of streaming platforms on traditional TV
Podcasts: The new radio or a unique medium?
Binge-watching culture and its psychological effects

Diverse Representation

The significance of minority representation in Hollywood
LGBTQ+ representation in modern television shows
The rise of international cinema in global box offices

Modern Technology and Its Influence

The cultural shift from Facebook to TikTok
Virtual reality: The future of entertainment?
The societal implications of AI-generated art and music

Evolving Music Genres

The impact of hip-hop on social justice movements
The re-emergence of vinyl and analog music
The cultural resonance of indie music in the digital age

Politics in Pop Culture

The portrayal of politicians in movies and TV series
The role of celebrities in political campaigns
Satire and political commentary in late-night shows

Evolving Beauty and Fashion Standards

The rise of the body positivity movement
Influences of global fashion trends on local cultures
The impact of digital filters on beauty standards

Gaming Culture

The social dynamics of online multiplayer games
The cultural impact of mobile gaming
Video games as a form of interactive storytelling

Contemporary Literature and Reading Habits

Digital vs. traditional reading: Changing habits and implications
The allure of dystopian novels in today’s society
The growth of self-publishing in the literary world

Youth and Adolescence in Pop Culture

The portrayal of teenagers in contemporary movies
The cultural significance of coming-of-age stories
Gen Z’s influence on pop culture trends

The World of Sports and Athletics

The impact of sports documentaries on fans’ perceptions
The societal implications of athletes taking political stances
The commercialization of amateur sports

Online Communities and Subcultures

The growth and influence of fandoms in shaping media content
The role of Reddit in shaping pop culture discussions
Exploring the “Stan” culture and its origins

Pop Culture and Mental Health

Addressing mental health through TV shows and movies
The role of music in therapy and mental well-being
Social media’s impact on self-esteem and body image

Historical Reflections in Pop Culture

The revival of the ’80s and ’90s trends in fashion and music
Period dramas and their influence on modern perceptions of history
The nostalgia factor: Reboots and remakes in the film industry

Contemporary Art and Design

Streetwear and its roots in urban culture
The influence of social media on modern art consumption
Pop art in the 21st century: Evolution or revolution?

Societal Movements and Pop Culture

The #MeToo movement’s reflection in films and TV shows
Pop culture’s role in the climate change discussion
The cultural implications of the Black Lives Matter movement

Digital Phenomena and Trends

The rise of short video platforms and their influence on attention spans
The allure of unboxing videos and consumer culture
The significance of virtual influencers in advertising and media

Celebrity Culture and Influence

The phenomenon of cancel culture in the digital age
Celebrities’ role in mental health advocacy
How influencers are redefining the meaning of celebrity

Music and Its Changing Dynamics

The resurgence of folk music in mainstream culture
The blurring lines between genres in modern music
The cultural impact of music festivals in the virtual era

Modern Interpretations of Classic Tales

The allure of dark retellings of fairy tales in media
The influence of Greek mythology in today’s pop culture
Contemporary adaptations of Shakespearean plays

Fashion, Sustainability, and Trends

The cultural implications of thrift shopping and upcycling
The influence of Korean fashion on global style trends
The growth and significance of sustainable fashion

Emerging Technologies and Entertainment

The role of augmented reality in art and exhibitions
The emergence of hologram concerts and performances
The influence of cryptocurrency and NFTs in the entertainment industry

Social Issues and Popular Narratives

The portrayal of immigration and cultural identity in movies
The influence of women empowerment anthems in pop music
Pop culture’s response to global crises like pandemics and natural disasters

Internet Cultures and Fandoms

The evolution and impact of fanfiction in literature
The role of internet memes in political and social commentary
The cultural significance of niche internet communities

Need Help Crafting Your Pop Culture Essay?

Crafting an essay on Pop Culture requires a keen eye for detail and a finger on the pulse of current trends. If you need assistance, our essay writing service at writeondeadline.com is here to help! Our experienced writers can bring depth, insight, and flair to your essay, ensuring it stands out.

Useful References

Pop Culture: An Overview – Philosophy Now
Understanding Popular Culture – John Fiske, Routledge
Pop Culture and the Power of Media – International Journal of Communication

The View From Baltimore

In his coming-of-age book The Cook Up , D. Watkins writes about drugs, race, and class for audiences living in different Americas.

D. Watkins’s memoir, The Cook Up , begins on a spring day in East Baltimore, in 1998. The author, then a senior in high school, was “rolling a celebratory blunt because College Park, Georgetown … and a couple other schools were letting me in” when a neighbor banged on the door: Watkins’s older brother, Bip, had just been shot dead on the street outside.

I ducked under the yellow warning tape and pushed past the beat cop … The noise and a cold silence blanketed the crowd. “Bip, get up!” I begged. “Get up. Come on …” The beat cop gathered himself and slammed me down next to my brother. He flipped me like a pissy mattress, positioning for a chokehold. Fuck fighting back. I wish I had died too.

