ABOUT:
Our group’s broader topic of discussion is media, society and popular culture within the context of South Africa, and more specifically; Stellenbosch. Each of us will look at a different aspect of everyday student life that the media effects in a light-hearted but educational manner. We’ll be structured so that as a group we have a post every day, in the following format:
Music Mondays – by McLovin’ (C.P.)
TV Tuesdays – by Sarah (me)
Mid-week high – by Hein
Therapy Thursdays (focusing on sexuality, of course) – by Jennifer Mae
Film Fridays – by Anthea
TV Tuesdays – by Sarah (me)
Mid-week high – by Hein
Therapy Thursdays (focusing on sexuality, of course) – by Jennifer Mae
Film Fridays – by Anthea
I personally will be focusing on the more specific issue of popular television programs, and the influence and effect that they have on our youth culture.
Even for those that don’t have TVs, “series” is a big part of our lives. In Stellenbosch especially it is incredibly easy to download entire seasons of a show and spend days cooped up in one’s room watching them. Series has become an entire culture; which shows you watch, how soon you get the new episodes, how much of it you’ve seen, until eventually it extends into our personality. We find the jokes that Barney says in How I Met Your Mother so funny that we build our own humour on his, or we think that the love between Derrick and Meredith in Grey’s Anatomy is so amazing and true that we judge our own relationships on theirs, and accept nothing less than what they have.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, and most of us (myself included) are very much caught up in it. I will study different shows each week, comparing them to one another and showing the correlation to our own lives, thus discussing the effect and influence of popular television shows on us as Stellenbosch students.
- Sarah Chaimowitz
