Pop Culture and Politics

Pop culture and politics mix everywhere. Especially when politics are aimed at our age demographics, I feel like politics use pop culture to connect with us as a younger demographic.
The example I am using for this week is Oprah taking a stand for Obama and literally standing with him in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. Oprah is an icon in todays celebrities. She is definitely one of the most recognizable talk show hosts of today.

So how does pop culture influence politics? This is a perfect example. Here we have someone who is a celebrity, crossing over into the political arena. When she makes it known that she is supporting Obama in the presidential race, she is hoping all her millions of viewers and supporters are going to agree with her. Oprah is a talk show hosts, who specializes in sappy stories that make us sit for an hour in front of our tv and cry. So what does she know about politics and why should I believe what she believes? She is just a pop culture icon, using her celebrity status to swing a vote.

Oprah made the decision to publicly announce that she was supporting Obama, and I don’t think she realized there could be repercussions. After she made that stand, her ratings dropped. Not everyone that watches her wants to vote democratic, and not wanting to support the democratic party, they can no longer support Oprah. Here is how politics crosses in to pop culture. Oprah’s shows didn’t change, she still had the same subjects and her topics didn’t become politically minded. But because she showed the world where she stands politically, she lost dedicated fans.

In our society it’s the unspoken rule that you don’t talk about two things to strangers, politics and religion. When either becomes the topic, you are bound to offend somebody by something you say. Everyone has their own opinions and everyone wants to be right about those. When a celebrity that is followed, I’d even argue idolized, takes a stand and goes from being an everyday talk show host to a political supporter, she is putting herself at risk. Nobody wants pop culture and politics to mix.

But as Fiske would argue, we need micropolitical changes to create macropolitcal changes. So it has to start somewhere. Someone has to take an individual stand to create change. In this example, Oprah uses her status as a pop culture icon to start somewhere, she is trying as an individual to make a change. While she may have lost some viewers, she probably has influenced many more to vote for Obama.