Bip raised Watkins from the age of 12, keeping him on the straight and narrow with Frederick Douglass quotes and bling for good grades, while Bip hustled home-cooked crack cocaine. After the murder, Watkins has to make his own way. He tries college, which looks and feels like “a Gap commercial,” a place where other black students try on middle-class whiteness, wear pastels, call each other “dude.” Watkins, for his part, wears Gucci sweat suits and $15,000 worth of jewelry. In the athletic center, he plays dice.

The juxtaposition is straight out of the sitcoms Watkins’s generation grew up watching, like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the Cosby Show spin-off A Different World —stories about black self-sufficiency made safe for curious, comfortable white people. Watkins flips this script twice. He drops out mid-semester and spends the next four years cooking crack in a Pyrex measuring cup in his kitchen, peddling it to neighborhood addicts, hiring friends and relatives to hustle for him, and making “a ridiculous amount of money.” Then, at the peak of his empire, he renounces it all, Siddhartha-like, to read and think. Watkins returns to college in the last pages of his memoir. In the final scene, he’s in an introductory writing class, reading Langston Hughes, Michael Eric Dyson, and Sister Souljah—writers who kindle what he calls “my obtainable superpower.”

Better Than Ambien

Dear Therapist: My Mom Used to Abuse Me. Should I Keep Her in My Life?

A decade separates that scene and The Cook Up ’s publication this spring. After Watkins earned his bachelor’s degree, he went back for a master’s in education and an M.F.A. in creative writing. He’s written essays for The New York Times , The Guardian , and Rolling Stone , 23 of which are collected in his first book, The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America (2015). After one of those essays (on being “Too Poor for Pop Culture”) went viral in 2014, Watkins was featured on mainstream-media outlets such as NPR, CNN, and NBC.

As high as he’s climbed, Watkins is quick to tell interviewers that he hasn’t “made it out yet.” He still lives in East Baltimore, where he is an adjunct professor and a freelance writer; on the side, he makes commemorative videos for weddings and funerals. Watkins’s native-son appeal is usually part of the reason he’s interviewed. The mainstream has a way of absorbing minority writers by typecasting them as “the voice” of this or that margin. Watkins plays along in order to address fatal disparities in American culture—and in his readership.

When Watkins was pitching his book, one publisher reportedly told him that his target audience was “white people who watch Breaking Bad .” Watkins seems more interested in drawing readers from his own neighborhood, though he splits the difference with his subtitle. A Crack Rock Memoir isn’t hype. Substance is style here. The short sentences are hard and bitter. The chapters are two minutes long, with quick blasts of intensity calibrated to hook anyone.

It’s easy to imagine the memoir being assigned in schools. Accessible and edifying, the book even comes with a list of discussion questions. If life lessons sometimes slow down the action, perhaps that’s to be expected. (I’m thinking of two pages where the word “ should’ve ” appears 18 times.) Like the rappers he quotes, Watkins acts out his self-understanding through story or sermon—or story as sermon.

In the tradition of James Baldwin’s “Letter From a Region in My Mind,” The Cook Up is a personal history that complicates racial stereotypes. “To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it,” Baldwin wrote. Since then, Baltimore has eclipsed Harlem as a locus of America’s racial anxiety. The image of that anxiety has changed, too, with the mass criminalization of young black men. Watkins’s writing offers answers to a question Baldwin might have asked, had he lived long enough: How can a superpredator’s past be used?

The Cook Up is costumed as a crime drama (the crack rocks stippling the cover, the blurb from David Simon), but its real drama is universal: coming of age. Watkins spends much of the book in a state of hyperadolescence, acting the part of a gangsta but unable to be one. Angsty and confused, he gropes toward fulfillment, spending drug money on random acts of kindness. Eventually he gets his bearings the way everyone must, by mastering what he’s inherited.

During that first semester at college, Watkins discovers the “trust fund” his brother stashed in a red safe—“stacks and bundles of balled up and unseparated cash, receipts, a watch, maybe a brick and a half of Aryan-colored cocaine, about half a brick of heroin, two pistols, a big zip of vials.” The inheritance offers an object lesson that anyone growing up under late capitalism would recognize: Power comes from commercializing a demand and exploiting it.

The mainstream economy has producers and consumers. Watkins’s has “dope boys” and junkies. The transactions between them are toxic, but compensate for opportunities that don’t exist, services that don’t deliver, and authority that doesn’t function. After crooked police raid Watkins’s home to seize his late brother’s jewelry and electronics, two junkies hide Watkins’s safe for him. How’s that for child protective services?

The insight that makes Watkins go clean, launching him into adulthood, is that helping people endure a rigged culture blurs into doing harm. Take Miss Angie, a godmother figure. When gentrification triples her rent, Watkins gives her enough cash to live for a year. She returns the favor, frying up comfort food around the clock for Watkins and his crew. But look again: The gift implicates Miss Angie in the crime that ruined her neighborhood, and in turn she keeps Watkins on a diet of tasty poison. What Watkins learns on the streets of Baltimore is just as true on the Upper West Side: Everyone is compromised by things that hurt so good.

