CAPS 6: Castle

Pop culture has a major impact on our society today. From current movies, new top chart hits, to murder TV series, our views of different cultures and parts of the world are changed. Our book explains that “people often are introduced to other cultures through the lens of popular culture” (Martin & Nakayama, 2012). One often develops most of their knowledge through these avenues of technology, only to cloud their judgment or get an off perspective from the truth. To analyze the different cultural views with pop culture, I sat down and enjoyed a few episodes of one of my favorite TV shows: Castle.

Castle is a crime drama series on ABC. The show is based in NYC with the NYPD detective Kate Beckett and tag along writer, Richard Castle. The two, along with their partners, Esposito and Ryan, solve unusual murder cases in NYC and all along are trying to find Beckett’s mothers killer. This is all tied together with Beckett and Castle getting in a relationship. The key cultural stereotypes that I want to point out are the idea of the NYPD lifestyle, the coworkers becoming family relationship and the violence in NYC.

The first point is the idea of the characters having an exciting and thrilling life in the NYPD. This view on their lives makes viewers belief that it is a great lifestyle, and it always works out. It shows that there is some danger, but it rarely amounts to anything. A key part to this assumption is that in the cultural group it is ok that Castle, a writer with literally no police experience, can just tag along for investigations and dangerous leads. This points out to us that it is almost not taken as serious as it needs to be.

Another cultural theme seen in this TV series is how the coworkers become family. The work environment is supposed to be focused on the work at hand; however, it is very clear that the four partners are closer than that, and Beckett and Castle have their own emotional relationship as well. I think this represents the police cultural well because when you are dealing with investigations and risky situations, it often connects the people on a closer level. That close feeling of friendship and family makes the force complete and is shown in their work.

The last stereotype that ties well into my life is the portrayal of all of the violence in NYC. In this TV series, the violence and murder situations are focused on giving it a negative perspective of NYC. People that come from a reserved area like Nebraska and especially the small towns often to get to see the actual side of NYC that a normal person would experience. I have been to NYC 3 times and love the city and rarely felt fear or concern while going around the city alone during the day or night. I know that this is just one view but others who have not experienced get this negative connotation and assume that this is a common thing in NYC that everyone experiences. The TV show gives this representation clearly; however, this isn’t the case for everyone. We must think about how these cultural groups are portrayed through the culture and remember that not everyone sees the same perspective from pop culture (Martin & Nakayama, 2012). This is a prime example as where people with different lifestyles that view this have different interpretations of how NYC is and the violence related to it. 

Popular culture is represented and portrayed in many different ways. Our cultural perceptions are affected by the different social media and entertainment avenues used today. Developing our views is on us to decide what we choose to let impact our ideas and how we will adjust what we know when we actually experience these various cultures.

Sources:

Martin & Nakayama, 2012. Intercultural Communication in Contexts, sixth edition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnY0xaGiS2M