Death in Popular Culture - Essay Example

Today the type of media one uses and is exposed to defines the personality of the individual (Kearl 85). The media is subtle in its approach and yet so sublime in its execution that today it is the media that decides who is a hero and who is a foe. Because of its speed and interactivity today people use media to give meaning to the world objects and make perceptions about various phenomena. Media has the power of accentuating paltry issues and making them appear ever more significant to the masses.

The stark imprints of media penetrate into our minds and shape our thoughts and behaviors and this is ultimately reflected in the society. This entire process along with its affects on the society is known as “popular culture” today (McKenzie 96). The popular culture in this contemporary world drives our thoughts and perceptions of different concepts in this world. Today we are subjected to movies, news, music, internet, games and a lot more under the banner of media. On the anterior media is of great help and use for us but on the posterior media is driving our opinions and have made our life materialistic and consequently we have become more hedonistic and pleasure loving, for instance we are least concerned today about the sheer truths and blunt realities of life.

We hardly care about the deaths occurring in Africa of hunger or people dying of natural or human disasters in any part of the world. All we care about is us and the maximization of our pleasures. With this newly form or guise that we as human have entered ourselves into has actually served to distant us from the love of God and the meaning of life. Similarly popular media has also defined death and its meaning to us in the modern age. This will be discussed throughout the length of this paper in light of the views of different philosophers and thinkers.

Thesis Statement Popular culture has transformed the meaning of death in the contemporary world, making death appear more materialistic and fascinating than meaningful and sublime. Kearl’s stance on the subject Kearl’s work is based on the impact that media has made on the people’s perception of death. Interestingly Kearl was keen enough to identify a certain shift in the media’s dealing with the subject of death after the World War II, since the Baby Boom age. Violence, murders and thrill since have been the new modes of entertainment used by directors for silver and golden screens.

According to Kearl’s research an average American by the age of 16 have witnessed approximately 18,000 murders on different forms of media. This is where Kearl quantifies the impact of media on the perception of death among humans. Death has been dramatized so frequently and creatively that it has not remain something sedate and imminent. In fact media and media actors have made death appear to be an event, an extraordinary event. This can be understood by the example of fans of Sylvester Stallone, they see him on the big screen so often that when they see him in reality, live, face to face they do not treat him like any other human, in fact they treat him like a super human and hence their reaction and behavior changes.

Same is the treatment of death in today’s society under the influence of media. People hardly know of death’s face value all they know about this phenomenon is unnatural, unreal and conveyed through media. Since media incorporate internet, TV, print and all forms of communication tools therefore the concept of death carried by each