Bill Clinton’s finger-wagging rebuke of Black Lives Matter protesters back in April was a reminder that conversations about race and class are hopeless when people can’t find common ground to stand on. But if presidents can’t create a basis for mutual understanding—a hard-learned lesson of the Obama era—writers can. It isn’t comfortable seeing oneself in the portrait of a crack dealer, and that’s the point. In one of his sharper lines, Watkins sums up his motivation for hustling: “Because only drug dealers and the top 1 percent of Americans can afford to push a cart through Whole Foods.”

Watkins knows his readers live in different Americas. The Cook Up is their invitation to notice one another standing in the same line.

TRACIE GUY-DECKER

Writer. Speaker. Doodler.

Mar 14, 2017

Stoop Stories & Too Poor for Pop Culture

On Tuesday March 7, a small group gathered at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation to discuss two essays by our fellow-Baltimorean, D. Watkins. Together, we read Stoop Stories and Too Poor for Pop Culture.

Those of us gathered that evening were all relatively privileged--middle to upper-middle class, white skin, cis gendered. We all noted the stark difference between the Baltimore we know and the one that Watkins describes in his essays.

Our group spent a good deal of time talking about Watkins as the quintessential code switcher. Code switching is the term that linguists use to describe what happens when multi-lingual people combine aspects of multiple languages in a single conversation. The term has been expanded by sociologists and those who study race to describe the ways in which individuals navigate the different cultural spaces they inhabit. I believe that most of us code switch to one degree or another, adapting our speech and demeanor to the demands of our context and those we encounter. Black Americans must learn to code switch in order to succeed in the parts of American society in which White culture holds power (which, let's face it, is most parts of American society).

The code switching Watkins relates in these two essays is extreme, self-conscious, and necessary to survival. In Stoop Stories he writes of his introduction to other college students at Loyola:

"The other students looked at me like I was an alien. I’d walk up on a student and clearly say: ‘Excuse me, where is the book store?’ And they’d look back with a twisted face, like: ‘I don’t understand you. What are you saying?’ And I had this dance with multiple students every day until I mastered my ‘Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ voice.”

We also spent a good deal of time talking about Watkins’ ability to introduce us to characters with seemingly perfect empathy. His descriptions of the people who inhabit his world paint pictures of fully human individuals. This is remarkable because the humanity of the people he depicts is so consistently denied in most of the media that those of us in the room usually consume. Drug dealers and addicts, prostitutes and felons, all receive their full humanity from D. Watkins’ pen. His empathy for them is contagious.

I related to the group the vitriol that can be found in the comments section on Stoop Stories. I first read the essay online several years ago, and was struck by the comments. People (probably mostly white people) called Watkins a liar in the comments on this essay. His experience was so foreign to their own that people insisted he must be fabricating it. It is a phenomenon that is familiar (to greater and lesser extent) to people of color, and anyone whose experiences are not white, Christian and male.

In this case, in addition to disbelief borne of extreme difference, I believe that Watkins’ tales bred disbelief because Watkins ultimately challenges the simmering White supremacy that many White liberals (myself included) don't even realize we have. Watkins is fully bi-lingual. He is comfortable in the Black Baltimore of his youth, but inhabits the (white) American culture we prize with ease. Indeed, he is a multiply-degreed writer and professor; a sought-after storyteller in Baltimore's Stoop Stories brand (a brand that, as he notes in the essay, is predominantly consumed by White Baltimoreans), and he prefers to stay in the Black Baltimore of his youth.

This preference challenges the narrative that (white) liberals tell ourselves about how, with smarts and perseverance, individuals can "get out of the inner city." When we tell (or hear) a success story of a young person of color, we fall back on tropes of escape. We imagine the hero of our story leaving behind all of the unpleasantness of their youth for the safety of the (white, middle class) environs we call home.

#codeswitching #Baltimore #race #racism #class #whitesupremacy #empathy

220 Pop Culture Topics for an A+ Essay

There are many ways to define popular culture . Here’s one of them: pop culture includes mainstream preferences in society within a specific time frame. It covers fashion, music, language, and even food. Pop culture is always evolving, engaging in new trends, and leaving the old ones behind.

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This article offers you a list of pop culture topics covering its numerous aspects. Continue reading to find helpful tips on how to choose a perfect topic for your assignment. And don’t forget that custom-writing.org is ready to help you with any task. Check out our resources!

🔝 Top 10 Pop Culture Topics

✅ how to choose a topic, ⭐ top 10 pop culture essay topics.

🎵 Music Topics
📰 Mass Media Topics
📚 Popular Literature
📺 Movies & T.V.
🇺🇸 American Pop Culture
🌐 Internet Phenomena
✍️ Pop Culture Analysis
🤔 Pop Culture & Social Issues

🔍 References

How is politics related to sport?
Is religion related to pop culture?
Does music affect the fashion industry?
The ways technology affects pop culture
Is traveling a part of modern pop culture?
Pop culture’s impact on consumer behavior
How does globalization affect pop culture?
Is there a negative effect of popular fiction?
Entertainment industry during different generations
How does fandom culture vary around the world?

