Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great brake, my midterms are driving me insane, I’m not used to this amount of study. In my school back in Monterrey, Mexico we have monthly exams so that helps to reduce the amount of information in the exams.
The purpose of this post is to talk about what I have learned from the class, and it is amazing how much I have learned over these two months about what is popular culture?
My parents and siblings came to Vancouver during the brake and I spent all the brake with them right, trying to find some truly Mexican culture in my family. Sadly I realized we don’t represent Mexican culture at all. What we represent I believe is a ‘’new’’ Latin American Popular Culture. We have all the generally well-liked customs from the Mexican society customs that now are really influenced by the US citizens, mass media, and religion among other factors, but in some time were from the Mexican Culture.
At the beginning I had some troubles regarding the word popular, because I associated this word with ‘’low’’ or ‘’vulgar’’ and we actually mentioned in class some concepts like ‘’low culture’’ or ‘’high culture’’, but the truth is that popular is not linked to these words it more correlated to ‘‘extensive’’, ‘’spread’’, ‘’common’’ among others.
I’m very proud of being Mexican, I loved my fatherhood, and I’m very nationalistic. Those are ideas that always wandered in my head. After two months of taking this course I realized that I live in a very nice bubble and the only Mexican Culture aspects that I have are those who are easy to practice or really fancy and fun to do. And that makes me a Light Mexican and that is sad in so many levels. After one class I felt like I was like some of those Mexican art crafts in the airports ‘’Mexican’’.
But then I tried to find someone who is a truly Mexican, and I realized that this light Mexican culture that I aforementioned really is popular culture. A new culture for everyone, not only for intellectuals, elite or indigenous people, I have the luck of belong to a family that tried to preserve all the aspects of our culture: cooking, clothing, consumption, sports, music, literature and then adjusted to the needs of the society in order to fit and fulfill the sense of belonging.
Pretty much those are my thoughts, and I also have a great time listening the Canadian, French or American point of view about the Latin American culture. How sometimes someone refers the folklore as hillbillies activities and in Mexico to practice folklore activities is for the elite or high society who bother in buying the expensive outfits, pay the expensive lessons etc.
I will also like to show and example of how Mexican folklore is influenced by the States. I prefer the American version.
