Brandon Bittner
Popular Culture and American Society
Base for Course Curriculum First drafted Jun 17, 2014, revised over time
Popular Culture and American Society: Window to the Nation’s Soul, Mirror of the Nation’s Mind
The super-objective of this course is to examine the intersection between pivotal events in our national
narrative and the popular cultural expressions of those periods. Students will learn to interpret popular
culture through a critical lens and see how art both inspires and imitates life.
The course will be broken into themes. What is Culture?, Media Literacy, Subcultures and Popular
Culture, Love and Marriage – Cultural Norms of gender and relationships, War and Peace in popular
culture, Technology in popular culture, Sport as mass entertainment, Video Games, the Cult of Celebrity.
Within those themes the course will look at periods through history when these themes were most
evident and relevant, and the variety of expressions in the popular culture which reflect or drive those
periods. In addition the content taught in the course, students learn how to create multi-media
presentations, how to create a story board, and how to write narrative scripts. This is in compliment to
traditional assessment techniques that are employed during the course.
Basic materials:
Each student will need a laptop computer with movie and audio creation/editing capabilities, and
earbuds. For the class we need Netflix, microphones and basic cameras. The class may need a social
media sharing platform like school tube in addition to MBC and google drive to share projects.
Unit 1 What is Culture?
Time-10-12 class periods. (includes introduction to technology and procedures)
Essential question; What is culture, and how do we differentiate between culture as a general concept
and popular culture?
SWBAT:
Identify and define culture, and popular culture
Explain the influences that shape American culture
Identify the impact of a diverse immigrant history on American culture
Resources ;
MBC Bundle Unit 1: Articles “What is Culture?” “Immigration Before 1965” “Fragmentation of American
Popular Culture”
Assessments: Articles have questions connected with them. Schoolwork quizzes
Unit 2 Basic Media Literacy
Time: 15-18 class periods
Essential question: How do artists use images and sound to convey meaning?
SWBAT:
Identify and explain how symbols are used as visual shorthand to convey meaning.
Explain and apply basic editing techniques
Identify and explain the use of sound and music to create emotional context in connection with visual
imagery in moving pictures.
Resources:
MBC Bundle Unit 2
Visual Composition, Album Art Exercise, Film Editing, Movie Poster Analysis, Visual presentation and
cultural assumptions
Assessment: Above materials have mini projects and assessments with them. Assessment in this unit is
project based, including first video project.
Unit 3 Subcultures and the Mainstream
Time: 20-25 Class periods
Essential Question: How do forms and styles begin as subcultures, and how do they become
mainstream popular culture?
SWBAT:
Identify the elements that make something a subculture, and what constitutes something becoming
“mainstream.”
Explain how several mainstream genres in popular culture began as subcultures and then became
mainstream
Analyze how Hip-Hop and Zombies are examples of this theme
Create a short documentary showing some other subculture that became “mainstream.”
Resources
MBC Unit 3 Bundle
Hip Hop Turns 40, Hip Hop sites, Zombie Alert (CDC), Hip Hop Project, What a script looks like (example),
Basic Storyboarding, Subculture to mainstream project
Assessments: Short documentary on hip hop, documentary on theme of specific subculture and it’s
transition to mainstream. Quiz on Hip Hop.
Unit 4 Technology and Popular Culture
Time: 10-12 class periods
Essential question: How does the introduction of new technologies influence society and popular
cultural genres?
SWBAT
Identify and explain how new technologies influence popular genres
Describe how specific technologies like the television, radio, sound recording and film created major
shifts in popular entertainment and society.
Explain how technologies in the 19th and 20th century had a homogenizing impact on popular culture,
and how the internet is reversing that trend.
Resources:
MBC Bundle Unit 4: History of Television, One new Technology…., Modern Marvels, Television,
Technology impact project, “Generation Like”
Assessments: Short project on specific technologies, quiz on history of television, quiz on Generation
Like
Unit 5 Video Games
Time 10-12 class periods
Essential question: How are video games a perfect analogy for the intersection between popular culture
and technology?
SWBAT
Identify and explain how the Cold War led to the creation of video games
Explain how innovations in technology allowed for first arcade video games, then home consoles
Describe how chance was a prime factor in the phenomenon of gaming
Explain how video games have subsequently driven changes in personal computers and visual arts like
film and television
Identify video games that have generated “virtual” celebrities and how that relates to the “virtual”
celebrities of past generations
Resources:
Netflix, History of Video Games, “War Games”
Assessment: Essay
Unit 6 Love and Marriage;
Gender, Love, Relationships and Family in Popular Culture
Time: 20-25 class periods
Essential Question: How have ideals regarding these topics remained consistent, and how have they
changed over time, and how is that both reflected in and driven by popular culture?
SWBAT
Identify cultural attitudes about love, marriage, gender roles and the cultural shifts on these issues over
time
Explain how popular culture has changed in concert with those overall cultural shifts
Identify how many of the fundamental ideals regarding family have remained consistent, even as some
of the specific cultural definitions have changed.
Resources
Netflix: “3 Ages (Buster Keaton) “It” (Clara Bow) “Leave it to Beaver” “Married with Children” “Modern
Family”
MBC Bundle Unit 6: IT New York Times (1927), Roaring 20s, Cosmopolitan “Love, love, love (1928) Love
and Marriage Paper
Schoolwork: Fashion Ads, Leave it to Beaver, 1950s Pop Music
Assessments: Schoolwork assessments based on films and themes. Primarily short answer questions,
and finding visual examples of themes using the internet
Unit 7 War and Peace
Time: 20-25 class periods
Essential Question: How has popular culture been a means to get the public to support war, and how
has it been used to end wars?
SWBAT
Define “propaganda”
Identify the basic elements found in nearly all war propaganda.
Explain how the same elements of propaganda were evident in the Spanish American War, WWI, WWII,
and Vietnam
Compare and contrast the popular culture of the WWII era and the Vietnam era
Resources:
Netflix: “Fighting Sea Bees” (John Wayne)
MBC Bundle 7: Analysis of protest songs, Compare and contrast WWII and Vietnam, Using Primary
Resources; recordings, WWI Propaganda
Assessments: Spanish American War Themes, WWI assignment, WWII interactive, WWII and Vietnam
assignment (script and film)
Unit 8 Sport as a Popular Entertainment Industry
Time: 15-17 class periods
Essential Question: How have the games people played for their personal amusements become a
massive popular cultural entertainment business?
SWBAT
Identify sports which have become integral parts of our popular culture
Analyze how technology allowed for local sport to become national business
Analyze the impact of popular sport on the economy
Explain how baseball made the transition from a sandlot game played in towns to becoming the
“national pastime”
Resources:
Netflix: “Baseball, 1st Inning” Ken Burns, “Bad News Bears”
MBC: Sport and Popular Culture, Sort, Old Sport
Assessments: Power Point, or other presentation platform to show the evolution of a specific sport
going from amateur amusement to integration into popular culture
Unit 9 Cult of Celebrity
Time: 5 class periods
Essential Question: Is the fascination with celebrity a new phenomenon and what is different today in
the world of celebrity than in past generations?
SWBAT
Analyze the difference between someone who participates in popular culture genres and a celebrity
Compare and contrast celebrity in the current era with celebrity in previous eras
Resources:
MBC Celebrity
People Magazine etc. online
Assessment: Mini project on a specific celebrity
End of year; culminating project – Social Media in Today’s Popular Culture
Time : 20 class periods
Students will produce a culminating project that incorporates the themes from all units studies during
the year through the lens of modern social media. (did you know the iphone is less than a decade old?)