Choosing a topic is the first step towards completing an assignment. This section will help middle, high school, and college students identify the right subject for an essay. Ask yourself these questions:

What are the requirements? Make sure you understand the task you need to complete.
You are free to choose your topic. Keep in mind the purpose of the course and the material covered in class. Brainstorm your ideas and choose the one you like the most!
You are provided with a list of topics to choose from. In this case, start by reviewing every option. Eliminate the ones you are least excited about. Then, select a subject that seems the most interesting to you.
What do you already know? Of course, you could choose a topic that is brand-new for you. But working with a familiar subject will make the research easier.
What does your instructor say about the topic? Don’t hesitate to consult with your instructors before writing. Make sure that the selected topic fits the requirements.

Now you understand how to select the right subject for your assignment. Let’s see the topic options! If you looked through the list but still haven’t found anything that insterests you, try your luck with an essay ideas generator .

Gender equality in fashion
Is food a part of pop culture?
Characteristics of pop art
Pop culture vs. folk culture
K-pop culture’s impact on fashion
How cultural appropriation affects media
Consumer culture and the world economy
Entertainment industry and mental health
The role of media in the music industry
Is TikTok a part of modern pop culture?

🎵 Popular Culture Topics about Music

Music never stops changing. It came a long way from hand-crafted instruments to computer programming. You can write about music that was popular in a specific timeframe or discuss the latest trends. Here is a list of topic ideas on this subject.

How did space-age discoveries affect rock music?
Discuss music marketing in the digital era.
Describe the features of Latin American pop music.
What makes K-Pop stand out?
The role of pop music for your generation.
Write about the origin of hip-hop.
Select a time period and write about its music trends.
Analyze the evolution of pop music starting from the 1950s.

Write about the occupational hazards of being a musician.
The origin and development of sunshine pop.
Choose a music album and analyze its impact.
Which pop music era seems the most interesting to you?
Pick a famous band and describe their career path.
Compare two different pieces of music from the 20th century.
What are the main features of rock music?
How do pop songs influence the teenage generation?
The role of radio broadcasting in the pop music industry .
Popular vs. serious music: a comparison.
Talk about a person who largely contributed to pop music.
What are the functions of film music?
Can popular songs influence public opinion on a specific subject?
Why do some people develop a very negative attitude towards pop music?
Describe the role of music in your life.
Do famous artists influence the lifestyle of their fans?
Discover why some entertainers remain famous even after their death.

📰 Mass Media Pop Culture Essay Topics

Popular culture exists and survives because of the mass media. With its help, it reaches and unites billions of people. Television, radio, and newspapers are the main outlets of mass media. Here is the list of media-related pop culture topics to write about.

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Do magazines publish celebrity gossip too often?
Describe the way mass media dictates fashion standards to young adults.
Analyze the link between pop culture and mass media in the U.S.
Does mass media influence the preferences of the audience?
Describe how the media contributes to stereotypes about minorities.
Should newspapers expose sensitive details about celebrities’ lives?
How can one make sure not to consume fake news ?
Analyze the peculiarities of New Journalism.
Discover the influence of the New York Times on the press.
Write about radio stations contributing to pop culture in the past.
Discuss racial stereotyping on television.
Talk about an influential online news resource.
Body as a subject in media and marketing.
What kind of pop culture topics are not broadcast via mass media?
Would you consider Twitter a mass media source?
Talk about the media and the global public sphere.
Write about promotional campaigns via mass media.
Is it possible for an artist to gain fame without the internet?
Which websites are known for spreading fake news ?
How to avoid information overload nowadays?
Conduct a semiotic analysis of a perfume commercial.
Can pop culture survive without American media ?
Describe the American Idol phenomenon.
Talk about the internet’s effects on journalism.
Which influencers do you personally prefer and why?

📚 Modern Popular Literature Essay Topics

This section will be fun for book lovers! The term “popular literature” refers to writings intended for a broad audience. It’s no surprise that such books often become bestsellers. You can describe this type of writing as fiction with a strong plot. Look at this list of topic ideas for a great analytical, argumentative, or informative essay.

Describe the magic of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books.
Discover the initial public opinion about The Handmaid’s Tale .
Why did The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo become a bestseller?
Principles used in Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson.
Why did Enduring Love by Ian McEwan gain popularity?
What charmed the readers of The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton?
Discuss the theme of change in Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee.
Discover the way the sad ending in The Lucky One affected the readers.
Orange Is the New Black: Netflix series vs. book.
What made The Wednesday Letters different from other love novels?

How did The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins become iconic?
Describe the characters of Katherine Min’s Courting a Monk .
Discover the way Atonement by Ian McEwan impacted the readers.
What values are encouraged in Every Breath by Nicholas Sparks?
Discuss the initial public opinion about Life of Pi by Yann Martel .
Self-awareness in The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman.
Analyze the success of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie .
Discuss the literary issues of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air.
How did the public accept the controversial message of The Da Vinci Code ?
Did Aziz Ansari’s reputation contribute to the fame of his book Modern Romance ?
What made The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer popular?
Analyze the fanbase of The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler.
What draws the readers to Confessions of a Shopaholic ?
Explore confession and forgiveness in The Lovely Bones.
Why did The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield gain popularity?

