Mis Aventuras en Buenos Aires: The Typical Mistake

Me & my awesome Professor, Blake

I've mentioned before that my communication's class is by far my favorite of the semester. Makes sense… it's intercultural communication and that just so happens to be my major. My professor, Blake, does an incredible job not only engaging us intellectually, but challenging us as well. His class is always forcing myself to reconsider how I view the world in which I live.

This week instead of having our regular classroom lecture, Blake had us come visit him as guests for his radio show here in Buenos Aires, "The Typical Mistake" on Radio Palermo. TTM is an all English-language radio show here in BsAs since 1999. My prof is the co-host on this show and his friend, Guillermo, is the show host/founder.

Who listens to an English-speaking show in Buenos Aires? Well, more people than you would think (unfortunately I don't have concrete numbers). Most of the audience is made up of Argentines who want to practice and integrate English into their lives, but TTM also has a growing set of listeners from all over the world.

Our topic during the show was about mass media. And the question asked was, does mass media drive culture? Or does mass media reflect culture?

I took a popular culture comm class last semester at Texas A&M. This class definitely changed the way I looked at the world by learning how we are affected by popular culture. From my previous professor I learned this: "Popular Culture serves as a mirror to society, reflecting standards and commonly held beliefs. PC serves as a resource to our lives, crossing across most barriers that divide us. To take a rhetorical perspective on popular culture is to pay attention to the persuasive nature of signs as we become detectives of meaning. "

I reflected back on this class as we sat and discussed mass media on the radio. And I though, "Does American popular culture really reflect me as an American?"

Let's look at how PC defines beauty. The reputation of the US abroad is that we are a nation of obese people. Yet in our mass media how many obese people are represented? Our advertisements and music videos are covered in half-naked photo-shopped women. This ideal image of "beauty" our pop culture portrays is so perfect that its nearly impossible for us to recreate without spending an abundance of money on clothes, cosmetics, or even surgery. I feel as if our media drives culture more than reflects it. If our media reflected who we were, magazines would stop using things like photoshop. Instead they drive this image of what they define beauty to be, and convince us that with their product/service alone can we obtain their definition of "true beauty".Is this image of beauty really a reflection of me??? And don't even get me started on the racial aspect of this beauty concept as well. (seriously, where's my hispanic disney princess?)

That's jus' me though.... What do you think about the relationship between culture and mass media?

Here is the link the hit "Like" on The Typical Mystake's facebook page.