Image Analysis of Topic

In our world today pop culture pretty much controls everything that we do, especially our money and how we spend it. Our pop culture also controls who has this money and even more important who has power, for we all know with money comes power. One can tie pop culture into almost everything that we do for work. From a Doctor to a housekeeper or nanny, so many occupations can be seen as relating back to pop culture.

With Marxism it has been seen applying to our pop culture in both terms of a straight economic reading and also seen in the Gramsci’s Idea of Hegemony as well. With Marxism, pop culture fits in well with this theory, “that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” It fits in well because that is what goes on in our world today. The working class citizens who make the luxuries for the rich and allow them to live the way they want day to day don’t get the respect or recognition they ought to. The economic system is so messed up in that way. There are those people out there that do the jobs that our rich wouldn’t dream of doing and yet this people get paid next to nothing to do this “bitch” work. Also, the harder these people work to lets say make bags doesn’t really matter; they don’t reap the benefits of that access in production. And when we talk about money it of course correlates to ones social class leading to a “predominance over others,” which would be Gramsci’s Idea of Hegemony. And if you don’t think that hegemony is seen in our pop culture today then you might be living under a rock. Today, our celebrities are so rich and famous that many of them have this hegemonic attitude about others. They have this attitude that it should be common sense that we “common folk” know where we stand in our social class and we should just accept that. I just used celebrities as an example but we can see this attitude with anyone with a lot of money and power.

Applying this to the Real World, Road Rules Challenge, The Duel, this show is actually centered around the idea of money and what people will do to be “rich.” The grand prize at the end is a huge check for $150k and not only that but throughout the show at each challenge and duel if you win you also receive a prize which is usually the newest hottest thing out. But, when looking at the show and the idea of Marxism closely, the idea of the show is the opposite of Marxism. At the beginning of the show everything starts off with nothing and then the harder you work the closer you get to winning the grand prize, with Marxism, work as hard as you want you still wont become rich. So, you can see how these two ideas are different.

In terms of the show and hegemony the show really relates to the structure of power that exists in America today because this show is giving those who don’t really have a lot a change to work hard and maybe through there performance and hard work of winning and getting the grand prize they would be able to change there social status due to there new found economic status. This relates to the structure of power that exists in America today because if you work hard to get what you want, it is easy to climb your way to a better life and a better social and economic status.