📺 Pop Culture Topics: Movies and T.V.

Movies and T.V. shows are an integral part of U.S. culture. This category includes films based on popular literature and all-time-classic movies. T.V. production is often accompanied by a massive amount of merchandise that fills clothing and toy stores. The following list will help you select an on-point essay topic.

Write about the way the Star Wars saga unifies several generations.
The Wizard of Oz in relation to populist movement.
Analyze the impact of King Kong on cinema.
What makes New York City an iconic location for movies?
Describe the role of fandom in pop culture.
Is it better to watch a movie at home vs. in theater?
Why is Lord of the Rings considered one of the greatest trilogies?
Define the genre of Scarface.
How does Groundhog Day relate to Buddhism?
Did The X-Files inspire conspiracy theories?
Analyze the way Friends logo entered the clothing industry.
Write about the role of the media in Jerry Maguire.
Why did the movie Aliens become popular?
Discover the effects of Western movies on Arab youth.
What has brought Terminator into pop culture?
Write about the impact Rocky had on viewers.
Discuss what fans appreciate about The Matrix movies.
Racism and masculinity in A Soldier’s Story.
Write about a successful Marvel movie .
What makes D.C. movies iconic?
Describe the role of social workers in Crash.
Discuss the periods of The Simpsons ’ fame.
Analyze the way Parks and Recreation reflect the U.S. culture.
Talk about your favorite blockbuster.
Should government control the contents of T.V. shows?

🇺🇸 American Pop Culture Topics

The history of the United States was always reflected in various art forms. Today its pop culture highlights social identity and carries on the American heritage. In this section, you can explore the elements that contribute to American pop culture.

How did globalization impact American pop culture ?
Analyze the influence of the American movie industry on the world.
Write about Hispanic American culture.
Explore the place of alien encounters narrative within American culture.
Write about a specific period of American pop culture.
Examine the popularity of American movies overseas.
Write about the history and influence of Halloween.
Discover the economic value of the American entertainment industry.
Write about an aspect of the American pop culture you’re most proud of.

What would you like to change about the U.S. pop industry?
American folk culture vs. pop culture.
Which countries are not influenced by American culture at all?
Describe the role of T.V. broadcasting for the U.S.
Talk about American fast food as a part of pop culture.
Discover vacation destinations in and outside of the U.S.
Why is so much of today’s pop culture focused on the 80s?
How significant is Disney for Americans?
Discover the roots of U.S. pop culture.
How does the American pop industry portray sexuality?
Analyze the way pop culture unifies American citizens.
What are the destructive trends prevalent in the U.S.?
Discuss gender roles in American cartoons.
What does American pop teach about lifestyle?
How quickly do new fashion trends spread across the U.S.?
Discuss the way the U.S. pop culture reflects its historical values.

🌐 Popular Culture Essay Topics on Internet Phenomena

The internet is the ultimate means of communication worldwide. The rise of online trends is quite unpredictable, which is why it’s called internet phenomena. Memes, videos, challenges will be the focus of this section. Continue reading to find a fun essay topic!

What purpose was intended for the Ice bucket challenge ?
What made the dab famous worldwide?
Describe a dangerous internet phenomenon.
Why were teens attracted to the fire challenge?
Analyze the way Harlem Shake went viral.
What is people’s attitude towards social media?
How does something become an internet phenomenon?
Describe the influence of the Thriller dance on the world.
Debate the ethics of Coffin Dance.
What’s the reason for Gangnam Style’s fame?
How did the Momo challenge turn into a worldwide phenomenon?
Write about an internet phenomenon that emerged in 2020.
Talk about an online challenge you participated in.
What made Bongo Cat famous for many years?
Write about a politics-themed online phenomenon.
What distinguishes popular video games nowadays?
Analyze the role of TikTok in song advertisement.
Write about a comics book that gained popularity online.
Discover online challenges that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Describe the Bernie Sanders phenomenon among college students.
What internet phenomena are popular amongst the older generation?
Discuss the outcomes of a viral fundraising challenge.
Talk about one of the earliest internet phenomena.
How did the first memes appear on the internet?
Write about a web cartoon that qualifies as an internet phenomenon.

✍️ Pop Culture Analysis Topics to Write About

Pop culture includes many components you could write about. For an analytical paper, feel free to pick any aspect of pop culture. You can focus on positive, negative, or controversial factors. Make sure to use academic resources and professional critique. Here are some topic examples of your future paper.

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How does pop culture impact public health?
Analyze Coca Cola marketing strategies from the sensory perspective.
Will the entertainment industry survive without encouraging predatory behavior?
What percentage of the U.S. population is currently involved with pop culture ?
Analyze a popular culture artifact of your choice.
What makes a pop song relatable?
Why is popular literature often made into films?
How does Instagram affect people’s lives?
Will your generation be drawn to pop culture decades from now?
How can one become famous in the age of informational overload?
Analyze the price one is paying for remaining popular.

