RR- Reading in America (Killer Culture)

Chris Dunfield

Stacey Knapp

English 1A

23 March 2013

Reading in America-Killer Culture (reading response)

An article in Reading America called Killer Culture, by David Kupelian, portrays 20^th century American culture, media, and society. David Kupelian holds the belief that kids should be both home schooled and shielded from mass mainstream culture/media. He targets American parents and Christian thinkers, as well as corporations who create the youths' culture like, “Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Universal Vivendi, and AOL/Time Warner.”(Ibid) David Kupelian holds the belief that kids are extremely susceptible to influence, and can easily have their perceptions molded and changed, which I agree with. Thus, children are in great need of some kind of good influence. I agree with David in his belief that, “children deserve and desperately need firmness, patience, fairness, limits, kindness, insight, and a good, non-hypocritical example.” (Kupelian) One point I do not agree with him on, however, is that I do not think all kids should be home schooled; the main problem is with mass media outlets owning and controlling everything that people are so frequently exposed to, the 'Killer Culture'.

Corporate culture has thus effectively starting creating culture through their monopolization of these forms of media that continually bombard our senses. David examines this effect of corporate America and advertisement well when he says, “This would be bad enough-- if corporate America were just following and marketing the basest instincts of confused, unsupervised teenagers. But they are not following, they are leading-- downward.”(Kupelian). Corporations own every commercial cable channel, and are responsible for almost all the advertisement we are exposed to; this means that they have the power to, and do, create culture through the exertion of this control. Clearly, something has to be done about the total domination of most peoples senses that (these small groups of people behind the most) powerful corporations in the world are able to exert. I agree educating people so that they are more aware of what's behind what they are being constantly exposed to is one of the most important steps we can take, but homeschooling is not the way. People need social interaction with one-another; I think homeschooling would just further feelings of separation and angst in the community at large. On a larger note, the power of these corporations and many others is way to vast and must be limited, corporations have the power to succeed international laws regarding the environment and trade, something that quite obviously raises a red flag! Once people become aware of what is going on, others will act out against these unethical and unlawful act of structural violence our 'killer culture' exerts on the global (undeveloped) South.

Word count :450