Mass Culture

I came upon an interesting topic today when I talked to the CEO of James Cook University. I was mentioning to him that there are certain courses which student prefer which makes these courses "popular" .

He agreed and also added that popular courses correlates with the occupations which is depicted in the television in series like CSI, ER, The Attorney... so on and so forth.

TV is what makes students flock to study Medicine, Law, Forensics. The shows depicts these jobs as being very interesting and solutions for the daily problems solve within a day. Students might be aware that these are unrealistic but they are still drawn towards these courses because in these movies the characters are charismatic.

I probe my CEO further because I never did thought that TV could have such a big influence on one's ambition in life. He informed me that he did a thesis on this before and the concept of Mass Culture came up.

When I googled for Mass culture I could only find the term popular culture. Popular culture is birthed from society's interaction with mass media especially the television or perhaps You Tube

With the birth of you tube and other forms of downloading devices from the Internet legal or illegal, we cannot excape being exposed to films that appeal to the mass public.

If we are rebelling against this mass culture we will be cast aside as ignorant as there would be no common topic to talk about. If everyone watches Superheroes and I decided to shun it, I would be considered either an anti superhero or just someone who is outdated. I think the latter is more appropriate.

Mass culture can cause one to lose a sense of uniqueness. Everyone is trying to identify with each other and thus the similarity can become so entrench that it merges the whole society into a single unit of actions, behaviours and interest.

If all the high school students wants to go for Medicine, Law , Forensics what happens to the less popular course. Of course a quota will be set for the ones who is inclined to perform well academically. Then the rest who scored below average will have to settle for the less in demand courses and nurse their discontentment.

They would have to face parental nagging for their lack of performance which cause them to not be able to follow the public opinion of what is considered a worthy occupation to pursue.