Why do some classic paintings become a commodity?
Write about a person who significantly impacted T.V.
Pick a T.V. show and analyze its rise to popularity.
Discover how one becomes an influencer.
Do video games have any positive effects?
In what ways does politics influence pop culture?
How necessary is funding for the pop industry?
Why have memes become a popular form of communication?
What things should celebrities stop promoting?
Analyze YouTube’s contributions to pop culture.
Talk about the important messages in current pop music.
What catches the attention of modern consumers?
How did the 2020 pandemic influence pop culture?
What happens to famous artists who quit their career?

🤔 Popular Culture and Social Issues Essay Topics

Pop culture reveals social issues and creates new ones. In your paper, consider various aspects of society. Think about popular culture’s effect on different generations, languages, or values. The following list will help you select an interesting essay topic.

Describe ways in which pop culture divides social groups.
Do pop songs represent the voice of society?
What social issues does pop music contribute to?
Analyze the media’s influence on women’s self-image.
How does an expectation of the zombie apocalypse affect the Americans?
The impact of T.V. shows on self-realization amongst teenagers.
Does popular literature disconnect teenagers from society?
Why do people incorporate fictional characters in protest marches?
What do modern toys teach children about body image ?
Did pop culture contribute to social unrest in the U.S.?
Discover the way popular movies contribute to discrimination .
In what ways do memes influence public opinion?
Analyze the effects of mass media on one’s sexuality.
Examine the impact of YouTube on young adults’ career choices.
Does pop culture promote promiscuous behavior?
Describe the way modern movies stigmatize obesity.
What family values are projected in today’s mass media?
Explore the harming side of fandoms .
Does mainstream media sabotage social norms or encourage them?
Do pop songs encourage rebellious behavior amongst teens?
What kind of lesson does pop culture teach about gender?
Correlation between mobile games and the overuse of display devices.
Discover stereotypes that are prevalent in the pop industry nowadays.
Analyze the effect of television on bullying .
In what light does pop culture portray religion?

We hope you found this article helpful and choose an excellent topic for your assignment. Now go ahead and write an A+ essay on pop culture!

What Really Causes Poor Performance in School

More from our inbox:, becoming a republican to vote against trump, countering propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.

A black and white photograph of a girl sitting at a desk with an open book and papers. She holds a pencil in one hand and her face with the other.

To the Editor:

Re “ We’re Not Battling the School Issues That Matter ,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, March 7):

I completely agree with Mr. Kristof’s column. The situation is serious, not only for education but also for our embattled democracy.

I would like to add some nuance. I have been working on a state-by-state analysis of the possible influence of racism, specifically anti-Black racism, on educational achievement.

What I have found so far indicates that some children are taught quite well: those in private schools, of course; Asian American children (particularly those whose families are from India); white children of families prosperous enough to be ineligible for the National School Lunch Program; children of college-educated parents; and Hispanic children who are not English-language learners.

Some students are in groups that are not likely to be taught to read effectively: Native Americans, children who are poor enough to be eligible for the National School Lunch Program and Black children.

None of this will be news to Mr. Kristof. What is surprising to me is the sheer extent and arbitrary nature of the failure by school authorities. Almost everywhere that urban schools, in particular, are failing, socioeconomically similar children are being taught much more effectively in the nearest suburban districts.

Part of the reason is money: Per-student expenditure is associated with educational achievement.

But part of the problem — most of it — is a matter of administrative decisions: placing the best teachers in schools with the “best” students; equipping schools, in effect, in accordance with parental income; offering more gifted and talented classes to white students — all the perhaps unconscious manifestations of everyday racism.

Michael Holzman Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. The writer is a former consultant for the Schott Foundation for Public Education in Cambridge, Mass.

Writers like Nicholas Kristof make a critical mistake when they assume that conservatives’ focus on issues like nudity, diversity and critical race theory in education is just a matter of misplaced priorities. Conservatives’ opposition to substantive improvements in American education is not a bug; it’s a feature.

Do politicians like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump really want children to grow up with a better grasp of math, when they can instead persuade voters that inflation is an existential threat to their personal financial security, even when wage growth is comfortably outstripping inflation?

Do they want students to become better critical thinkers when they can use photos of migrants massed at the border to convince voters that immigrants are a threat to national security, even though most immigrants will provide needed labor in a rapidly growing economy?

Do they want students to be good readers who can use logic and analysis to evaluate an argument, when politicians can easily use social media platforms, with no evidence, to persuade voters that the 2020 presidential election was rigged?

Why would Republicans want America’s children to be well educated, when the voters with the most education will consistently vote for the other guys?

Lisa Elliott Newark, Del. The writer is a licensed school psychologist.

Nicholas Kristof’s column miseducates by pointing out which states do better with schools.

