By looking at many things at your surroundings, you might have recognized popular characters by seeing certain visual elements. You see many colors, shapes, lines, and texts every day. Sometimes you might be familiar to a cartoon character just by glancing through its shape and color. To learn and understand popular culture by analyzing its visual elements, I believe it is essential to study popular culture along with understanding visual elements.
Sellnow (2010) stated that “popular culture is also important to study because of its persuasive power to reinforce taken-for-granted beliefs and behaviors” (p.8). In addition, Brummett (2014) claims that “everything is a sign” (p.45), and also, he added “that’s because a sign is something that induces you to think about something other than itself – and everything has that potential” (p. 45). I clarify that there are three different signs to utilize in visually recognizing pop culture: iconic meaning, indexical meaning, and symbolic meaning (Brummett 2014).
In iconic meaning, Brummett (2014) mentions that “if a sign makes you think of something else because the sign resembles that thing, then the sign has iconic meaning” (p.47). We may saw a lot of yellow painted Chevrolet Camaro cars roaming around the streets, then we quickly recognize Bumblebee from Transformers (2007) because we saw the movie. We switch this time to cartoons. When you see a blue colored cat, then you start recognizing Tom from Tom and Jerry? When you see a blue colored dog, then do you recognize Bluey?
Brummett (2014) clarifies that in indexical meaning, signs and meanings are “linked by way of cause or association” (p.46). When I visit local restaurants and small shops and I see the number symbol on their walls. Do I think the number symbol is about dialing numbers? No, the number sign makes the particular word next to it to become viral because of social media and it is called “hashtags”. These restaurants and retail stores install this particular number sign icon for the purpose of gaining social media exposure because they would help themselves become famous. In addition, they use popular culture as their business tactic that is why they apply hashtags on their artistic walls inside their business infrastructures.
We understand that we recognize popular culture by looking
at certain objects. What popular culture do you recognize after looking closely
to certain visual elements such as colors, shapes, lines, and text symbols?
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References:
Brummett, B. (2014). Rhetoric in popular culture (pp. 45-46). Sage Publications.
Bay, M. (Director). (2007). Transformers [Film]. Paramount
Pictures.
Car and Driver. (2018, October 16). 2019 Chevrolet Camaro adds extreme yellow color – preview the SEMA concept. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a23827596/2019-chevrolet-camaro-shock yellow-color/
Cohen, R. (Director). (2001). The Fast and the Furious[Film].
Universal Pictures.
Chung, J. (2023, April 28). Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R paul walker fast & furious tribute car hits the autobahn. TechEBlog. https://www.techeblog.com/nissan-skyline-r34-gtr-paul-walker-fast-furious-autobahn/
Meenan, D. (2023, July 9). How Michael Bay tracked down the perfect car for Transformers’ bumblebee. SlashFilm. https://www.slashfilm.com/1330104/how-michael-bay-found-gm-camaro-transformers-bumblebee/
Morris, J. (2024, September 19). Instagram hashtag wall - what is it and benefits at venues and events. Taggbox Blog. https://taggbox.com/blog/instagram-hashtag-wall/
Sellnow, Deanna (2010). The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering Mediated Texts (p.8). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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