Media Effects on Culture

Last Monday my FHE family played a game called celebrity. In the game, players wrote down names of celebrities and other famous people and characters on three small pieces of paper. Then everyone divided into two teams and players took turns pulling names from the bowl of papers. In the first round they had to describe the famous person, in the second round they had to use one word to describe the person, and in the third round they had to act out the person. I was a little worried in the beginning that I would not know the people I had to describe, but I soon found that the actors, singers,  and movie/book characters were generally well-known to me and the rest of the people playing the game. This made me realize just how much media influences our American culture. Although each person comes from a unique background, everyone generally knows who Selena Gomez, Katniss Everdeen, and Harry Potter are. Because these types of media characters are well-known to us, we talk about them in hopes of building connections with other people. Additionally, popular merchandise often times contains celebrity content or strives to mimic what they use. We consume media, talk about media, and base our lives based on what it glorified in the media. Media definitely impacts our culture and can be a way to unify a country full of a variety of people.