Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Revisionist Westerns

I'm staying up all night to write a term paper about Clint Eastwood's ultra-revisionist western, Unforgiven. I think it's interesting to read scholarly articles about popular culture. I believe it adds a much-needed legitimization of popular culture as a social document and reinforces the idea that in many ways, popular culture can become a real entity rather than a media-imagined social phenomenon. Especially now, when digital technology allows for unprecedented interpersonal connectivity, especially for the distribution of information, society seems to really exist in this forum of constant discussion which is popular culture. Many critics dismiss the value of this information because of the influence that the media has exerted onto it in the transformation of information into a marketable product for a mass audience, however, I feel that the nature of this media manipulation is a direct response to the will of the people (or at least, the will of the people with enough money to constitute demand), and in being such, becomes an invaluable barometer for the philosophies and achievements of the times.

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