Now, this I did not see coming… Though I am not going to say that I did not find the article interesting… I must admit I definitely did not expect to talk about JLo’s butt in this class. However, I think this article by Mary Beltran is a good continuation for the Hybridity topic. If you remember – if not you can read my past post – I was wondering if given the current levels of globalization it was possible to find “authentic” culture anymore? As I mentioned on my previous entry, I do believe that globalization makes hybridity an interesting concept to analyze. Thus, I think that the mobility of people play an important role on the whole mixing cultures together.

Do I think JLo is a good example? No, I don’t think that a a second generation Puerto Rican – American can honestly represent Latin American Popular culture without being biased. I believe JLo was the creation of some very smart executive producers in Hollywood that realized that making a hot “Latina” famous, would attract the younger Latinos in the US to buy this “new product”. However, Beltran does not discusses this instead she tries to give JLo credit for creating an alternative ‘acceptable’ image of women. Well, no offense but I think that is just not true… because if anything young african-american artist would have been able to achieve this way before JLo. One example is the very famous show “Fresh Prince of Belair” where most of the women in the show are already “curvy”. This show was at is prime before JLo released her first single… Women with big butts were already becoming famous.

Did JLo contribute to this movement? Most likely she did, however in Beltran’s article she is given way more credit than she deserves as JLo is definitely not what an average “Latina” looks, thus not relieving any social pressure from Women of this ethnic group, instead all she is doing is creating another false image of what a Latin Women should look like.

As for weather the material presented this week really presents an “end of popular culture?” I think it may be too soon too tell. As we have seen popular culture has been constantly evolving. Furthermore, since we saw in the very begining of the course things move around and somethings move from high culture to pop culture and viceversa. Perhaps it is the end of popular culture as we know it, but if so this is definetly the begining of globalized popular culture.