How Popular Culture Shapes My Life

1. The Greatest Work of Art

When it comes to pop culture, my memory takes me back to the time when I first got to know the pop culture in my home country China. There is no doubt that Jay Chow was an icon who made me perceive how pop culture presents in music. He is a phenomenal Chinese singer who has brought the concepts of popular culture into Chinese music with genre-cross innovation. He ushers in combining various western music such as R&B, hip-hop, rock, funk, folk, jazz, electronic, etc with Chinese traditional music. His recent song The Greatest Work of Art, same as the album’s name, portrays a fantasy journey of exploring artists from European Impressionism to modern China. This song also displays a perfect fusion of different cultures, which unconventionally breaks the boundary of the time period, region and art forms. The music video aligned with lyrics displays elements of famous artwork and has actors actually emulate these artists. For example, the video includes Claude Monet’s oil painting Water Lilies and Zhimo Xu’s poem “Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again.”

2. The Big Bang Theory

Unlike most people starting with the classic sitcom Friends, my first engagement with American pop culture is The Big Bang Theory. Around 2011, streaming media in China just sprung up with a lot of introduction of foreign broadcasting programs. I was in junior high school at that time and I remember I used the first generation iPad to binge-watch this TV series almost every week on Souhu TV (similar to Netflix). I was attracted by the hilarious stories that happened in these seven people’s daily lives. And the main characters: Penny, Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, Raj, Amy and Bernadette have different backgrounds and personalities. Their dialogues and plot in each episode involve topics in terms of entertainment, fashion, politics, social issues, etc, which typically represent American pop culture and show people’s manners, thoughts and beliefs in America. Several years later, after I came to the U.S., I watched this sitcom less frequently than before but I did follow the plot sometimes. When the final episode of the last season was released in May 2019, I almost cried at that time because I grew up with these characters and the whole series. As one of the longest-running scripted American TV series, it shapes my beautiful memory.

3. Harry Potter

I started to watch Harry Potter after its final series was released in 2011, so I was a little left behind to get involved in this series. I watched movies and also read original novels in Chinese. I was surprised by how the wonderful inspiration J.K Rowling came up and all those creative ideas she shaped a magic world in the contexts parallel to modern U.K. society. These eight series had different themes and always brought me new surprises. To see these witches gradually grow from young kids to adults, I also feel like I improved a lot by learning from them. The Harry Potter series movie plays an important role in leading people to have great characteristics. The another reason that I love this series is that they did a good job on embracing diversity. You can see different races of actors and actresses in these films.

4. Sorry Sorry Kpop: Korean music band Super Junior

Sorry Sorry is always my favorite song on my Korean music playlist. It is also the third album name of a popular South Korean boy band called Super Junior. The debut of the Korean group band started to prosper in the 1990s and later on it has gradually developed as Kpop music which evolved into a new wave of a generation per decade. Super Junior was the 2nd generation band that released Sorry Sorry in 2009 catapulting them to stardom, especially in China. I was also one of the Kpop fans who were attracted by catchy hooks, auto-tuned vocals and creative choreography in this song. And the band’s music video and performance reinforce heterosexual views and masculinity in terms of charming dance moves and male-perspective lyrics speaking to a woman. These messages consolidate how masculinity shares some common characteristics in Asian countries. And more importantly, this song revolutionized the significance of Kpop and reached the peak of fame at that time.

5. Rock & Roast

Over those years, stand-up comedy shows have become more and more popular in China, no matter presenting in-person or streaming online. And I am really interested in verbal performances and listening to their fun stories shared with the audience because doing stand-up comedy entails broad perspectives and cultural experiences to make the audience feel relatable. This show has five seasons until now and was held by Xiaoguo, which is one of the largest comedy companies cultivating thousands of stand-up comedians in China. Every comedian on the stage could express their own thoughts and also interact with the audience. In my opinion, this show significantly makes every Chinese know how to use Chinese to tell a story in a fun way and encourage many Chinese viewers a strong passion to learn more about stand-up comedians. Therefore, these are several reasons that I like this comedian show so much.

6. Let The Bullets Fly

I first watched this film at the age of ten in 2009 with my father at the cinema. At that time, I barely understood what the movie tried to convey because I was too young to contextualize some particular meanings of the film based on my limited knowledge. I remember many moviegoers including my father were laughing when they saw some scenes. But I had no idea why they laughed and some scenes were not apt for children to watch. When I grow up, I watched this film more than five times until now. It was interesting that every time I watched the film, I would have a completely different understanding of this movie’s messages in the context of modern China in the 1900s. Jiang is one of my favorite Chinese directors which is good at having imagery and implications involved in the film. The black sarcasm he used in this film differentiates the patronizingly unscrupulous authority and bandits with a sense of justice.

7. CODA

This movie influenced me because it relates to my personal experience. I am very glad that eventually there is a movie telling stories about deaf culture and the hearing-impaired community. This film won the best picture Oscar Award in 2022. I was diagnosed with mild to severe sensorineural hearing loss when I was three years old. Looking through my growing experience, I have to admit I sometimes confront exactly the same embarrassment as what these deaf people experienced in the movie. Thanks to this film, a lot of people started to realize challenging situations and communication issues that the deaf community has to experience. In this film, what most impresses me is that there is a nearly one-minute silence scene, which used the lens of the main character Ruby’s deaf parents when they sit with audiences who have normal hearing to “listen” to Ruby’s singing performance. They can only see other people’s facial reactions to feel how talented Ruby was in singing songs.