I think the podcast and its take on pop culture is really interesting. While we may view pop culture as being useless and something we don’t pay attention to, it is actually vital to analyze. While we still can enjoy our pop culture, we should not dismiss anything as just being entertainment. I especially found it very interesting when the podcast talked about the influence of entertainment over facts. While this is concerning, it is not hard to believe. Our lives are full of forms of entertainment. In some cases, the sources that should be providing us the facts such as different news outlets, are our main sources of pleasure. However, entertainment can be good. Things such as different bands, movies, or books that bring attention to important topics such as racism or sexism.

Culture has influenced the world for a long time. While it has done so much good for society, it can also be harmful. When the wrong people come into power or provide different sources of social media to their audience, it is possible they are presenting the wrong ideas. Pop culture can be impactful as long as it is used in the right manner.

The readings and podcast for Tuesday talked about Pop Culture and leadership in many different ways. It got me thinking about the pop culture I take in everyday and how I commonly write it off as just my entertainment when I should not. I have been now looking deeper at the shows, movies, books, and music I am consuming and trying to think of their alternative meanings. For example, one of my favorite shows is New Girl and it is a really easy watch for me because it always makes me laugh and is about probably the most random things on the planet. However, it also makes subtle comments about race, gender, ethnicity, politics, that are thrown into the show in an easy way for the audience to digest. One scene I think about in particular is when one of the characters is talking about a white man breaking into a school. In response to this, one character Schmidt asked if anyone did anything about him breaking and when they respond he yelled out “typical!”. It was a really funny moment in the show that also comments about the current political and criminal systems in a way that almost everyone in the audience can understand.

This made me definitely rethink New Girl and appreciate it even more. It also made me realize that you do not have to watch something super serious and heavy to realize cultural and political stances. Things that are easier to watch can also go into the subconscious more and make potentially really serious issues easier to approach and acknowledge.

I found the podcast and the reading super interesting, especially considering all of the ties between popular culture and leadership. I knew the Robin Hood story was old but I had no idea it was that old or had such an effective and extensive history. Since humans are primarily social creatures it makes you wonder if Storytelling was the main form of leadership in times before detailed history recording, mass media, or fast forms of communication. In my Leadership 102 class we talked a lot about oral traditions and how humans have evolved to depend on the information that they learn from others.

Furthermore, I found this podcast super interesting and important because it ties directly to the topic of my semester research paper for this class. My main argument is how music and popular culture in general is a valid and effective form of leadership that can provide a lasting impact and influence on our culture as a whole. Not only is it exciting that I can now cite Dr. Bezio in my research paper, but now I know that it falls under the category of storytelling as leadership. Lastly, I think it is critical to realize what Dr. Bezio points out in the podcast, that storytelling directly ties to our unit on the media and how representation is a reflection of how our society is or how it should be. By creating widespread narratives about injustices in society or an ideal world that would solve people’s problems, we give people the inspiration to create change. I have always found that to be an incredible aspect of leadership: that the actions of ordinary people, like the original storytellers of Robin Hood, can create widespread positive change.

I really liked the way that Harvey and Dr. Bezio discuss leadership and how important representation is to leadership. Harvey defines leadership as the process of individuals and activities that influence a group to achieve a common goal. What I thought was most interesting in the Harvey reading was the seven fundamental questions that groups and leaders must confront and answer. These questions are meant to essentially determine a plan to how achieve this goal and I think they are important questions that people don’t really think about. It’s essential to ask ourselves questions such as, “who are we, where are we, where are we going and how will we get there?” If we don’t, we may not have a solid plan for getting to the common goal.

I also really liked Dr. Bezio’s reading and podcast, which talks primarily about pop culture. She defines pop culture as literally popular culture, which tends to be associated with young people and the uneducated. What people don’t usually think about is the fact that if a culture is popular, then there is a wide audience exposed to it. This in turn means there is potential for this culture to induce change or influence us in a certain way. I also liked the point of pop culture being a form of story telling, which essentially is leadership. I think it’s important to realize that what we are surrounded by shapes our view on the world. If we only watch movies with black people portrayed as criminals, we will have a biased view on who is a “threat” to the world. But, if we see a movie like Just Mercy, we will be exposed to the fact that this bias has falsely incarcerated way too many black people.

