Hidden Rhetoric of Popular Culture

 It is tempting to write off popular culture as brainless fluff—something to distract ourselves with during our downtime, rather than something that deserves our critical attention. Sellnow, in What Is Popular Culture and Why Study It?, challenges us to look closer at the media texts that shape the everyday world. Television programs, movies, songs, billboards, magazines, advertisements, and video games are all instances of popular culture, and like other rhetorical artifacts they “matter” in that they have the power to influence how people think, act, and make meaning of the world around them. Popular culture is rarely value-neutral. It both directly and indirectly reinforces or disrupts social norms, conveys ideas about how the world works, or suggests that things could or should be otherwise.  According to Brummett, rhetoric does not only happen when someone is giving a formal speech or when we are being overtly “persuaded” to think or act in a certain way. It is present wh...