Who loves ya baby? Celebrities, that who.

My sister-in-law is a professor at a medical school, and during a conversation she lamented that medical students were dressing like they were on television programs: men wearing scrubs instead of traditional lab coats; and women wearing more provocative clothing than they had in the past. She spoke to me about it, because she thought there might be a connection to popular culture. Indeed there does seem to be some modeling going on between characters on television and young doctors. So I wasn’t surprised when I read the abc12.com celebrity blog about this very phenomenon. The blog post confirmed what my sister-in-law and I had been speaking about: medical schools are concerned about where doctors in training learn about their profession. Some informal learning comes from Grey’s Anatomy, ER and other medically oriented programs. But it goes beyond those likely culprits as other programs, like Law and Order often feature medical situations. Oh, and the problem isn’t isolated to breaking dress codes, medical students also learn about intubation and CPR from medical programs. On the one hand it makes sense that medical students would enjoy medically oriented entertainment. And, modeling behavior is nothing new when it comes to popular culture, as much of the academic literature has focused on the transference of violent behavior from the screen to actual life situations. The kind of modeling these young doctors are performing relates, I think, to the concept of imaginary social relationships. In this case the young doctors see idealized images of media figures that over-time they learn to be like. It is a form of admiration that makes sense for students who do not yet know how to behave and how to look like a physician. What makes it interesting is that formerly medical students would have obtained this information from medical professors and others in the field with which they would have contact. The fact that the influence is from television makes this phenomenon all the more interesting. This is not the first time this has happened. I can remember what was called the Kojak effect, so named for a nattily dressed police detective named Kojak. As a result of his popularity among police detectives many began to dress in suits and ties, like Kojak, instead of the normal police uniform. Media figures model behavior and we sometimes adopt it. I guess you could count the popularity of former Friends star Jennifer Aniston’s hairstyle that swept the nation after she appeared on many magazine covers. Or, the “Be like Mike” advertising campaign where youngsters were beckoned to become like their favorite basketball player. To be like a media figure or to dress like a media figure suggests a greater role for celebrities than they perhaps had in the past. In the past it would have been parents or other relatives, teachers, civic leaders, among others who would have been our role models and major influences. Today, in our media saturated world, it is celebrities and the characters they play on television and in movies that provide such modeling. I have to tell you though, the next time one of my doctors starts acting like the ones on Scrubs, I outta there!

Pop culture brings stability to our otherwise unstable world

I’ve been thinking about the construct of stability and instability, as this comes up at a time when I usually ask students whether or not they perceive their world to be stable or not. But given the current economic situation and the elusive job market they will be chasing, I think I know the answer. But beyond the instability of the economy, what about the physical world itself? Fires in California. Volcanoes erupting. Glacial melting. Rising sea levels. The list goes on. And what about the stability of society? Relationships seem like a temporary thing, or virtual (if you count your seven hundred friends on Facebook). Oh well, you get the picture. The world is not a very stable place. But we (humans) need stability in our lives; we seek stability in our lives. This is where pop culture enters into the picture. You know the world may not be a particularly stable place but on Tuesday and Wednesday evening, for sure, American Idol will be on television. I may not be able to trust the world around me, but I can trust that pop culture will be there routinely – I can count on it. And so, we develop media rituals around pop culture and technology that lend stability to our lives: you wake up to your cell phone or music on your Ipod; you immediately check out PerezHilton.com or Facebook to see what’s going on in the world (your world) of gossip; you turn on The Today Show (as I do) or one of the other morning programs; read the newspaper (I know you don’t do this, but I read two every morning); listen to music on your Ipod on the way to campus. You see where I’m going with this – we use pop culture in order to develop routines in our everyday lives that ultimately provide a sense of stability in an otherwise unstable world. Did you ever think that pop culture could play such a vital role in our lives? Furthermore, we utilize what pop culture provides to make sense of our world. The tragic loss of actress Natasha Richardson reminded us that life could be extinguished in a moment. Pop culture. We don’t think much of it, but it’s really important in a post-modern world such as ours.

Why can't we advertise our way out of the recession?

If advertising worked the way many people seem to think it works, then why can’t we advertise our way out of this recession? Over the years, advertising has been given such a bad name for being manipulative and highly persuasive. If there is any basis for such claims, then surely it has the power to manipulate and persuade people to consume, even under these present circumstances. But instead of going after us consumers, according to a March 11 article in The Wall Street Journal, advertisers are going after each other. The article refers to a style of advertising called “comparative advertising” in which one advertiser utilizes some piece of data in order to claim superiority for their product or brand. The Pepsi Challenge is a good example of comparative advertising. The article refers to the ways in which advertisers utilize misleading or incomplete information to make a claim, like when Campbells attacks Progresso or when Dominos attacks Subway or Pepsi attacks Coke. I guess you could call this attack advertising as one marketer attempts to claim a superior position for the product by directly diminishing an attribute of another. Well, it’s not atypical to attack a competitor’s product, but in many cases it’s done implicitly. In this latest round of comparative advertising, marketers explicitly depict the competitive product along with their own in order to make their point. This type of advertising began around 1978 when the FTC actually began to encourage use of such comparative data. The FTC thought that comparing one product to another would actually clarify differences between products with the net result being that consumers could make more informed decisions. It’s a shame it never turned out that way. I guess when the going gets tough….well, you know the rest. But is this kind of backbiting going to help us out of this recession? Seems to me like a waste of resources based on the serious economic situation at hand. A comparative advertisement may sell one more hamburger, one more bottle of soda and one more can of soup, but brand advertising is usually atmospheric in nature, and as such I think there is greater opportunity to provide an upbeat atmosphere for consumers to encourage them to buy more. I like the ads, for example, from that insurance company that sponsors the “aha moment.” Those commercials feature average individuals who have had an epiphany that changed their lives. Very uplifting. I hope others join this bandwagon. Because if advertising works the way many people think it works, it could be of great public assistance to brighten our lives and affect our attitudes toward a more positive outlook. Do I think it works this way? Not a chance. But under the circumstances, even I think it’s worth a try.