Get the picture? When translation is up to the interpreter

Preface by Lauren Greenfield

Greenfield is a documentarien who tries to be a participent observer of teens in LA and at the same time try to be unbiased in her analysis when relating this to teenagers on a bigger scale. While i understand what she is trying to accomplish, I am hesitant to believe that some of her conclusions aren't biased by her own experiences as a teen in LA.

she suggests that only in LA life is rushed. "You grow up really fast when you grow up in LA. It seems like everyone is in a rush to be an adult. It's not cool to be a kid." According the the five discources reading, i believe our culture tells us that it isn't cool to be a kid anywhere in western culture, you are always striving to achive "16" "18" "21" "get married" "have babies" "have your dream job" you are always looking forward and pushing for it as hard as you can, this is not a phenomenon isolated to LA.

she also suggests that LA determines popular culture. "as the center of the entertainment industry...the experience of LA teens has inspired many popular media products" our culture does not follow LA teens specifically to determine what be the new fashion trend or if gayness will be acceptable in the next generation fo movies. the intention may not be that LA determines popular culture, but this is definatly how it reads to me.

She suggests money is more important in La then elsewhere. LA may have rich people, but the US is based on capitalism which is a machine made to center around money so its no surprise that this is central to people's minds everywhere, not just in LA.

"better to not like one another than to not know the stranger exists" this reads to me like visibility at any cost, which ties into last class. while i agree that seeing the sissy gay is better than no gay at all, visibility at any cost is like saying i am happy with tolerance, and i am not. i want acceptance- and furthur full integration. i want "you" not to see me as any different from yourself, and only then will i be content. so yes, hoo rah for visibility but i can't stop there, becasue rap exists so should we be happy that parts of balck culture are in the mainstream and stop there? no! its still perpetuating the cycle, and worse, it makes people think that we are combating racism becasie the rap songs exist. we are not combatting homophobia when all we see is sissy gay men. UGH. i could go on for hours.

"in LA...quest for noteriety has become a rite of passage" again, not just in LA this is popular culture, where i come from, in the sticks, people still dream of making a name for themselves. we have created a culture where everyone is trying to be anything but themselves becasue being who you are is never pretty enough, skinny enough, smooth enough, young enough, innocent enough, smart enough, mature enough, privilaged enough, rich enough, etc. You forget who you are in all this confusion and i would argue that most people are wandering around western culture disconnected from their true identities and their bodies. Thats a very sad concept.

Another thing that she touches on a lot is the notion of MTV and TV in general as a major popular culture distributer. While i know what she is trying to say, i have to mention that culture gets to you almost always no matter how "disconnected" you may feel, and that is the truly scary part of culture's penetration. I grew up with very little tv access (and no cable), no internet, no gaming- kids and the outdoors, but our knowledge of popular culture was just as fine tuned of the teens discribed from LA.