Research Blog #3

For my research blog I am going to be researching the Harry Potter subculture.  The site I will use is http://www.mugglenet.com/

Blog Assignment # 2-Hegemony

Monarchy represents hegemony because for a long period of time people in England for example believed that they should follow leadership of the monarchy just because these people were born into royalty.  Eventually they did rebel against the monarchy, but for a long time there was an unexplainable power towards the monarchy with little to no resistance.

In the show House, Dr. House is an image of hegemony because he has the respect and power over all the other doctors.  He doesn't force people to follow him, nor does he care if they do.  He just leads and does his job in the medical world.  People are afraid of acting out and contradicting House because I think they are afraid that they will be wrong, and House is never wrong.

Your elders are a good example of hegemony as well.  You are always told throughout your life to respect and listen to your elders.  In my family we never talked back to my grandparents because they are the head of our family and our leaders.  There was never really an explaination why they are in charge, they just were and we always went along with it.  Not to say that is a bad thing, they earned their rights to be in charge of our family, and they created our family.  They never forced us to respect them or to follow them, we just did because they are our elders.

Sub Culture Research Blog 2

I think figuring out which subculture I wanted to research was relatively simple.  I thought about what I personally was a fan of in popular culture and what I knew a lot of people would be interested in.  Harry Potter has been popular now for a decade and has been a huge part of our popular culture today.  I knew this is why I wanted to research Harry Potter as a subculture.  I personally love Harry Potter, nerdy as that may be.  I have read and watched the movies numerous times and I knew that researching this topic would be fun and interesting for me.

I expect by researching this subject I will find many people who are much more involved in the subculture than I am.  I also expect to learn a lot about why people love Harry Potter and why it is that this subculture has been lasting for as long as it has.  Before going into this project I feel like I already have a good background knowledge of this subculture since I have been a fan myself and have read and watched the movies.  Some difficulties I may encounter could be the issue of not enough broad topics to look into.  People who are fans of Harry Potter tend to have similar views and I do not really know how in depth topics could be.  I think that this subculture research will definately help me have awareness of what I like and do not like about Harry Potter and it will teach me many things that I may not know about the characters and the plot lines of the books and movies.

List of Subcultures

http://www.mugglenet.com/ -harry potter sub culture

http://www.hisgoldeneyes.com/ -twilight sub culture

http://justinbieberfansite.blogspot.com/ -justin bieber sub culture

http://www.youtube.com/ -youtube sub culture

Binary Opposition

When I was thinking about the term binary opposition, what stuck in my head mostly was the example of "us-them" that they use in the text. There are always two different sides, and whatever side an individual happens to be a part of is always the "good" side, where as the other side is always considered "bad", the opposition. The best example I could think of with this is Walmart vs. small businesses. Walmart is not an evil company yet people who own small businesses and are on the opposing side believe that Walmart's way of selling goods is unfair. While Walmart's goods may be inexpensive and helpful to customer's budgets, the opposing small businesses can't compete.

Authenticity

From reading the chapter my take on authenticity is that it is a way of making something genuine and valuable in popular culture. I chose the Tiffany's diamond engagement ring as a symbol of authenticity for various reasons. When people are getting an engagement ring for their significant other they want something that is authentic. For diamond rings, Tiffany's is one of the most stereotyped high class label in today's popular culture. Just for having that little blue box with the name Tiffany's engraved into it people automatically are convinced that what they are about to receive is authentic and original.