Popular culture has often been used to bring attention to injustice and to criticize different aspects of American society and its values. You are going to be giving examples of people who criticize what the government is doing, what America is doing, trying to show what’s wrong with something about society or culture. Using at least two specific examples in each part, identify and discuss the way this occurred during all of these time periods:
(a) the Great Depression – You are using at least two example of America criticizing American injustice during the Great Depression. Here are several ID’s you can use. The first would be the Bonus Army. All those veterans who had been promised money march to Washington to get their bonus bill, to get the money they had been promised. The second is Grape of Wrath
(b) the Baby Boom era from 1945-1970 – Start with the Beats, the writers and poets who criticized consumerism and conformity right after WWII. So not the beatles, but the beats were criticizing what was happening in American Culture. The second, Student-movements, to explain how popular culture Criticizes aspects of America. Student Movements in the 19 sixties were all of those college age baby boomers protesting free speech and Vietnam war.
c) from 1970 to today (including one from rap/Hip-Hop) – You could start from Deer Hunter, which was the movie from 1978 about the Vietnam War that criticized the horrors of war and what happened to Vietnam veterans from rap and hip hop. You could use any of the following. The song, the message from the ID, Public enemy, who had a social political militant stats, NWA and gangsta rap, who felt they were criticizing, as they said realism rap, what real their lives were like, racism and police brutality and being abused by the system. Granted, they may have been very dramatic and gone way overboard in the way that they rapped about it, but they were protesting what they saw as in justice. So we have the deer hunter, several different aspects of hiphop, including Gradndmaster Flash and the message, public enemy, NWA, and gangsta rap. And finally, one that you could use from the movie Merchants of cool was rage rock. But thats band like Limp Bizikit and insane clown posse who argued that slit commercial culture is what’s wrong with America. And they want to have their own expressions of their feelings, no matter how hateful they may seem.