In Massachusetts, one of the examples Mr. Kristof mentions, parents don’t move there because of the schools. They choose the town or city they think has the best schools — and the one they can afford.

Local property taxes, not the state, provide most educational funding, so the better schools tend to be in the wealthier towns. Per-pupil spending in Massachusetts varies greatly from district to district: According to recent data from the state Department of Education , that figure ranges from about $14,000 in Dracut to almost $37,000 in Cambridge.

More money means smaller classes and better-paid teachers. So Mr. Kristof’s argument about which states have better education mostly misses the mark about what matters.

Michael Jacoby Brown Arlington, Mass. The writer is a community organizer and former high school teacher.

Nicholas Kristof makes some valid points in his column, but I have to wonder why he and most of the media skipped over Donald Trump’s promise that followed his vile remark about denying funding to schools that teach critical race theory.

Mr. Trump announced, “ I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or mask mandate .”

Hello, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, pertussis, measles, mumps, hepatitis, rubella and more.

Surely, any worries over whether teachers choose to focus on phonics or address critical race theory will vanish when these diseases, which vaccinations prevent, invade the schools.

Susan Ohanian Charlotte, Vt. The writer is a retired reading teacher.

Re “ Trump’s Conquest of the Republican Party ” (editorial, March 10):

I’ve been a registered Democrat most of my adult life, except for a brief time with the Green Party. I have campaigned for Bernie Sanders. Earlier this winter I changed my official party affiliation to Republican. I made that change solely as a way to vote against Donald Trump in the primaries.

My plan following Nikki Haley’s exit after Super Tuesday is to cast a protest vote in New York next month. In November, I’ll vote for Joe Biden.

That said, my registration won’t change again. I’m not going anywhere. The G.O.P. will be stuck with this lefty.

The party of Trump needs a new birth of freedom, however belated, within its ranks. That reconstruction must be seeded by individual voters like yours truly.

Donald Mender Rhinebeck, N.Y.

Re “ John Kerry: ‘I Feel Deeply Frustrated,’ ” by David Wallace-Wells (Opinion, March 10):

John Kerry, America’s departing climate envoy, is “pissed off and frustrated” with the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda campaign to obstruct climate action and raise fears about its costs.

Just recently, the American Petroleum Institute launched an eight-figure media campaign intended to “dismantle policy threats” to the fossil fuel industry, with statements such as “Products made from oil and gas … make everyday living more mobile, comfortable and healthier.”

Most Americans — including our policymakers — are unaware that burning fossil fuels produces pollution that causes over eight million deaths a year.

Rather than bemoan the industry’s decades of disinformation, we need to proactively counter it. Exxon and other fossil fuel companies followed Big Tobacco’s playbook. Let’s build on lessons from successful tobacco control campaigns with a “truth” campaign on fossil fuels and health, enforcement of false advertising rules, and a Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Health Harms of Fossil Fuels.

Linda Rudolph Oakland, Calif. The writer is a consultant with the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and on the steering committee of the Fossil Free for Health Coalition.

