When “Just Entertainment” Starts Teaching Us Who We Are

Every time I hear someone say, “It’s just a show” or “It’s just a song,” I think about how much of our worldview is shaped by the things we consume without thinking. This week’s readings pushed that idea even further. Sellnow argues that pop culture isn’t background noise, it’s one of the most powerful teachers in our daily lives. Brummett calls pop culture rhetoric, meaning it’s always persuading us, even when we’re relaxed on the couch scrolling TikTok.

Once I sat with that, I realized how often we learn our values from fictional worlds. Klosterman’s piece on Harry Potter shows how deeply people attach to stories, sometimes treating fictional characters as more emotionally real than the people around them. Fans don’t just enjoy a text; they build identities around it. You’re not just someone who reads Harry Potter, you’re a “Harry Potter person.”

Jacobson’s reflection on 25 years of pop culture studies made me appreciate how far the field has come. What used to be dismissed as “not serious” is now recognized as a legitimate way to understand society. If pop culture is where people go to make sense of politics, relationships, gender, race, and power, then studying it becomes essential. The “fun stuff” is where the sneakiest lessons live.

Think about a show like Euphoria, Bridgerton, or Black Panther. These aren’t just stories; they’re arguments about what love looks like, what justice looks like, who gets to be a hero, and whose pain is worth centering. Even silence is rhetorical, who doesn’t show up on screen, whose accent is mocked, whose body is treated as a joke, whose culture is exoticized.

What struck me most this week is how easy it is to feel emotionally attached to a pop culture world and never question what it’s teaching us. If a fandom becomes your community, are you more likely to defend the text than critique it? At what point does “I love this” turn into “I’ll excuse anything this does because it feels like part of me”?

So here’s what I’m wondering:

1. Have you ever realized, maybe years later, that a show, song, or fandom quietly shaped your beliefs about yourself or other people? What was the text, and what did it teach you?

2. Is there a pop culture text you love that you’re hesitant to analyze too closely because it might disrupt the comfort it gives you?