Harvey’s seven questions are not unique, nor are they revolutionary. However, the questions do create a simplified framework for a leadership plan. “Who are we? Where are we? How are we doing? Where are we going? How will we get there? Why should we care? Do we understand?” are all questions that we are asked and ask ourselves fairly regularly. The first thing I thought of when I read the questions was The Who? What? When? Where? Why? writing philosophy that was pushed all throughout Elementary, Middle, and High School. Obviously the questions are a little different but the ethos is the same. Both sets of questions focus on a deep analysis of the details and goals. The Five W’s usually focus on an outside party and as a result are less introspective. Harvey’s questions are all about knowing oneself and the group intimately. Leaders can use the questions to accurately assess if the group is on the right course of action. Furthermore, how a group wants to be identified and what its true group identity are can be seen by the leader answering these questions. I believe that followers or the group can best use Harvey’s questions to ascertain whether they want to remain as part of the group, maintain the status quo, or ascend to a leadership position. If a follower does not like who the group is or where they are going or the plan to get there then he or she might choose to cut ties. On the other hand they can also try to change the group from within by attempting to become a leader. I think Harvey’s questions allow for the necessary introspective questioning that is necessary to be an effective leader or follower.

On a different note, I find it fascinating the things that modern society considers “high culture,” when it was sometimes created to be “low culture” during its time period. As Dr. Bezio pointed out, Shakespeare is a great example with mom and fart jokes galore. I wonder what pieces of our culture will ascend to the status of “high culture” in the future. I hope it isn’t reality TV.

What we as a society promote in popular culture and stories have profound impacts on what our world looks like. As said in the podcast, popular culture makes arguments about what should or should not be in culture that surrounds us and the stories we tell can change/shape our world. To think that popular culture does not play a large role in society and leadership is to “profoundly misapprehend” its value in the world (Bezio). Therefore, as a society, we have a job to use works of culture for the better, whether it is to create a more representative popular culture or use popular culture to mold minds to be more inclusive or more inspired.

Even more, our society’s leaders must be aware of what is being promoted in popular culture and ask the necessary questions to encourage or fix what is being put out there. As said in Harvey, “to lead is to ask.” Leaders must be questioning what popular culture is identifying as society’s identity or purpose. Any popular culture or stories that do not accurately represent society or misconstrue what society is meant to do should be fixed immediately or gotten rid of.  Representation and culture matter; therefore, leaders need to be asking or answering the right questions about popular culture, as it plays a profound role in who we are and what we strive to be. We must make sure the right messages are being put out there in order to make the world a better place for everyone.

The ideas surrounding popular culture that were discussed in the podcast as well as both readings have really interesting connections to leadership. The story of Robinhood demonstrates how impactful popular culture is. Robinhood was a single story with a popular trope of “steal from the rich to help the poor”. Yet this one story was able to contribute to the creation of the House of Commons in England and further the elected representation government that we have in the United States. That trope and story has continued to be present in our current popular culture through movies and TV shows and continues to represent different ideas all surrounding the same trope. This makes me question what stories and tropes of today’s popular culture will be carried through to the future. How will our generation decide what of the current popular culture will be important to carry through as we grow up and become adults in society. The Harvey article tells us that as groups and as leaders we have to ask seven questions in order to get to where we as a generation are going. The first question “who are we” is where I see our generation in now. We are still trying to figure out who we as a generation are. As we spoke of in class, our generation is likely more elastic than older generations. However, creating an identity as more than elastic is challenging when we are able to change so quickly. I also think that our generation and our society is constantly asking “why should I care?”. Especially living in a current time where a global pandemic and social justice movement are extremely present, questioning why one should care is ever-present. What we care about defines what tropes and movements will be carried forward into the future. If no one cared about Robinhood’s story or the trope that went with it then our society could look vastly different. Regardless, figuring out wha from popular culture is more than just a mindless pastime is immensely important, but very nuanced as it is challenging to recognize that at the time.

