Weekly Analysis 5

My weekly analysis is about a popular culture topic involving cultural beliefs from another country. I recently read an interesting story about this topic in October's issue of Marie Claire magazine, (2009). The article highlights the culture, rituals, and stereotyping of romance in Mauritanian, a country located in West Africa.

The story discusses how the young women of Mauritanian are molded into to looking the part of a suitable wife for the men of the country. In an attempt to "return to tradition", the shaky government has begun implementing an old custom that the women should be obese for their men. Yes, the men of Mauritanian prefer to have their wives be obese. "The Practice is re-emerging because men still find mounds of female flesh comforting and erotic; the attraction is engrained from birth", explains Seyid Ould Seyid, a Mauritanian male journalist, (Haworth, p. 106, 2009).

How ironic that the men of Mauritanian are entranced by what many American men would consider a turnoff. The Mauritanian men find stretch marks on a woman to be a bonus, in their bizarre prize of obesity, (Haworth, p. 106-107, 2009).

Obviously, the Mauritanian men feel that the weight of their woman is just an extension of cosmetic beauty. In reality, these women are being abused physically and mentally. The women are sent by their families to a camp that focuses on helping the women prepare for marriage, by drastically increasing their weight. At this center the women are force-fed an upwards of 16,000 calories per day in order to gain a large amount of weight in a short amount of time. The women will face abuse if they do not eat the food they are given. In addition to eating mass quantities of food, the women are made to lie around all day doing nothing, so as not to contradict their weight gain, (Haworth, 2009).

Unfortunately, the women are not only dealing with the mental abuse from their families, and the "obese camp" that they have been made to live at; their bodies are facing tremendous physical abuse from eating so much. The obese women have to deal with the physical side effects of being obese, including diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

How is something so "beautiful" to one culture considered so "ugly" by another…

References

Haworth, A., (October, 2009) Forced to be fat. Marie Claire, 16,104-108.

Journal Article Analysis

I am analyzing "Popular Culture and the Economy", by Cusic & Faulk, (2009), an article featured in The Journal of Popular Culture. The article details how popular culture in America supports our economy. The article has detailed how American's spend their money in each area of culturally related sectors, such as cable television, and sporting events.

Prior to reading the article, I interpreted the title to mean that the article discussed how the sales of popular culture goods are affected by the strength of the economy. I soon realized that the article explains how the purchasing of popular culture items reflects on the economy. The article is written in a manner that can be understood by a wide variety of people. If terminology used is partial to a specific industry, it is well defined and examples are given. I like the way that the article has explained how each category of popular culture relates to our economy. The authors start off by explaining what they believe culture means, so the reader can understand what the basis of the article is about. After defining what culture is, the category system in our country is defined.

The division within the U.S. Department of Commerce that is associated with overseeing this information is called the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The Bureau of Economic Analysis works with the U.S. Census Bureau to classify the various industries using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). In order for the reader to fully understand the definition of popular culture goods, the authors have included an extensive definition.

Cultural products are those that directly express attitudes, opinions, ideas, values, and artistic creativity; provide entertainment; or offer information and analysis concerning the past and present. Included in this definition are popular, mass-produced products as well as cultural products that normally have a more limited audience, such as poetry books, literary magazines, or classical records (U.S. Census Bureau). (Cusic & Faulk, 2009)

The information sector is divided into three areas; those that produce and distribute, those that provide the ability to transmit and distribute, including data communications, and data processors (Cusic & Faulk, 2009). Common in this industry is newspaper publishers, motion picture and video industries, cable networks, and radio and TV broadcasting. $385 billion dollars were contributed to the U.S. economy in 2004, from the industry that encompasses the information related popular culture (Cusic & Faulk, 2009).

The Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation sector reaped approximately half of the total information revenue in 2004. "Consumers spend more money on entertainment that they can see and hear than they do on print-based media or sound recordings." (Cusic & Faulk, 2009) Cable TV is considered the biggest component of the information sector, contributing $120 billion dollars to the economy in 2004. In December 2005 approximately 90 million people in the U.S. were cable customers (Cusic &Faulk, 2009).

The same corporations associated with the cable industry are intertwined with the film industry, which is why the film industry is the second largest player in the media sector. Combined, TV, films, and cable programming make up half of the economic output of the information sector. Interestingly, music has such a huge cultural influence in our society, but it only captures four percent of the information sector. In order to be successful in the information sector, a company needs to be willing to takes risks, and have a large financial backing. If an album or movie doesn't do well with the masses, the production company is at a financial loss, (Cusic & Faulk, 2009).

"Unlike the Information sector, which is characterized by large public corporations with ownership interests in various subsectors, the brunt of the economic output in the Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation sector is produced by private corporations, partnerships, and individual investors", (Cusic & Faulk, 2009). The Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation are divided into three different categories. One of the groups are the Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related industries group. Another group is called the Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation industries. The third group consists of Museums, Historical Sites, and Similar institutions. Performers in this industry made twenty-five percent of the total $18.1 billion generated from this industry. Gambling is the biggest contributor to this group; fifty-five percent, with a total revenue of $99 billion dollars, (Cusic & Faulk, 2009).

Many of the various sectors have companies within them that are owned and run by the same corporations. There are six notable corporations that dominate in more than one industry. The major players are Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, Time-Warner, Sony, and General Electric. The total amount of money contributed to the economy in 2004 from the creation and production of popular culture goods and services was $565 billion dollars, (Cusic & Faulk, 2009).

I think that the article may have been a little overwhelming with the amount of financial figures listed for each sector. Although, I did like that the authors gave examples of businesses for each sector so that the reader could relate. For example, when the authors were discussing an example of performing arts they defined what an Opera consists of, and the four major opera companies throughout the United States. I think that the article allows people to understand the importance that popular culture plays in our society, and the major impact it has on our economy.

References

Cusic, D., & Faulk, G. (June, 2009). Popular culture and the economy. Journal of Popular

Culture, 42(3), 458-479. Retrieved August 23, 2009, using Academic Search Complete