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Introduction

Mrs Scriven 7 November 2013 History Question: ?To what extent were changes in popular culture responsible for dividing rather than united US society in the years 1968-2001?? Popular culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society. Popular culture reflected the situation and issues in the society, such as sports which reflected racism, homosexuality and the emerging role of women, the media reflected the change in society as it began to display sexual explicit contents, music reflected the rejection of earlier generation and the emerge of a new and diverse culture and lastly the Internet, while some viewed the internet as a weapon of mass distraction, others viewed it as the opening of new worlds of knowledge and culture. The changes in popular culture were symbolic as factions of the society made use of popular culture to question the norms of the society, which they lived in. ...read more.

Middle

announced that he was gay , he was seen by society as a struggling talent . While these individual reflected the tolerance of female athletes and gays in sports it did not reflect increasing tolerance of the gay faction in the society. Also, sports were meant to reflect honesty, fair play and tradition, rather than this, sports reflected the revised edition such as cheating, drug abuse, with so much money at stake, it was no surprise when drugs and cheating were happening in sports, such as Carl Lewis positive drug test at the Olympic trial , the increase in investigative journalism showed led to much exposure of corruption , cheating and violence in sports . In 1980 University of New Mexico coaches were found tampering with athlete?s test scripts. However, Sports also had a part in uniting the society as the desire to win made schools integrate their sport teams in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the 1980s black athletes dominated team sports. In 1986, 63 per cent of top footballers were black and 33 per cent of baseball players and 75 per cent of basketball players. ...read more.

Conclusion

Internet played a vital role in the dividing the country but it was also significant in uniting the country as people were able to communicate through websites such as Myspace and Emails . Their ability to communicate brought some unity to the country. In conclusion, Popular culture could be seen as the two political parties in the US (Republican and Democrats) both having different views on how the society should be, some believe in the traditions and values while others believe in adapting and being modernized in their thinking. Popular culture reflected these two perspectives of how the society should be and like the election some might vote for the Republican Party or the Democratic Party but cannot vote for both. Popular culture presented a society with so many beliefs on what was right and wrong. The older generation were quite contented with the norms but the emerging generation rejected the status quo. So the gradual changes in popular culture was reflective of the changes in beliefs, opinions and views of the society and its modernization. This brought about division in America?s society. Ezeani Gabriella. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level History of the USA, 1840-1968 section.