 |
| Screen shot of my Youth Popular Culture Pinterest Board |
- talking to students
- looking at catalogues from bookstores, toy shops, department stores
- television advertising
So select the Pinterest board below to be able to access the items pinned to it.
Follow Margot's board Youth Popular Culture on Pinterest.
What did I discover?
When I look back over the board a few things strike me as worth commenting on and upon reflection probably not all that surprising.
- So much of what interests our young people is tied up with consumerism. The merchandising around movies and books for games, clothing, video games is enormous.
- The formula for appeal to youth is similar across all ages. Take Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for example and see how they flood the market from all directions such as movies, comics, apps, board games, toys, books, video games and so on. It's no different for Game of Thrones for 'older 'young people.
- The connection between movies and books is striking. The popularity of the book or books in a series is enhanced by the release of the movie (The advertising helps!!!). The popular books seem to also be the popular movie releases (Eg. If I Stay, Game of Thrones, Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters, Frozen, the Box Trolls). Just take a look in a bookshop and see what books they are promoting to see the connection between them and the movies on release! A couple of interesting sites around books that have been made into movies can be found at Kids Read and Ranker and they are also on my Pinterest board.
- Curiously some things have remained popular for a long time such as Harry Potter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, Lego and Roald Dahl. Whether their continued popularity has had more to do with movie releases and associated merchandising explosion than with the literature itself is a good point for debate! (I suspect the former!)
If my Pinterest board represents those things that are interesting to youth right now, then it is imperative that I know about them and include them in a structured and purposeful way in my literacy program. Michele Anstey, quite some time ago, said that literacies are changing all the time, due to technology, social diversity and globalisation and that this requires 'not only the mastery of communication, but an ability to
critically analyse, deconstruct, and reconstruct a range of texts and other
representational forms' (2002). Anstey is still relevant today and we need to be aware of what our students are doing and plan for the teaching of skills and knowledge that will take into account the things that are important in their world.
References
Anstey, Michele. (2002) It's not all black and white':
Postmodern picture books and new literacies. Journal of
Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Mar 2002, Vol. 45, Issue 6
There is so much stimulation in visual collections such as your fabulous Pinterest page, that I find it unsurprising that we, as social beings, are engaged. As a personal collection, your identification of young people’s popular culture highly accurate and affinity groups will be linking to the items readily if access is enabled. And you included over 40 pins – well done you!
ReplyDeleteI wondered with your comment on the close relationship between movie and book links, whether you haven’t hit upon the notion of digital convergence, especially as Wikipedia (2014) lists this as technologies that “now share resources and interact with each other synergistically”. Consumerism certainly links into this debate as a great deal of what is popular, and therefore promoted, is for financial gain. These links provide not just opportunities for student engagement, and inclusion, but options to change texts, readers and their practices as we develop critical literacy in the learning environment .
Your notes on relatively long lasting popular texts, such as Star Wars and Harry Potter are thought provoking too. It would be interesting to determine if research suggests they remain popular because of updated marketing and new releases, especially, as I also ponder, in ten years’ time, which of our pins will be whatever the latest word for outdated is.
I've found it really interesting to see the variety in make-up of so many people's different Pinterest boards. Yours is probably the heaviest 'book-weighted' board I've looked at so far. Which I love!!
ReplyDeleteHaving worked in the retail book industry as well as in school settings, I too believe there is a strong correlation between advertising and consumerism in the popularity-building of book and subsequent film/s. So often in the retail realm, while a book may have been seen to do very well in initial sales, this grows exponentially once announcements about the upcoming film release are publicised. While I like to hold onto the belief that it all starts with the book, the pessimist in me says, "Yeah, but it kicks into overdrive when there's a movie on the horizon."
Thankfully, I think it can be seen to be a two-way street when it comes to books promoting films and films promoting books. In my interview with a young person, my niece outlined to me how "everyone!!" had seen The Fault In Our Stars, but when she was offered to view the film she responded with, "I really want to read the book first." And she did. That's my girl!!