Fake Love

If someone were to ask me about fake love I would honestly have a hard time. I would be better off giving them my personal example of fake love: Mila Kunis. In every recent movie Mila has been in, she has basically played the girl that the main guy was in love with. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Friends With Benefits, and Ted, she has played the sexy ass cool chick who any man would helplessly fall in love with. This is because of a fact that Klosterman mentions: in my mind when Mila is done making those movies, she lives as her character does, day to day a normal girl, but crazy beautiful and talented, usually at a position in a field that you wouldn't normally find a girl of that nature such as microbiology.

Kilbourne video

In reaction to this article Jean Kilbourne would probably have a few things in particular to say. First and foremost she would notice the sexual innuendo that the picture is meant to portray(ask mom or dad if you don't know). Secondly,  Kilbourne discusses in her video that often, only parts of women are shown in ads, and as for this one in particular, only the head combined with the questionable facial expression is displayed. The facial expression alone may often times be enough to anger a woman, but combined with the slogan, "it'll blow your mind away", is just plain inappropriate considering the audience is anyone who sees it, not anyone over a certain age as enforced at movie theatrers to ensure certain material not be seen by younger viewers.

Popular Culture & Happiness

As Jon Gertner explains in 'Futile Pursuit of Happiness', "Happiness is a signal that our brains use to motivate us to do certain things. And in the same way that our eye adapts to different levels of illumination, we're designed to go back to the happiness set brains. Our brains are not trying to be happy. Our brains are trying to regulate us." (Gertner 37) In my opinion a lot of what makes people happy (including myself) can be traced back to an influence in pop culture, even in the simplest forms such as: seeing a commercial for a Pepsi and then going to the fridge to feed that desire. As we discussed in class popular culture is everywhere in our everyday lives, even if we don't notice the connection at the time. Popular culture can make us believe that spending the extra cash on a Polo V-neck will make us more happy when we could just get the same off brand style for eight bucks cheaper at the Kohl's down the street.

This power that popular culture holds over us can sometimes be under-estimated. It can drive one to do foolish things that we wouldn't do by ourselves or do in a cold state of mind. We can more easily be influenced by a group of close friends just as easily as we can by people we see on  the newest reality television that we have no relation to what so ever. I like to describe popular culture as a sort of forever constant type of 'peer pressure' with said peer being society.