Pop culture isn’t the barometer of America’s health; we are | A Rant

by: Melanie Mudge

“Why do we have a culture that promotes filth?” we ask.

“Why can’t we go back to wholesome media?” we wonder.

“Will this ever stop?!” we lament.

Then we get on Twitter, notice that #mileycyrus and #twerking are trending, and proceed to spend the next 45 minutes looking at each 140-character tweet about her VMA performance. When we’re finally jerked out of our trances by our overly full bladders or something equally annoying, we decide to add our voices to the cacophony with a thought-provoking tweet, a Vine of our reactions to the performance, an Instagram photo of our dogs looking shocked, and a link on Facebook to our blogs about how her performance is the barometer of the health of America, complete with a link to the performance. Whew! Oh yeah, and those bladders are still calling...

The phrase “If you ignore it, it will go away” keeps coming to mind. Of course, the phrase isn’t always true. Case in point--this recent interaction between my mom and younger sister:

“Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. 

Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom! Mom! 

MOM! MOM! MOM!!!!!!! MOTHER!!” 

“What?” 

“Hi!” 

(Or this video of Stewie from Family Guy)

Obviously, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” became a cliché for a reason. However, an annoying gnat in your ear (i.e. a force outside of our control) is different from culture (i.e. a force which, despite our misconceptions, is controlled by all of us collectively).

Pop culture is 100% driven by dollars. If a song sells, we will soon see a music video, a movie of the same title, TV shows featuring the song, magazines articles about the artist, 13.452 songs exactly like it, and t-shirts, mugs, necklaces, and other paraphernalia featuring the lyrics (remember this?) because it’s all guaranteed to bring in even more dough.

Who buys the song in the first place? We do. And who buys the resulting spin-off paraphernalia? We do. So when an artist has a provocative performance, who’s responsible for the ensuing media hype and social media buzz? We are--because we watch it, watch the news reports about it, find it on YouTube to re-watch it, Tweet about it, and on, and on.

Lest this devolves into a “chicken or egg” sort of argument here, let’s instead figure out the solution. We can’t control the artists or the media companies. But we can control the demand; we can control what we watch, spend money on, talk or tweet about, or follow on social media. 

And, most importantly, we can control what we teach and model to our kids. Instead of immediately adding to the noise about the latest appalling performance on every social media platform available--hence giving the artists and the media companies the hype they want--let our first thought be to disciple our kids. There are enough people tweeting and blogging both positive and negative things about it. And we might get a grand total of 7 “likes.”

But we can have significant influence on our children, their values, and their desires. We can show them what it means to esteem things besides shocking, sex-filled media. We can teach them to love what God loves and hate what He hates. And we can show them that doing so is much more fulfilling than anything else in this world.

If we raise a generation to value, support, and create media that helps everyone to love God more, culture will change. If we continue as we’re going now, we’ll raise a generation that becomes part of pushing the boundaries even further, all the while valuing social media interactions over real-life relationships.

Sex sells...but only because we buy it. Pop culture isn’t the barometer of America’s health; we are.

Melanie Mudge has been the Associate Director of Research for Axis since 2011. She is passionate about seeing the next generation love what God loves and hate what God hates.