Popular Culture and Archaeology
Archaeology as a field of study has often been incorrectly portrayed by popular culture and mass media. False stereotypes glamorise it with the use of violence and thrill. Relic Hunter is an example of how a profession can be altered to fit public interests. Although Relic Hunter has faults in its portrayal of the profession, the overall concept of searching for relics and uncovering historical archives is relevant. While Fox is portrayed as a young professional to the field, her sex appeal is used to intrigue viewers and place a different spin on a female archaeologist/professor.
Read more about this topic: Sydney Fox
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)