Popularity in the 1940's-50's

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Ben Nelson English 1000 November 6th 2012 Popularity, What is it made of? The short film “Are You Popular?” goes into detail on the ways to become popular, such as having a good personality, a good home, and good parents. The film breaks down popularity in the lives of high school students, how they react to it and how they handle it. Students saw a film on “mental hygiene” that is instructing them on how to act and what they should do in certain situations. For me looking at this film today, it seems silly and ridiculous. Let’s take a look at this film and how it explains to be popular in the American Society of the 40s and 50s. While it may seem that girls who parks in cars of the popular boys are believed to be popular themselves. The film, Are You Popular, starts out with the popular kids sitting at their table talking and eating their lunch. As they are trying to call Caroline Ames over another girl Ginny Finch thinks they are calling at her. She thinks she has the keys to popularity by parking in the boys’ cars at night. As Jerry brags about taking her out he finds out that she does that with all the other boys, and this makes him feel bad and less important about himself now that he found out. As she tries to start a conversation the guys at the table brush her off. With Ginny’s permiscouous ways she is wrong about the keys to popularity. This is shown when none of the boys say anything to her whenever they see her outside of their cars. Most relationships in the 1940’ s-50’s were about popularity and not personality. Continuing in the same scene, they see the new girl Caroline Ames as a good-looking girl who always dresses nice as one guy puts it “she always dresses nice and looks good”. They invite her over to sit and right away they strike up a conversation about the school play. Wally says he’s a one-man team with the props and

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