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While I was reading about postmodernism for class I was very confused. It just seemed to represent so many things that I wasn’t exactly sure where it was getting at. Finally, I understood what the theory was saying. It’s basically talking about how today’s popular culture affects society.

How I understood it to be was popular culture puts in front of us things that may be unattainable but screen them as what is needed in order to be happy. They create a reel life that isn’t real. Unlike in the past, the media has a much greater influence on our everyday lives. We may think that we are living our lives without influence, but that is not the case by a long shot. Almost everything we do is influenced by popular culture. From the foods we eat to the clothes we wear. From how we view ourselves to how we view others. There is no part of our lives that are completely without influence.

In connecting postmodernism with The Boondocks I found a couple aspects that could apply. First was the style over substance. In the show the younger brother, Riley, is grasping onto the ‘gangsta style.’ He wants to wear what they rappers wear, talk how they talk, and walk how they walk. He’s a perfect example of a part of society that is obsessed with modeling their image after certain celebrities and not really looking at the meaning behind their image. The other aspect that I applied to the show was self reflexive. I pretty much saw this in the show from the episode that covered the R.Kelly trial. They showed how big of a deal it was in the black community and show the viewpoint that Huey has about it. The show presented the community as being acceptant of R.Kelly because of his music and didn’t want him to go to jail, which is close to how many saw the trial.

Postmodernism gives us the analysis of what is going on in today’s society with popular culture. It shows that we are very much a slave to media and are in need of some kind of interference. Time will tell where we’ll end up and how much of that will be as a result of our popular culture.


This was my first experience with blogging and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I always wanted to blog but never really had the discipline to stick to it. So, it was good to be forced into doing something that I’ve wanted to do. The best part was using this as a homework assignment. I think that’s the best way to do papers because it changes how you do them and how you feel about them. Writing papers on the norm is a tedious and boring task regardless of what the assignment is about. With blogging you have more fun with it because, not only are you writing, you’re looking for clips and pictures to analyze that you’re sharing with other people besides your teacher. I don’t really have any negatives as far as blogging goes. It provided a new experience that livened up an old way of doing things. I liked the idea of having one set person to comment on and another random blog to look at everyweek. That made me go through all the pages and see what others were saying instead of just looking at the same blogs the whole time.


By looking at The Boondocks for my assignment, I developed a new appreciation for the show. It made me really look at the specific messages that they were putting out there and actually think about them. I actually want to go back and watch the season over, and am looking forward to the upcoming season.

Clip Analysis

This clip is from the first season of the Boondocks which aired between 2005 and 2006. While this clip exceeds the 5 minute time frame, I feel the extra couple of minutes give u a more complete story than just the speech itself. The clip is from my favorite episode of The Boondocks to date titled “Return of the King.” It pretty much sums up what I feel the message of the show is.

This episode of the Boondocks is very interesting and moving to say the least. In it Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t actually assassinated but was in a coma and 32 years later he wakes up and is thrust into the 21st century. They give a brief summary of his comings and goings throughout the year up to September 11th. When he goes to speak his opinions on terrorism people quickly begin to criticize his “love your enemy” way of thinking. He’s then seen as a terrorist sympathizer and becomes an outcast. When Huey and Dr. King put together an emergency action plan meeting to talk about what’s going on in the black community everyone finds out and it becomes a circus. It was at that moment that Dr. King reached his breaking point and told the simple truth.

This clip shows what a socially conscious show The Boondocks is. Though this clip has some over exaggerations, many of the attitudes and actions are prevalent within the black community. They also said some things that while controversial are pretty apparent and that was the need for the black community to wake up and become aware of not only what is going on around them but what is going on with them. So many times people want to blame others for their misfortunes and give excuses as to why they are they way they are. “Gramsci says particular attention should be given to ‘everyday’ routine structures and ‘common sense’ values in trying to locate mechanisms of domination (Gitlin, 1994, 517).” Applying that quote to this situation, if a group of people are willing to look at themselves and see what their own part is in their oppression and destruction, steps can be taken to change this cycle of oppression.

What touched me most about this clip was it summed up my feelings about what is going on today. There is just so much potential within the black community that is just being wasted on ignorance and laziness and it’s heartbreaking. This episode’s primary message was if Dr. King was here today how would he react? Well the answer is not good at all. Unless the community comes together and becomes accountable for their own actions, they will continually be oppressed and ‘dominated.’

Semiotically Speaking....

When deciding what to analyze for this assignment I looked at several posters and book covers, I finally decided to look at the DVD images for the first season. From the section on Barthes’ semiology and popular culture in the third chapter of An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture he says that “material reality can never be taken for granted. It is always constructed and made intelligible to human understanding by culturally specific systems of meaning.” I thought that this DVD images gave good examples of what he was saying there and throughout the chapter.

The cover has the three main characters sectioned off, Huey, Riley, and Grandpa. All three of them are shown with angry looks on their faces. When the show first starts we see that these three move to the suburbs from the ghetto and are just starting to adjust to suburban life. On the back of the DVD the majority of the supporting cast is shown in front of the image of the house that the main characters moved to.