COMMENTS

Too poor for pop culture
Like many of us, she's too poor to participate in pop culture. She's on public assistance living in public housing and scrambles for odd jobs to survive. Advertisement: Sheryl lost her job as a ...
Summary Of Too Poor For Pop Culture
The article title "Too Poor for Pop Culture" by Dwight Watkins, he describes some people that work hard to get a paycheck. ... Barbara Ehrenreich, a political activist and author in her essay "Is it Now a Crime Being Poor?" discusses the problems of the US correctional system about the treat of homeless people. She explains how they are ...
PDF Too poor for pop culture
Like many of us, she's too poor to participate in pop culture. She's on public assistance living in public housing and scrambles for odd jobs to survive. Sheryl lost her job as a cook moments after she lost her daughter to heroin, her son Meaty to crack and her kidneys to soul food. It took 15 to 20 unanswered applications a week for over a ...
Dwight Watkins, former drug dealer, forges a new identity: D ...
As D. Watkins, writing about his journey from drug dealer to aspiring writer has made him Internet infamous. In February, his "Too Poor for Pop Culture" essay went viral almost immediately after it appeared on the website Salon. It's a vivid meditation about how little pop culture matters to the people who live paycheck to paycheck.
Too Poor for Pop Culture
Her cell runs on minutes and doesn't have a camera. Like many of us, she's too poor to participate in pop culture." - D. Watkins. This insightful and eye-opening piece by D. Watkins sheds light on a reality that many, if not most, people in the United States are not aware of. Read the full article here. Newer Post Barravento: Bahia in the ...
Bestselling Author D. Watkins Talks Trump, Satire and the Future of
In 2014, Dwight Watkins, known as D. Watkins, penned an essay titled "Too Poor for Pop Culture" that ran on progressive news website Salon.Fast forward a few years, and he has two New York ...
Too Poor for Pop Culture?
Her cell runs on minutes and doesn't have a camera. Like many of us, she's too poor to participate in pop culture. She's on public assistance living in public housing and scrambles for odd jobs to survive. — D. Watkins, writing in Salon, on how class differences influence the consumption of pop culture. Read more from Salon in the ...
Too Poor For Pop Culture
February 11, 2014 - Segment 3. We talk with author, filmmaker and native Baltimorean D. Watkins, about his article " Too poor for pop culture ," which was published last week on Salon. Watkins teaches at Coppin State University and runs a writing workshop on Creative Nonfiction at the Baltimore Freedom School.
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The good, the bad and the trashy: The pop culture viewing that helped
Left to right: Lisa Vanderpump in Vanderpump Rules, Elle Fanning in The Great, Shea Couleé in RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. (Bravo/Hulu/VH1) Anne T. Donahue and Peter Knegt each write regular ...
Pop Culture Criticism: A How-To For Beginners
A piece of pop culture analysis might contain elements similar to a review, but pop culture criticism is really its own form - and an important one. As Emily VanDerWerff wrote in a 2018 piece for Vox on why cultural criticism is necessary: "We need cultural criticism not just to tell us which movies to go see and which ones to avoid, but to ...
How to Write Personal Essays About Pop Culture [+ Examples]
When you write your essay about pop culture, try to focus on specific details that link you to the time; you don't have to try to go for some grandiose idea of how it changed your life, but that is fine if you do. What matters is the emotional connection you make on the page. As the cliche goes, to be genuinely universal, you need to be ...
Pop Culture Essay
The pop culture was opposed to the official culture with its higher education and income standards. After the World War II, the term acquired the new meaning of "mass" culture, or "consumerism" culture. Even though the word "pop" is short for "popular," the two have a difference in meaning. While "popular" is used to ...
After reading the essay "Too Poor For Pop Culture What is the
Answer to After reading the essay . The Reason Why and the Core Idea. The primary objective of Kevin Watkins's article titled "Too Poor For Pop Culture" is to demonstrate how pop culture may be seen as an elite club, one in which members are required to have the appropriate attire, technological devices, and financial resources in order to participate.
Personal Essay 2
Personal Essay 2 too poor for pop culture where live in east baltimore, everything looks like and nobody cares what is watkins miss sheryl, dontay, and compiled. Skip to document. ... too poor to participate in pop culture. Too poor to give a fuck about a selfie or what Kanye said or Beyoncé's new album and the 17 videos it came with.
Impacts Of Popular Culture On The Society: [Essay Example ...
Nevertheless, pop culture impacts the society in both positive and negative manner. Positively, the culture has helped women and teenage girls to self-define themselves, create bonds with people of different backgrounds, increase knowledge in various subjects and realize their worth in the society. Negatively, the culture has made both women ...
An Interview with D Watkins
D. Watkins is a columnist for Salon. His work has been published in the New York Times, Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He holds a master's in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore. He is a college professor at the University of Baltimore and…
100+ Pop Culture Essay Topics and Ideas
Historical Reflections in Pop Culture. Contemporary Art and Design. Societal Movements and Pop Culture. Digital Phenomena and Trends. Celebrity Culture and Influence. Music and Its Changing Dynamics. Modern Interpretations of Classic Tales. Fashion, Sustainability, and Trends. Emerging Technologies and Entertainment.
Who Reads a 'Crack Rock Memoir'?
After one of those essays (on being "Too Poor for Pop Culture") went viral in 2014, Watkins was featured on mainstream-media outlets such as NPR, CNN, and NBC.
Essay on Pop Culture
Students are often asked to write an essay on Pop Culture in their schools and colleges. And if you're also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic. ... Essay on Poor And Rich Lifestyle; Essay on Polygamy Is Better Than Monogamy; Essay on Politics And Society; Apart from these, you can look ...
Pop Culture Argumentative Essay
1. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. Cite This Essay. Download. Pop culture should be studied because it will rejuvenate old culture, keep society up to date, and, overall help individuals find solutions to their daily conflicts. Pop ...
Stoop Stories & Too Poor for Pop Culture
On Tuesday March 7, a small group gathered at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation to discuss two essays by our fellow-Baltimorean, D. Watkins. Together, we read Stoop Stories and Too Poor for Pop Culture. Those of us gathered that evening were all relatively privileged--middle to upper-middle class, white skin, cis gendered. We all noted the stark difference between the Baltimore we know and the one ...
220 Pop Culture Topics for an A+ Essay
220 Pop Culture Topics for an A+ Essay. (7 votes) There are many ways to define popular culture. Here's one of them: pop culture includes mainstream preferences in society within a specific time frame. It covers fashion, music, language, and even food. Pop culture is always evolving, engaging in new trends, and leaving the old ones behind.
Bell Hooks Representing The Poor
The article title "Too Poor for Pop Culture" by Dwight Watkins, he describes some people that work hard to get a paycheck. Sometimes it does not even get them to eat because of the many things that they have to pay. Those people that are very poor does not care about pop culture and sometimes they don't even have time to think about what ...
Opinion
Responses to a column by Nicholas Kristof about schools' inadequacies. Also: A lefty in the G.O.P.; countering fossil fuel industry propaganda.