I thought that Harvey’s writing for today was an awesome way to lay out a few leadership concepts, and use a road map to ask the right questions in order to be a more effective leader. I found it interesting that he stated that “research cant provide answers to the puzzle of leadership” (p. 201). My first thought after this was, “how do we improve as leaders then without researching how to get better?”. I enjoyed the stories and examples used throughout the writing and definitely thought they were effective ways to communicate points. Personally, the most interesting question to ask for me was “How do we get there?”. I think often, it is so easy to get caught up in the goal and vision of a process or plan. Furthermore, in my mind leaders are people who come up with these plans or visions to get a group to a destination. However, the best leaders in my mind are the leaders who can most effectively communicate how the group can get there. In the section around the next question Harvey writes that followers “expect clarity, direction, and action”. While creating the big picture goals and plans usually get associated with effective leadership, I have become more interested in how leaders manage the day to dat emotions, feeling, and actions of their followers. How do leaders keep their followers on track without micromanaging? How do they approach a situation in which a follower simply doesn’t care? I really enjoyed this reading and thought it showed just how complex of a puzzle leadership really is.

This week, I think that our readings were perfectly paired. In the piece by Dr.Bezio, she discusses the relevance of popular culture to critical analysis of leadership and society as a whole. Although popular culture is commonly referred to as shallow entertainment, I think that it was very important to note that it’s essentially the study of a social history through storytelling. With this definition, it was easier to imagine popular culture as something that could be related to leadership. Using the questions listed in the Harvey reading, it becomes more and more clear that the role of popular culture should be more relevant to the discipling of leadership than it is. Even more, the “newfound skepticism” surrounding leadership that Harvey mentions could be aided by applying popular culture, something so extremely relevant by definition, to the study of leadership. Another important aspect of this week’s reading was understanding basic criteria for identifying an example of leadership. Besides occurring within groups, leadership has many faces, and looks different in almost every single context.

I think that moving forward, it might be beneficial for more professors to include pop culture in the classroom. Not only would this bridge the age gap between professor and student, but I think it would be helpful to understand leadership in the context of now. Studying history (and historiography!), scientific studies and things like that can be beneficial, but as the saying goes, there’s no better time than the present. If you think about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capital, the latest meme on Twitter, who has the most followers in Instagram, the latest New York Times bestseller and on and on and on, it would be super interesting to see conversations about these implemented in the classroom. From a leadership prospective, there’s a lot that we could learn as students being that this is the world we will be graduating and joining soon.

I absolutely love how Dr. Bezio was able to draw a throughline from peasant’s songs, various iterations of the Robin Hood story, the peasant revolts, the pressure from dukes to have the king sign the Magna Carta, and then the eventual creation of our modern democratic sociology. I’ve heard many different claims of similar relations between major historical events and examples of popular culture. I am very drawn to the connection between popular culture and social change and find myself working closely with various popular culture ‘texts’ from science fiction to hip hop, and every time I find wild influences 

In my sociology class, Power, Control, and Resistance, we talked about plays like the Marriage of Figaro that blurred the lines of high brow and low brow, and how it influenced/lead to/contributed to the French Revolution, arguably one of the most influential historical time periods of the modern era. My favorite domino effect of history (that does work in the opposite direction of major events to pop culture instead of pop culture to major event) is the connection between 9/11 and 50 Shades of Grey. I picked up this piece of trivia years ago through some random tumblr or reddit post, I’m not sure where, but for some reason, it stuck with me. Here’s the through-line: On the day the twin towers fell on September 11th, 2001, there was a young man watching. His name was Gerard Way. This tragic event leads him to start the emo band My Chemical Romance. Stephanie Meyer was a fan of the band and went on to write her series Twilight using the band’s music and aesthetics and music as inspiration. And E.L. James wrote fanfiction of the series, which later became the basis for her book 50 Shades of Grey. Now, I have not actually read Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey, nor do I plan to, but I always found the connections interesting in our hyper-connected world.

I really value diversity in my media, mainly because I see no reason that there shouldn’t be diversity. We live in a diverse world, and there is no reason that our fictional worlds should be any different. However, Harry Potter is a poor example of racial diversity. There might be POC characters, but they are not necessarily great representations, as Rowling has a history of running aground on racial stereotypes and sometimes using caricature-like names for POC characters. Example: Cho Chang is a Korean last name and a Chinese last name, making a vaguely ‘Asian’ name. It would be extremely uncommon to find a person who is Chinese or has Chinese ancestry who had this name, considering both Cho and Chang are last names, and the naming format has been treated as anglicized, with the given name first then family name.