The first thing that someone who is looking at this DVD would ask is why are all three of these males angry? By looking at the images inside of the DVD this question is quickly answered. On the first inside image we see Huey with his fist in the air, speaking angrily. From this image alone we can see that Huey is the social activist of the group. He’s giving the “fist”, which looking back in history could be seen as a black power symbol. His living in the suburbs around mostly white people always makes him want to speak out about racism and other social problems. He also speaks out against things within in pop culture that many blindly consume. He’s quick to correct his brother, Riley, and grandfather about their blind consumption.

On the second inside cover we see Riley dressed in baggy clothes, glasses, and pointing a gun. He’s the one that models his life after popular culture. He’s trying to be the wannabe rapper or gangster. He listens to rap music and tries to emulate the rap artists in every way. He shows the violent nature of some of the music that is out there today and shows what a lot of young people see as “cool.”

The third image is probably my favorite out of all of them and it’s of the grandfather slinging his belt around. Grandpa is always whipping or yelling at the kids. This is where his anger comes from. His role mainly is his concern about the image that Huey and Riley present to the white people in the neighborhood. He just wants to be on good terms with everyone in the neighborhood and put his past life behind him.

Looking at the image on the back cover, we can see the variety of people which are apart of the new life that the main characters are trying to fit into. There is a pimp, an educated black man, who could be considered this because he’s wearing a suit, a young mixed girl an older black gentleman, who could be considered an Uncle Tom, a white young man dressed in street clothing, and an older white gentleman. From this mixture I guess it could be inferred that you can never truly run from your past or in their case the “ghetto.”

In American culture today we have our issues that we’re dealing with that are specific to this time and that are a result of past actions. The Boondocks being a show that makes somewhat political statements throughout the show brings these issues to light. From looking at these images we see the different levels of anger that the characters have and also the people they encounter in their lives in the suburbs. It shows that in today’s’ society we aren’t separated in the way we used to be, we are more integrated. We have to learn to deal with each other no matter where we live and who we are.

"Game recognize game..."

When it comes to popular culture, it’s something that everyone has an opinion on, no matter who they are. It has surrounded our everyday life in some shape or form since the day we came out of the womb. Within popular culture it seems as though the negatives outweigh the positives, and it’s time that we take a step back and look closer at the things that we as consumers consume. For my interview I decided to interview a former classmate of mine, who watches The Boondocks religiously.

Michael is a senior at Morgan State University, who spends a majority of his time either on a computer or watching television. His favorite pastimes are fixing computers and watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. As a consumer, Michael feels as though popular culture is a big negative within our society, “it’s become somewhat of a manipulation that many people can’t recognize and it all comes down to power.” The power that he’s referring to is who exactly is in control of the things that we get out of popular culture. Many of these things within popular culture that we consume, such as music, movies, television, and even food, are all controlled by a small number of people, “It’s what they think and what they want us to think that’s out there.”

In the case of The Boondocks Michael has been a fan since the comic strip, “It was one of the highlights of my weekly comic strip reads.” The thing that he loved the most about the comic strip was its “black power” undertones. It was a very “social and political” comic strip that he wasn’t used to getting at that time. So, when it came to the show he was really excited about what kind of a statement it would make. Although he’s a fan of the show he was a little disappointed in how it was made, “it was funny but it lacked the strong political message that comic strip had. It just became another cartoon that I’m used to seeing.” To him The Boondocks traded in it’s uniqueness for a more “mainstream” appeal that leaves the show somewhat empty. It's continually use of the N word also left him cold "it's just like with rap music that makes it seem cool to use that word and it's transported all over the world."

Some of the episodes that stuck out to him were the ones that made a statement in particular the episode “Return of the King.” In this episode Martin Luther King Jr. comes out of a multiple decade coma and is shocked and very disappointed with the state of black America. This episode “spoke the truth and reminded me of the comic strip.” There were a few others that also spoke to the state and ideals of black America that needed to be addressed.

Ultimately, Michael feels that The Boondocks is a small breathe of fresh air on television, but doesn’t quite do anything or say anything that hasn’t been said before, "it's one of those things that may want to do something different but in the end follows the grain." He hopes that the show doesn't fall too much within the mainstream that it forgets where it came from.

"The Real"

When it comes to new tv shows, I'm not one to gravitate towards them unless there's been alot of buzz before or after a few episodes have aired. I knew about The Boondocks because I used to read comic strips when I was younger and remembered seeing that one in the newspaper. Although I saw it in there, I never read that particular strip, but my friends always talked about it. As a result, the show was getting a lot press before it aired, and it made me curious about what this show had to offer. When the show first aired, my friends and I all gathered in the common area of my dorm and watched it. I laughed hysterically and knew this would be a show I wouldn't mind watching on the regular.

I chose this show to analyze because I feel it stirs the pot a little. It's proven that from the controversy that has surrounded it just from its repeated use of the N word. Many view the show as apart of a problem within our society, but I feel that it's forcing us to look, talk, and want to do something about the problems in our society.

The following websites all give you the best of The Boondocks. The first two give you similar things. You get an episode guide with brief summaries of each of episode, a message board where fans off the show share their thoughts and opinions of the shows, clips, pictures, and more. The last website gives you daily doses of The Boondocks comic strip, where the show originates from.

The Boondocks Official Website

IMDB-The Boondocks

The Boondocks Comic Strips