This is the Start of Something New

So it's the end of 2009 and a lot has gone on this past year! We're about to wrap it up and move on to 2010. In the spirit of new beginnings I decided to create a space to reflect (in a lighthearted way) on one of my favorite subjects: pop culture. I was always the kid who lived for the afternoons and weekends when all the best shows would come on Nickelodeon (Hey Arnold, All That, Kenan and Kel, etc.) and have been fascinated with the music videos and image creation of musical artists. I've also believed that "scandals" and representations of blacks and women (yeah, look to my profile picture and you'll understand why) in the media have so much to tell us about American culture. The fact of the matter is that we live in a society inundated by images and messages about what we do, how we should act or look and who we are. It's always seemed to me that various types of media (tv, movies, ad, the internet) have a huge potential to construct and influence us in our day-to-day lives. Rather than stopping to critique that influence, we often just soak it up like sponges. That's where this blog comes in: I don't claim to be the first person to take a step back and look at all this, but I do wanna throw in my two cents in hopes that I might clarify to myself and to others that what we're told is not all that we can be.